Siamo una famiglia

It has been a great week! Let me tell you about Saturday.  So we were invited to go with a bunch of our members and their non-member friends to find castigli…chestnuts.  Have you ever gone searching for chestnuts? Let me tell you, it is difficult.  And Italians are a little picky about what the chestnut looks like. Every one I picked up ended up getting tossed out by the end 🙂  We drove out to the country-side. It was absolutely, stunningly, beautiful.  The hopeless romantic that I am…I was almost in tears of happiness. We were driving through these mountains and there are these little beautiful Italian houses dispersed throughout.  And the members we were driving with (our Italian family) may or may not have been playing Andrea Bocelli and Italian opera. I seriously was in complete heaven.  It was like I was living this childhood romantic dream for a little bit. Yes, I am a missionary, but I’d like to think God just gave me that little gift of having a romantic moment to myself in the hills of the Italian countryside.  We were able to develop some good relationships with the members as well, I hope 🙂  And at the end, yes, we roasted chestnuts on an open fire.  That really happened.

I was sitting there, eating chestnuts and delicious meat and Italian pasta and just so… happy.  This branch in Rimini is so close and such a family.  And the missionaries are a part of this family.  I sat there, and I thought of home, and the laughs we always have, and I just wanted my family in America to be with my Italian family.  And for mom to realize that.. these members take care of me 🙂  They worry about me if I’m not wearing a scarf and if I’m freezing, they feed us endlessly because they don’t want us to starve, they love us and take care of us. I am filled with so much love for each and every one of them. The church is just this big community family and there is such a sicurezza (safety/assurety) in this.

We have also had some great referral miracles this week.  Our investigators brought their friends to lessons, and our members invited us to eat with them and teach their friends.  It has been great!  Our members from Ecuador invited us over for food §(it was so good, something different than pasta!) and to teach these two girls that they are fellowshipping.   We had two family home evenings in one night and received some more referrals.  These members are so wonderful!  They just welcome us into our home and treat us like family.  Do you know how comforting and wonderful this is? We are so far away from home, and yet and never alone.  But we are all brothers and sisters and children of God, and we take care of each other.  We show our love for God by the way we treat His children.