Thursday! Thursday we got fantastic and terrible news. We have an
investigator named Meary, from Ghana. Her number was in our phone and
we called her probably about 5-6 weeks ago. The first time we met her,
her husband was there, too. Every lesson after that, he's been away.
After some time, Meary let us know that he's a drinker, a smoker, and
a liar. At first I was worried she was maybe being abused, I still
don't know, but at the end of the day it's really not good for Meary,
or anyone, to be married to someone like him. I was really afraid for
her. I wanted to get her and her daughter (7) out of that house, but
that idea was laughable. Where will she go? She has no work. She can't
support herself. She's better off with him than on the streets.
Spiritually, she's been progressing so great! She loves the Book of
Mormon, has come to church twice, and really has a testimony of this
church. But she has not accepted a baptism date because she needs to
be sure that this is true, because if she comes to our church she will
most likely lose all of her African friends in her current church and
that's a big sacrifice for anyone.
But today Meary told us that shes going to divorce her husband. She's
going to take her daughter and go back to Ghana and live with her
family there. Their house has no water and her husband, despite the
fact that he has income, "can't pay." She's done. She's leaving. She
just needs plane tickets. We gave her a baptism date for two weeks out
and she accepted. She has nothing to lose and she knows that this is
right.
We came back that afternoon with big bottles of water, and she BOWED
to us. Many times you hear stories of people loving their
missionaries. We are the missionaries who are loved now. It's
incredible, and we don't deserve it, but that's what the gospel of
Jesus Christ gives you is that incredible amount of gratitude. Because
it's true! It's amazing.
Friday was a weird day. Nothing went as planned and we kept almost
getting hit by cars. We organized our maps app so every single member,
less active, investigator, and potential is on our iPads now. Then we
had a lesson with Isaac, a Ghanaian, on the grass in the park. Then we
went to another Ghanaian members house to give her one of my MTC
language books since she can't come to Italian class. Then we had Ward
council at the end of the night, the first one I've been to in this
area, which was perfect because we were able to bring up the whole,
"Mary is leaving her husband and moving to Africa but wants to get
baptized first," thing.
Saturday we had a fantastic lesson with our favorite member family,
the Elwood's!! They're Americans. We've been over a few times and so
this time we were able to ask them to commit to some kind of
missionary work, and sister Elwood was already thinking about people
she could invite to church. Then we rode our bikes out to a hamlet and
taught Isaac the rest of the plan of salvation. Then we went over to
Meary's and asked her to really pray on what she wants, because the
ward will probably be able to help her, but she has to be sure of her
decision.
After that we had dinner with a member, Ross, who is a single military
guy who has been the elders best friend for the last 4 years. Now he's
moving back to America, Hill Air Force Base actually. Anyways, for the
last four years I would imagine, he's been trying to get the sisters
to go get dinner with the elders too so now that he's leaving, we gave
him what he wanted and went out for Indian food with Ross, Valentina,
and the elders and afterwards we got gelato, of course. He's a really
good guy and he has been a saving grace for the missionaries for a
long time, Pordenone is really going to miss him.
Sunday we had a crazy stake conference (crazy as in technical
difficulties and all the Americans got to listen to the whole first
hour in Italian). Then we went to an Italian members house and they
fed us spaghetti and ragù to die for! They are an older couple whose
less active son lives with them so we try to share stuff we think
he'll be willing to listen to.
Monday was a day full of cancelled appointments. We were going to have
FOUR solid appointments and then we ended the day with one. That's
okay, because our one is super special! It's Meary! She's getting
baptized! We're so excited! We had to DTR with a couple investigators
though (define the relationship). I sent them an email saying exactly
what our intentions are and if they don't want to listen to us
(because they keep making and cancelling appointments), that's fine.
(But if they do want to listen to us, that's better).
Tuesday we met with Meary again. I taught the law of chastity for the
second time on the mission and it went over just about as easily as
you'd expect for a 40-year-old married woman of God. So. Then for
family home evening that we do with the Italian ward, we did a
demonstration about the Holy Ghost with blindfolds, yogurt, and people
being spoon fed. We used Ross as our guinea pig, since he's about to
leave us. It went over even better than we had imagined. It was
hilarious and we bore really good testimonies after.
Sorry my blog posts have been so lame lately! It's hard to keep up
with email time, it slips away so fast! And sometimes I forget that
people actually read my blog so I should probably give you good people
something worth reading if you're going to take the time to read about
my week. So hopefully this makes up for some lame weeks and I hope you
have a fantastic week too! Love you guys!
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