Sorella Snow & "The Italian Job": Crazy Trains

Ciao tutti!
Man sounds like a crazy week with two graduations! Melanie and Mason
are getting so old! :)
Questions: Umm, to get to Firenze takes
us about an hour and a half. They rented out a big civic center type
thing for it, the stake center is pretty small and the stake has like
10 wards/branches so we needed a little more room. There were maybe
200 or 250 people there in attendance.

So, last Wednesday, after pday, we went to see the V family. It
was a really good appointment, they're this super cute couple and the
husband's a member of the bishopric. They have kids who live in
America. Then we went to see Sorella N, a less active member in
our ward. A sister from the ward council came with us, so that was
cool. The whole ward council has a push this summer to visit every
single inactive or less active member, so we're super excited to do
splits with them and help with that.

Thursday, we had zone training in the morning, so we went back to
Pisa! It was really good, super interesting. We have some cool people
in our zone this transfer, including Sorella Carducci, who I did a
scambio with while I was still in Milano.

Friday, we saw Sorella Na. She's moving into a new apartment and
hasn't been able to see us in a little while. She's super cute and
always really funny. Then we saw a new convert who just moved her from Rome. Her name is
Federica. She's just a little bit olde then us and she seems super
cool so we're excited to start working with her. Plus we don't have a
ton of young single adults in the ward, so we're glad we got another.
That night we saw Sorella N again and we had a good lesson and
invited her to come to church on Sunday, which, she did!

Saturday, we spent all day at a conference put on by a member in the
stake to help us learn how to do missionary work with deaf people. We
learned some Italian sign language. I've been thinking a little bit
how cool it would be to learn some sign language, so I guess that was
karma. It was fun, but obviously we're not super great at it or
anything yet. There's a deaf center in Livorno, so we're planning on
going some time to try and do some missionary work there. The
instructor who taught the course was super cool, really sweet. He's
deaf so we communicated by writing on his computer.

Great glasses!

Sunday, we had church and it was fast Sunday, since last Sunday was
stake conference. We also had district meeting on Sunday because we
had an appointment scheduled for when we usually do it on Monday. We
did a ton of calls and planning also for the scambio we had the next
day.

Monday, our appointment in the morning canceled :( but she
rescheduled, so we'll hopefully see her later this week. We started
our scambio at lunch time that day. I stayed in Livorno with Sorella
Johnson. We had another appointment cancel on us so we went and did
some pass bys of less active members. We also saw Viviana and her mom
that night. Viviana had actually met Sorella Johnson before when she
was here on another scambio, so that was kinda a tender mercy, that
they were able to see each other again.

Tuesday, since our STL copia has a car, we drove out in the morning to
see Grazia a simp who Sorella Kras and Sorella Albos had taught, but
I'd never met. She lives kinda far from Livorno, so we took the chance
to go out and see her. It was a super good appointment and she says
she wants to see us again, so that's really exciting!

Sorella Johnson, Grazia and Sorella Snow

Then we came back, had lunch and drove up to Prato to switch back (a lot of driving
in the last few days, that was pretty bizarre for me...) Then Sorella
McMurray and I were supposed to catch a train back to Livorno at 4:30
but there was apparently a sciopero (strike) that day. So all of our
trains kept getting canceled. We finally caught one, after waiting at
the station for 2 or 3 hours. That train got us to Florence, where we
had to wait for another hour or two , with all of our trains being
delayed or canceled until we finally were able to take a train the
rest of the way home. We got home at about 9:30 and were super excited
our bikes hadn't been stolen after being locked up all day. Man,
taking trains can be pretty crazy sometimes here!

Anywho, today, we're going to La Spezia a city north of us that has
these five cities up in the mountains called Cinque Terre that are
supposed to be absolutely beautiful. Update! We went and they were
absolutely beautiful! I'll send some pics. It was a ton of fun to see
the other Sorelle again and it was amazing to be so close to the
water, even if we were pretty tempted to jump in! Don't worry, we
didn't!