Week 15 - Battipaglia, 3/23/2015

Well this week was a great one! Here is why:
1. okay so we have the scottish lady that lives up in Salerno that we have been teaching and we go and visit her every week. When we first met with her she told us that she felt like the Joseph Smith story and the Book of Mormon seemed very far fetched and she just didnt feel like they could be true. She was super skeptical of the Book of Mormon because she was raised in a home that was very centered on the Bible and the 10 commandments. But she said that she wanted to understand the Mormons and so we told her the best way to do this would be to read the Book of Mormon, so she has faithfully read every week 3-4 chapters every week. So this week when we went we asked her if she thought the Book of Mormon could have been written by God's prophets and without hesitation she said yes! Wow. This was such a testament to the converting power of the Book Of Mormon. It really is another book of scripture and the word of God. 

2. One of our english course students walked us around a town next door to Battipaglia called Eboli. He lives there and he took us on a tour of the historical part of town which had buildings that were 1000 years old!!! How crazy is that?? It was nuts. And it was so beautiful. It was like these tiny cobblestone streets with these big old homes lining it. It was pretty incredible. 

3. This Friday we went to Mission Conference!! Oh my gosh it was amazing. I got to see a bunch of my MTC homies and we got to hear Elder Teixeira (of the 70) and his wife. IT was so inpirational. The conference was focused on finding, specifically street contacting, which was super good because that is something that is hard for Sorella Argyle and I. He just gave us some really neat advice on cutting straight to the message of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. So we have been working on putting this into practice these last couple days and it has really made a huge difference. We have been able to talk to alot more people about the gospel and just testify more in general. I will report more next week. :) Also funny adventure. On our way home from the mission conference there was a strike in Rome so all of the public buses, airplanes, trains were on strike so we had to have a private bus drive us down to Napoli so it was 4 sorelle and 20 anziani on a bus for like 3 hours haha. It was super fun and pretty funny. 

4. We had some seriously cool inspiration this week. So we had an hour before we needed to be home one night and so Sorella Argyle suggested we go check in on our friend that works at the bakery. So we go down there and her and her husband and his brother and wife are all there and so we started talking to the husband and his brother and he was like oh ya they're mormon and so we started telling the brother more about what we believe and then he was like oh cool ya and then we started telling him about the Book of Mormon and he was like whoa.. can i have a copy and we were like um yes of course. So then i started talking more about the book of momron while sorella argyle was talking to his wife and i was telling them that the Book of Mormon is the story of the people in America and when Jesus appeared to them and the both were like WHAT?? jesus appeared to the people in america... like im not kidding jaws dropped just like in shock... and i was like ya, if you read the introduction it talks about that. So then he was like okay im going to read and then we told him to call us if he had any questions but they were closing the store so we had to go. So then as we left sorella argyle said the she found out that our friend got cut from working at the bakery so she doesnt work there anymore and that was actually her last night working! this was crazy!! had we not gone that night we would've never known that she got fired or where she went or anything like that. We just felt so extremely blessed that the Lord was guiding us to go see her and her family that night. 

So yup that was the week! It was pretty awesome! :) The church is true and the lord has each and every one of us in his mind. 

Love, 

Sorella Kennedy 

Cathedral in Eboli (town next to battipaglia)

Notice the date it was built.......

Mission Conference

Old friend from the MTC 

"SO we mailed hailey this package in the middle of january for her birthday in february......thinking I was really on the ball. It just finally got to her march 20th.  Apparently because it had certain food items the Italian customs and sanitation department held it.  When we finally figured out what they wanted (a wire transfer of 80 euros) through a third party which  then had to give the "OK" to the postal service  - it had been a very long time." - Elizabeth hailey's mom

I GOT MY PACKAGE!!!!!! HOLY CATS!!! MOM IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER!!!!!!!! THANK YOU A MILLION MILLION. The cards were the happiest thing and all of my treats and the shirts were so cute and the backpack in my favorite color and ahh it was just the greatest most coolest ever. Thank you thank you thank you!!! 

I had my mom send pop tarts for sorella argyle who has apparently never had one!!:)

week 14 - Battipaglia, 3/16/2015

Okay so i just dont think i can write a super long letter for everyone... im really tired... haha. but i will share acouple of spiritual thoughts i had this week. 

1. We had 2 people this week tell us that they felt calm and better around us and that is why they like being with us so much. This was super cool because that is exactly what we want. Maybe they are not ready to accept the gospel or sit down and have full lessons but their souls are being pricked with the holy ghost just by us being around them. This was cool and uplifting because we may not be teaching like dozens of people but people notice a difference when they are around us and i think that sometimes that is all we are here to do. 

