Wednesday, May 15: hopefully I choose the right cup, unlike that other Cecilian 🤌

May 16, 2024

Wednesday, 15 May 2024

JESUS LOVES YOU!!!

don't forget it.

Okay now for the week!!!

Last week during our family home evening President was giving his weekly pep talk (I live for these) and starts talking about how Elder Brent H Nielson from the presidency of the seventy is in Germany and then said that he wanted to stop by our mission AND THEN SAYS HE'S DECIDED TO BRING THE WHOLE MISSION TOGETHER IN ROME FOR A SPECIAL MISSION CONFERENCE!!!!

So yeah! That's how I ended up in Rome this week.

The conference was amazing. Sister Nielson and Elder Nielson focused on the redeeming power vs enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ which is such a cool concept; I suggest you look into it because we talked about it for 3 hours and I cannot fit it all on this email haha. He also talked about why bad things happen to good people which I want to touch on because pretty much every person I meet has this question and I have such a huge testimony of the answer. We came to earth to 1) receive a body and 2) go through trials so that we can become like Heavenly Father and return back to Him someday. It's funny because sometimes when we start going through a hard thing or something bad happens to us the natural man in us thinks "wait! does this mean God abandoned me? did i do something wrong to deserve this? what is going on?" when in fact, our trials are one of the greatest manifestations of God's love for us.

If we pray for patience God is not going to just *poof* give us patience. He is going to give us OPPORTUNITIES (love this word) to practice and grow our patience. An opportunity that could be really hard, but Heavenly Father gives us these because He loves us and wants us to grow! The miracle of it all is that He does not leave us alone in these periods of growth or hard times. He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ understands. Perfectly. As we turn to the Savior IN our trials we can see the enabling power of the Atonement in our lives and we can develop a beautiful relationship with Him.

I'd invite each of you, next time you are struggling with something, instead of praying and asking Heavenly Father to remove the trial from your life, pray for the strength to accept it and ask "what does God want me to learn from this?" I know that as you do this, God will send you the strength to "bear up your burdens with ease" and you will be able to "submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord." (Mosiah 24:14)

Jesus Christ is my Savior. I love Him! I love learning more about Him and His sacrifice for me.

Random fun things:

-Experienced trio mode for 3 days while Sorella Sandow (one of our stl's who is pure joy) waited for her greenie and it was SO FUN

-Accidentally ordered pizza with hard boiled eggs but it kinda slapped?!?

-Danced with a homeless man. Let me take a sec and tell you about this absolute legend. A few transfers ago some other sorelle found a 50 euro on the ground and decided to give it to him. So then this guy goes out and buys this MEGA speaker with the 50 bucks and line dances with people in centro to try and get money! So of course when me and sorella pike saw him we had to join!!! It's moments like these you just think wow I'm a 19 year old girl in Italy, dancing with this cute old man on the street. I love life.

-I finally caught a picture of sorella hartshorn with her TO DIE FOR peanut butter no bake cookies. Cookie queen

-I'm obsessed with the temple. Even though we didn't have time to go inside, as soon as we walked onto the temple grounds I felt like I was home. The peace and Spirit of the temple is incomparable. If you haven't gone for a while: go for me!!!

-FRANCESCA!!! I will talk more about her next week probably but she came to church this week!!!!! (Huge step for her) She is one of the sweetest most tender women I've ever met and she calls us "gioa" or "joy"