Last P-day at the MTC!

Wow, I can't believe we're getting out of here soon! There comes a point where it feels like you've been here forever, and then it feels like you've only been here a day. I can't even comprehend the fact yet that I will be in a different country one week from now. I've never been more east than Mississippi! (technically Louisiana, but we crossed the border for fun, so I'm counting it).

This past week we received our travel plans, which feels like Christmas at the MTC. On Sunday our devotional was a musical devotional, and Lloyd Newel was the speaker. If you don't know who Lloyd Newel is, I guess he is kind of a big deal because he does the spoken word with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and he is "the voice" of general conference. When you turn on your tv this coming October for conference, and you hear the guy say "this is the (big number)th session of general conference...". So it was really cool hearing from him on Sunday! We sang some songs as the MTC choir (not Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but missionary training center) and he then would talk about the song, and the theme was overcoming fear.

This week I had a cool experience in one of our lessons with one of our investigators. (we call the people we talk to and teach investigators because it's like they're "investigating" the church). At the mtc, they're not real, they are just the persona of people that our teachers taught on their missions, with the same life stories and everything but it is our teaching pretending to be them.

We shall call this investigator Blessing. She is from Nigeria, and moved to Italy to find work. She has great faith in Christ, was baptized in another church before, and cannot read at all. She cannot even write her own name. She is humble, positive, and just amazing. In our lesson this week we were discussing The Plan of Salvation. This is about how we lived before this life, the reason we all came to earth, Christ's role in all of it, and what is going to happen after we die. She was very interested in the fact that we lived before this. She had never heard anything like that before. We draw pictures for our lessons with her to make it more interactive, and we read the scriptures for her because we don't have portable audio scriptures to take to these lessons.
    We had a scripture prepared to share with her, but I knew it wasn't really going to help. It wasn't going to answer her question, and it was going to stray to far off from the direction  the lesson was going. Then a scripture in Alma came to my mind! I had an idea where it was, but I could not rememebr the exact verse. And if you've ever read the book of mormon, you know the book of alma is pretty long. I wasn't sure if I would be able to find it because, I understand a little Italian, but reading the scriptures in Italian is a whole 'nother story. It uses old language and a lot of words people don't say every day. Reading the scriptures is hard enough in English. But I said a little prayer, flipped the book open , turned a couple pages, and there it was! I knew it was the verse I was looking for, we read it, she loved it, and i double checked it in English to make sure haha. My companion after wards was like, "uhm how did you do that?". I'm honestly not really sure, but it was awesome. I've read the Book of Mormon, I've prayed about it, and there is no way I can deny that that book is the word of God.


Another cool scripture in the Bible, check out Romans 1:15 :) my companion came across it this week, and we just thought it was pretty awesome.

Ciao! Have a wonderful week!
Sorella Holiday

Here is Sister Canino from Calabria! We're kind of best buds now.

Sister Hogan! ​She was on my floor when I lived in Taylor Hall at BYU! I love her she is such a doll, and she's going to the CALIFORNIA MODESTO MISSION. That's you Stockton. She left this Monday.

We twinned because #compunity

​So Sister Taylor has a lot of funny markings in her scriptures because she's had them since she was 7, and she chose random pages to put these little scripture pictures in, and guess where she put the picture of the missionaries. Yea! how cool is verse 15?

I wish you could have seen my outfit I wore yesterday with that new skirt! it was way cute.

The four of us going to the Rome mission

We tried spelling out "Italia" as a district. Let's just take a moment to appreciate how amazing mine and Sister Taylor's "A" is. The Elders try, haha, scherzo. 

Here's a pic of the whole zone. It's not the best, but we had all been through about 20 different cameras by then.