Transfer 3, Week 5!

Holy rainy day in Sardegna!

For November it's been so hot here like still in the 70s during the day if not hotter and I am so ready for some cold weather, well today the cold weather came! It's been raining all morning and it's fa freddo as the Italians say! I like it though, it's a little wet but we can make it work!

This week we got stood up for a lot of our lessons this week but we still had some good ones. One of our investigators was telling us about some financial difficulties over the phone and so we were able to teach her the principle of tithing over the phone, we read some scriptures to her and testified to her about the blessings that come from baptism. It made me think about the importance of tithing and the blessings that I have seen from it in my life. It was also really neat to teach a lesson over the phone. We said a prayer and everything. One thing that I have learned in the last few weeks is to not feel awkward about praying in random places. We ask people to pray with us on the street, outside their homes, but it doesn't matter where we are, Heavenly Father hears our prayers!

Another cool thing we did this week was we went to Burcei which is this little tiny city way up in the mountains where you didn't think there was civilization. We got a referral from Mormon.org that had been submitted over a year ago. It said that this guy lived in Burcei and so we decided we would go find him! We drove about an hour up there because his phone didn't work and when we got there we met his twin. His twin said that his Brother wasn't there because he was at work in Cagliari...so we drove all the way up there for nothing... BUT the view was incredible! The road to Burcei is only about 25 km long but it took us the whole hour because it winds through the mountains and it was so pretty and so green. My companion made the comment that all the trees in Italy look like Broccoli and its so true. I didn't take a picture but as we were driving I just kept seeing all these trees that looked like giant broccoli. I took some pictures when we stopped but it doesn't do it justice.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we did an exchange with the Elders that work in Oristano. Anziano Pyper came down and worked with me and we had a lot of fun together! All of the lessons we had planned cancelled on us so we did a lot of finding and just walking around trying to talk to people. We also baked quite a bit... Anziano Pyper likes to cook and we had a ton of apples left over that we didn't use for bobbing for apples 🍎 so we made three pans of apple crisp and I made a batch of Apple sauce, our apartment smelled soooo good and we gave some apple sauce to the Sister Missionaries. Italian desserts are interesting, some of them are very good and others are a little out of my comfort zone or just plain aren't good. Everyone loved the apple crisp, we bought some Ice Cream to eat with it and it was a big hit at Family Home Evening.

On Saturday we had a lesson with Ruth, she is our investigator closest to baptism, she has been meeting with the missionaries for over a year now and she is finally making progress and we are so excited for her! They invited us over to Pranzo and we brought Roberto and Eride, our ward missionaries that are bomb. They are both new converts that love to share the Gospel! We ate pranzo and then they wanted to sing some Karaoke which was really fun. They listen to a lot of American Music so they were singing and we sang some and then we sang "Bisogno ho di te" which is "I Need thee every hour" in Italian to kind of bring the spirit back and let us share the message that we had prepared. Ruth's husband is not ready to be baptized but Ruth really wants to be. So we shared the principles of The Gospel of Jesus Christ with them and then Ruth said to her husband "I am ready to be baptized, and with your blessing I would like to be baptized on the 19th of November." Her husband said he had no problems with her getting baptized so we are super excited! Ruth is getting baptized, she has a baptismal interview on Saturday and for those of you that have been baptized you know that the weeks before your baptism can be some of the hardest days because Satan works at us like no other! So if you all wouldn't mind adding an extra prayer for her we would really appreciate it!

Today was Sorella Tingey's Birthday so we went out to eat Chinese food because its her favorite! We found this really good place that had a buffet and a Mongolian grill thing and it was really good! It reminded me of how much I love Chinese food! Like I said its been raining all day, we're a little soggy but nothing too bad! I have been thinking a lot about what we as Latter-day Saints get out of the Gospel, not in a selfish way but what are some of the blessings that come from knowing that we have the restored Gospel. Ya know its great that its true and all but what do we get out of it. I have a couple thoughts in my mind but I wanted to put it out there as kind of a question for you. What have you seen out of the Gospel that blesses you. What do you think are some of the biggest blessings that come to your life because of your testimony. I really want to hear your thoughts on this! So think about it and get back to me!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and know how much I love you! The Gospel is a great blessing in our lives if we let it change our lives!

Love,

Jacob

P.S. This is the view from the winding road on the way up to Burcei!