2. We were talking to one of our members and we were talking about the ways people recognize the spirit and how everyone recognizes the spirit differently. So i talking and saying that sorella argyle and i recognize the spirit in different ways and i dont really know why this hit me so hard but the spirit really does have an individual way that it speaks to each of us. I had been praying for an answer about something for a while now and i realized that i had been waiting for an answer in a different way than the Lord normally speaks to me and actually He had been answering my question in different ways that i had not been recognizing because i was looking for something else. 

3. I love being a missionary. Well really I love being a member of this church. As a missionary all we do all day is try to tell people about the church. To bear testimony of what we believe. Something that is so amazing about being a member of this church is that you never need to doubt your message. No matter what anyone throws at you or says to put down what you have said, you know that what you are saying is true and if they put it to the test it would never fail. You can say the message of the restoration, of the book of mormon, of prophets, that God is our loving Heavenly Father and is in charge of this church, and you do not ever need to worry or doubt because all of it is 100% true. If someone was going to try and disprove it.. it wouldnt work. You never have to walk away from someone who has rejected you or questioned you and worry or ponder if what you are saying is a lie. You can walk away with confidence that everything you just spoke was 100% truth. Its this knowledge that gives me the confidence and the strength to keep going every day when people dont listen or dont care. 

love you. :) 

Week 13 - Battipaglia, 3/9/2015

Well this week was pretty awesome per usual! 

1. We saw one of our first female investigators. this was a miracle. We happened to be walking home one night and her lights were on and so we went and rang her citofono and she answered and let us in. We had a great lesson about the >BOM and how we know that if she reads it and prays every  day she can feel peace and comfort in her life because shes been really stressed. But it was such a miracle to see her because she usually is at her house in Pertosa (which is 45 minutes away and we cant get to it without a car.) 

2. Our Yogurt shop friends! We stopped in on tuesday and saw the husband and he said he'd been reading the Book of mormon, even though he hates reading :) haha. and then we came back on Friday and they talked to us for so long and then got pizza and we ate pizza with them in their shop and they told us they would be our italian parents. They really are so cool!! We are going over this friday to eat Pranzo with them and to teach them the Restoration. 

3. Okay so there is this EC student that we have who is our good friend and is super cool. Like in high school he was that cool, like mr. swag guy, so im really not sure why he likes sorella argyle and I because im pretty sure swag has never been in either one of our vocabularies. But nonetheless he is a good friend of ours. This week he said, "sisters i have a question for you..." and we said okay what? and he was like how do you deal with the death of someone that is your age? and we were like oh boy. So then he started telling me that this guy at his gym who he wasn't really friends with passed away and it was so crazy to just not see him at the gym anymore. So i told him, "its times like this when people are sick or something that you realized that the world is an imperfect place and thats why we need God." and he was like " i hate that. I am someone who needs to be in control and to know what's going to happen and imperfection is just out of my control." and i was like "has anyone told you about the plan of salvation that our church believes in?" and he was like no... and i was like well.. we we would love to tell you about it sometime because it gives a plan of exactly what happened to us before this life and what will happen after and that is how i have been able to get through the deaths in my life because I knew this plan. and he was like Okay ya! AHHH. this was sooooooooo amazing. Because he has been coming to english course for like 4 years and has NEVER been interested in hearing the message of the church before. It was so amazing to see his heart opening to the message of our gospel and the lord preparing him to hear the truthfulness of it! 

4. We had a neat experience with a member this week where we went and visited her and she just really needed to hear from us and Sorella Argyle had felt inspiried to share a certain talk with her and it was exactly what she needed. Afterwards she said, "I want you to know that i really take what you have to say seriously because i know that you were called by christ and that you are his representatives here on this earth, and everything that you have said to me today is really from him." This was such an amazing experience. I felt so humbled to hear that she trusted our words so much. It really shows how important it is to be listening to the spirit and to be worthy to hear what we need to to help the people around us. God uses us, not just the missionaries, but members, friends, family in general to answer the prayers of others every day. What a unique and fantastic blessing to be used as an instrument in the hands of the Lord to help someone else. It really made me think about CRITICAL it is to be listening to the spirit everyday of our lives and to be worthy to hear the promptings of the Holy Ghost because the Lord is relying on us as members and as friends and as missionaries. 

Week 12 - Battipaglia, 3/2/2015

Well this week was transfer calls and Sorella Argyle and I are staying here in Battipaglia!! We are so excited about this because.. drumroll... this week we got 3 new investigators!! What a miracle. 

One of them in this woman we found doing streat contacting on the pier in salerno. She is the neatest woman. Serioulsy. She told us her husband had passed away recently but that she tries not to look at it and experience pain but remember the joy and the privilege it was to be with him for as long as she was. Isn't that amazing! You just don't meet people with such a beautiful attitude about trials like that. She is truly an amazing woman with a very special spirit. 

