Auguri (letter from 4/30/14)

Carissima famiglia,

Buon compleanno a me! Haha. This week is crazy! Sarah’s going into the MTC, I’m reaching my year mark, my best friend is getting married,  my littlest brother is becoming a deacon, and I’m 21 years old.  Weird. So, this week we are working super duper hard, (as we always should…)

I wanted to share a scripture that I found in my personal study this morning as I study the Christ-like attribute of charity

1 John 2: 1-6

And hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments…whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected hereby know that we are in him.  He that saith he abideth in him ouht himself aslo to walk, even as he walked.”

I really liked this because, if we ever expect to know our Savior and truly have a realtionship with Him, we have to obey His commandments.  If we want to feel His presence in our lives, we need to do what He asks.  As we want to feel His love for us, we just need to reach out and love His children.  We can feel this love by praying with all of our hearts to love His children.   As we love His children, we love Him, and we will recognize Him as our Savior one day, as we finally get to enter into the warmth of His loving embrace. Where we can answer, as Jeffrey R. Holland said, Yes, I truly loved thee.

Sunday we ate lunch with one of th emost angelic members in the world, who makes me laugh so hard that I cry.  I love these people and these members so much, they have changed me and humbled me so much, and they love me.  This member gave me all of this stuff for my back pain and just makes me slow down and remember I have to take care of myself too.

This week we saw lots and lots of miracles.  We are working with our members a lot, finding lots of new investigators, and seeing beautiful moments with our new converts. We are just trying to truly follow the spirit in our teaching and help these investigators progress.  We brought our new convert out finding with us and she helped us teach a couple of lessons in the park and on the street.  It was so amazing, and it is amazing to see how much she has grown.  I just love her!

Today for my birthday we ate at my favorite pizzeria in all of my favorite cities, and ate some gelato and wandered the beautiful streets of Florence.   The anziani are the best and everyone’s calling me.  I feel loved. I absolutely adore, adore, adore my companion.  I just love her and feel so blessed to be serving with her right now. She has taught me so much, and will always be one of my best friends.  She is so open to learn, improve, and work hard.

I love you all so much.  The mission is the hardest thing in the world, but it is seriously changing, deepening my testimony with true witness and experience.

Vi voglio un mondo bene,

Sorella Strong