I am learning the value of a traveling home as, in these days, we our gradually moving our home into our car. It's not like we want to -- but we've been doing all this work in Sant'Agata, which is an hour away, and if we leave in the morning it really isn't effective to drive home for lunch/dinner. So instead we just stay out in Sant'Agata the whole day and drive home by 9 that night. I've discovered that our car has many different functions than just a means of transportation (in other words, it's a picnic spot, office, study area, bedroom, and meeting hall in disguise). We are in the car all the time, either driving to and from our cities, eating, sleeping, etc. It's exhausting.
Thus, I propose that all missionaries should have an RV. That way we wouldn't have to spend money on rent and gas... just bundle it all up! It would be great. We could even set aside a little meeting spot to meet investigators if the weather gets bad!
But, for now we have our dear Sorella Benzina. And she's not bad, in fact she's a really blessing and helps us get to a lot of places and do a lot of things. For example: Thanksgiving! Our branch in Mistretta still doesn't have their church building in the city, so they haven't been able to do any activities. So instead the missionaries in Palermo invited us to the festivities there. At first we didn't feel like we should go, since Thursday is a great proselyting day and we'd be driving all the way to Palermo just to eat food... but we both thought about it and for whatever reason it felt right. So we saddled up ol Sorella Benzina down the highway to Palermo Thanksgiving. We brought mashed potatoes (with the famous Fuller recipe) to accompany all the other traditional dishes brought, namely: 10 lbs of sausage by the elders (turkey was too expensive for the missionary budget), pizza, cous cous salad, and pastaries. Just like the Indians made! While we were there we ended up talking to a girl who has been thinking about going on a mission but is up in the air and wanted to know about our experiences. So we talked, we ate, and right before the sausage triptophane kicked in, we scuttled in the car back home. Nice. We think that girl might have been the reason we went. But. Chissa? (Who knows?)
Also the car is great to teach all our different people. We just started teaching this man and his family of four.
We also got to teach an adult family this week. We have one contact named Brigitte, who's from France but has been living in Sicily with her family for years. We've been teaching her at work and offered to share a family night with her (i.e. bring a treat, teach a lesson, play a game) and she accepted. We show up Sunday night, treatless (I burned the zucchini bread....) but with UNO in hand to find that two of her grown daughters had their boyfriends over and one of the boyfriend's mom as well. With Brigitte and her husband that made 7 adults who, as soon as Brigitte called them all together, sat down intently focused on us. It was intimidating for sure... what was supposed to be a five minute movie about happiness turned into an hour long discussion... and we didn't even get a CHANCE to play UNO. But it was good. Good things were said and hopefully we'll be able to go back and teach the few of the seven that were more interested.
Ok, thoughts of the week: it's been a hard week. Probably because it's the first week of a transfer (a transfer is a six week period where you for sure stay in one zone, in this case Mistretta). I think it's hard to just get geared up again when I've already been here three months. But, the time does fly. And I think... sometimes it's crazy that I'm doing this. Running around Sicily doing, in the words of Sorella Christensen, everything my parents taught me not to do (knocking on doors, talking to strangers, giving out my phone number, etc.). And I've been thinking about why Heavenly Father asks me to serve a mission... after all, if He is God, why does He need me to do this work? Why can't he just help people see the light on their own?
I haven't fully figured it out yet, but I'm prone to believe that this whole "mission thing" is a lot for my benefit. ...it's not so much that I'm going out, doing good and helping peeps. It's that, in the process of doing all this, I am becoming something that Heavenly Father needs me to be. There's a scripture that says that others' salvation is essential to our salvation (to parphrase D&C 128:15). I don't think that means going out and teaching people the gospel will rack me up "salvation" points in the next life. But I think the mission is teaching me things I need to learn to reach my highest potential. Yes? Yes.
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