Then there is this husband and wife who run a yogurt shop here in Battipaglia that we are frequent customers at :) When we first got here the sisters before us told us that they might be interested in the gospel so we should go and try and talk to them. Well for the first 4 weeks we were here we went in about 3-4 times a week and they were never there. So we kind of put them on the back burner and then this week one day when all of our plans and backup plans fell through we were like oh we could go get yogurt... and then jokingly.. maybe they will be there. Well what do you know?! both of them were there! So we started talking to them and then we started talking about the gospel and gave them an introduction to the book of mormon and then the wife had to leave and she was like will you come back on tuesday and tell us more? and we were like uhh ya. :) and then we stayed and talked to the husband some more after and he was like we should have you over for dinner next week. that would be great. and then he wanted us to come back on tuesday and talk more to!! ahhhh it was so awesome!! Its amazing to see how the Lord puts people in your path in his own time and in his own way. 

We are so excited to be here in Battipaglia. We feel like our work here is not yet finished and we have alot of faith that we can see some real miracles in these next 6 weeks here. 

Guess What?? Elder Bednar is coming in april becuase we are getting ipads!! 

We will be able to show mormon messages and bible videos to our contacts which will be AWESOME because it'll be a short beautiful way to introduce the gospel to them and continue to build the friendships we have. and well get to hear elder bednar speak!!! 

In response to mom asking about the girl who was trying to get baptized before she left to come to the US: 

Did she get baptized??

Sadly she did not... she had the interview and was totally ready but none of us felt right about trying to rush into it this week. For some reason we don't know why but we feel like she needs to be baptized in Florida. But it was cool because sorella argyle and i both felt like even though she didn't get baptized -  we did our job which was to show her that she was worthy and ready to be baptized because when we first came here that was a big concern for her and she hadn't wanted to set a date at all. But i think we had to go through all of that like picking a date getting her interviewed and everything to show her and strengthen her own testimonny or belief in herself that she is ready and knows its all true. So that was pretty awesome. 

It's interesting to see and feel even when we don't do big grand things that the little things we do to be friends with people make a HUGE difference to them. We had this one english course student tell us this week that we are the first sisters he has ever liked... and he was so nervous that we were going to be sent away. He's known the sisters for like 3 or 4 years! its that kind of stuff that just reminds you that being peoples friend is SO important and maybe thats the first step they need to come closer to Christ. 

love you all!!!

Week 11 - Battipaglia, 2/23/2015

Well we met with a Scottish woman this week. She was an old simp of the other sorelle.  She is from Scotland so she speaks english. We began with the Plan of Salvation because she had already been taught the Restoration. She is super into the Bible and the 10 commandments and is a member of the church of Scotland. She said she wanted to meet with us so that she could know about the Mormons before she spoke ill of them... how thoughtful..? haha nah its cool. So we started teaching the Plan of salvation but she had told us in the beginning that she found the idea of the Book of Mormon difficult and halfway through the spirit led us to testify of the importance and the truthfulness of the Book. So she was like giving us all these things like its to small to read and its in old english and I don't understand, and so we were just testifying over and over and then finally i felt prompted to say "I am sure you are wondering why we care so much that you read the BOM? I'm here to tell you that you say your goal is to understand the Mormons, this is the best way. We can teach you everything but if you want to know us best you can read and pray about this book." and she was like "okay. ill do it". that was awesome. 

We were feeling discouraged this week because we dont have very many investigators and then we had a day where we just ran into all of these people we have good friendships with. We realized that even if we are not sitting down teaching lessons we can help bring them closer to Christ by just being their friends, and maybe one day they will want to hear more about our message. So we have a list of friends rather than an investigators but we are excited about this and we love these people. 

Someone from English course told me my Italian was getting better. (its a miracle) 

We got let into someone's house while following up on some casa to casa we did a few weeks ago. Its a pregnant woman and she was so nice and we talked for a while and she told us we can come back again! :) 

We had Zone Conference!! It was so fun and so inspired!

Okay so at ZC we were talking about being unafraid, and the Assistants shared the story of David and Goliath and specifically for me a part that stood out was 1 sam 17:47 where it says "and all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hands." and then they gave us other scriptures to look up, one of which was Deut 20:3-4 "and shall say unto them, Hear o Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; For the Lord your God is He that goeth with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you."

Ahh how awesome is that. Like you picture yourself dressed in armor or walking into the battle and standing off at the front line you need not fear! Because it isnt your weaponry or your army size or your skill that matter, its the fact that behind you is the Lord, the almighty, to stand firm and strong against your enemies and to save you. We don't need to be afraid and we don't need to feel like we're fighting the battles of this world alone.. the battle is the Lord's and he goes against your enemies with you to fight and to win. 

(For those of you who have read the mortal instruments book series) :  Also i found the PARABATAI scripture. its 1 sam 18:1-3

1And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 

2And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. 

3Then Jonathan and David made a covenant , because he loved him as his own soul.