The Adventures of Sister Holiday: An Apostle in Rome

Hello family!
'Twas another fantastic week. I met president Nelson on Thursday and
that was sooooo amazing. He's so smart, and he basically just brought
his scriptures and expounded them unto us for a straight hour and
talked about deep doctrine. Mostly about the 12 tribes of Israel. It
was definitely an experience I will never forget. The other people who
spoke also gave really inspiring and encouraging discourses.

One I liked in particular was given by Elder Halstrom. He talked about
us "becoming". And how the mission is meant to change us forever. I
think that's one thing I'm afraid of, is going back home and then just
being the kind of lame person I was before. I'm definitely better than
I was a year ago, and I hope the things I've learned remain in the
very fiber of my being forever.

Also last week for pday we went to the Vatican and it was soooo cool!
I saw the Sistine Chapels and it's honestly the only thing I've ever
wanted to see serving in Rome, and it was also so worth it. I just
love that classic image that is printed and posted everywhere of the
hand of Adam and the hand of God, as Adam falls from His presence. It
just like so perfectly illustrates how man was made in the image of
God, and it's so tender it looks like a Father letting go of His son.
A companion and I talked about this once, about how much trust Adam
would have had in Christ before this life. Knowing he was going to be
the on to make mankind a fallen people, he really had to trust in
Christ to know when he came he would have been perfect and saved
mankind from their fallen state.

Wednesday night was a lot of fun, the night before the conference all
the 200 missionaries came to Rome so we just got to flood the city
with missionaries, and we did a mini scambio, and then we also had
four other sisters sleep at our house so that's always fun. A lot of
missionaries had to sleep at a convent next to the Villa, haha.

Friday was not that awesome of a day, in fact pretty much everything
went wrong. It started with the metro strike. So the metro was shut
down almost all day and we didn't know about it. I asked someone how
we can find out when there will be a strike, and she said, "you don't
watch t.v.?" Haha, uhm no, nope I don't. So that meant missing an
appointment, but then an angelic member came and took us to a
different appointment so that was great, and yea a few other stressful
and not that great things happened but then at the end of the day I
looked back and I thought about President Nelson's talk on Joy again.
He said, "We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or
even a bad year!" and it's soooo true!
Friday night something wonderful happened, and one of the women we've
been working with has read up to Jacob, and she bore us her most
sincere testimony, and it was one of the sweetest moments of my
mission.

Also! Since Friday night we've been in a trio so that has been pretty
fun. We're pretty much like Cheetah girls: One World, because I think
that's the one when there's only three of them. Charlie's Angels?
They're in three too, right? I don't know. The 3 Nefites...there we
go. But we're girls so like, yea, I don't know but we're an awesome
force of three.

Well, that's it! The good, the bad and the wonderful.

We made s'mores with the English students. And Sorella Groll was back getting her permesso di soggiorno so there was just a ton of missionaries Thursday night.