Casting pearls before PIGS (Portugual, Italy, Greece and Spain!)

I'm sitting at the Internet point listening to the manager play Bollywood music. Shoutout to LAGAAN and Rachel PLUIM!

This week, we've been using the D. Todd talk "Whom I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten" a lot, with the fancy story about the current bush. In a nut shell/current berry, it says, God is the gardener and sometimes he cuts us down because he knows what kind of plant we are capable of becoming. Sometimes God blocks our path because He has other things in mind.

In addition to that, let's remember my favorite quote from church this week! "We are not perfect, but we are perfectable." At least, that's what I think it said. Sometimes the saintly old ladies in church slur when they talk and sometimes I think I understand better than I think I do. But the principle is the same... we can CHANGE and IMPROVE! (also, we can have CHANGE, which no one in Italy seems to have and gets grumpy when you can't pay with exact change).

Fusing these two principles, we get this week's smiritual smock (=spiritual thought). I've been realizing this week how much I still need to improve and change as a missionary AKA I'm just riding the missionary wave right now without doing much to improve or really push myself to my full potential. We visited a member who recently moved back to the area and she told us about her conversion and how missionary work used to be in the ward 10 months back. Obviously, hindsight looks through rose colored glasses (that's how the saying goes, right?), but I realized that I've been missing something here. I think when I arrived to Bari, I was too expectant that I would find out why ***I*** had been called to Bari and what God wanted ME to do. This member pointed out that, instead, "You have been called to Bari for a reason, because BARI needs you. If Bari didn't need you, if the people here didn't need you, you'd be somewhere else. But we need you to do your very best." Or to put it in the words of KFC: "Think not what Bari can do for you... but what you can do for Bari!"

Have I been putting in my full mental capacity into the work here at Bari? Nope. Why not? Not sure. Laziness? Frustration? Self-pity? All these selfish desires I think I've been letting hold me back. Which now, looking through 20/20 glasses, I can see that that was DUMB!

So it's time to rise up, ye sister fuller of God! Enough with wallowing! Wallowing is for pigs! Not PIGS, pigs! I'm turning a new leaf, and I've got my trusty Sorella Bradford by my side to keep me grounded! And back me up in the car! (Soon we'll be getting her driving. Has anyone else realized that I've been driving for my ENTIRE MISSION!?!?! That is nuts and not at all what I expected or desired. On the brightside, I now love driving/honking/parallel parking/driving in reverse/using my emergency lights early and often).

Anyway. Watch out, Bari. I've got all these pearls of great price and I know that you are OUT THERE, unhappy, and frustrated with empty lives. Like this member was five years ago, before she met the missionaries, you have things in your life, but no reason to it. You seek meaning. And we have it! And we are casting these pearls before you, now. We gonna find you. We gonna find you.

love

Sorella Fuller