Letter 15~
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas!
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| Christmas Eve with the Silva Family! |
We had a delicious filipino Christmas Eve dinner with the Silva family and a ton of their relatives. We had fun listening to Christmas music and having a good ole' guitar Christmas carol jam sesh. They are such a sweet, humble, and insanely hilarious family, we were so happy to have spent Christmas Eve with them! By the end of the day my left hand fingertips were peeling and my right thumb had a sweet blister from all the guitar playing! But it was such a great day.
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| Christmas caroling on Piazza del Popolo with other Rome missionaries. :) |
Christmas Day we had an early dinner with the Burnett family, they're American and stationed here for work. The highlight of that has got to be their adorable 4 year old Noah, we played Avengers and Legos with him. I was missing my Eli but I know that because the sealing power has been restored to the earth, I will be with my family forever. And I'm giving up my Christmas at home to help other people, to help other families, be able to be together FOREVER! The second best thing about Christmas with them was Tostitos Lime tortilla chips and Pace salsa. And they sent us home with Jello pudding packets. I'd never thought I would say it but I missed American food!!
December 26th is also a holiday here, San Stefano. We had a meal appointment with the Italian Sorella de Matteis, and we barely made it out alive afterwards, see photos for details. I did all I could to finish all the food, but in the end I just couldn't. I may have sustained internal injuries from that one. ;)
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| San Stefano (26th) at Sorella DeMatteis' house |
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| First dish at Sorella De Matteis- a heaping plate of penne with salmon, cream, and tomato |
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| Secondo- prosciutto, salame, provolone, egg, and "Philadelphia" as they call it (cream cheese) |
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| Terzo- oily bean and celery salad, oily mystery seafood and parsley salad. Not pictured- oily artichoke and carrot salad, 3 thick slices of bread, bowl of fruit salad, huge slice of panetone- sweet bread with fruit inside |
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| Dolce- dried papaya, dried fig, anis (licorice) chocolate, rum flavored chocolate. I dont know what the thing in the cupcake paper is...it was like gnocchi in honey caramel with pieces of spicy fruit and sprinkles. ..and also a handful of chocolates! I couldn't finish it. I just couldn't. It hurt so bad I thought I was going to rupture my stomach or something |
Then that evening I got to SKYPE MY FAMILY and I only cried a little when I saw Eli's haircut and how tall he was getting! I love my family so much and that was definitely the fastest hour of my life.
We get to watch 2 movies for Christmas, so we watched Hercules on the 24th and How to Train Your Dragon 2 on the 25th! You know you're a missionary when that is like one of the highlights of your month!
Being away from my family is hard, I'm not going to lie and say that it isn't. Of course it is. You miss them so much. But at the same time you know that you're doing it for the best cause in the world. For the Savior. And I find that the more I testify of Him, the more I push myself to talk to people and share this wonderful news, the better I feel. It's really incredible. Because as I share what I know to be true with others, it helps remind of just how wonderful the message of Jesus Christ is, and how much I have to be grateful for!
As for our work, we lost our family! They very graciously and sincerely let us know that they weren't interested. So our list of investigators got a whole lot shorter all of a sudden. But Nexhi, our Albanian investigator is still doing wonderful, she went to her sister's baptism in Taranto this weekend! So we're so glad that she's had that amazing experience and hoping it will help her agree to be baptized herself! She's wonderful.
We set a baptismal date with Antonella, one of the 14 year olds we started teaching a few weeks ago. We're hoping to be able to meet her family and talk to them too, and get her to church!!
It's hard to get people to come to church. I had no idea how difficult it is. So if you ever see an investigator in church, wherever you may be, you HAVE to go say hi and shake their hand and let them know you care that they're there! PLEASE!
I can't wait to see what this new year holds! I will be a missionary for all of 2015. Whoo! Buon capodanno! Happy new years, everyone!
Lots of love,
Sorella Frandsen
brianne.frandsen@myldsmail.net
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| Beautiful Sicilian "fruit" made of marzipan in a shop window |
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| Essential oils have begun their international conquest
Sorella Frandsen's Mailing Address: LETTERS & PACKAGES
Letters take about one week to arrive, Packages take about 2 weeks
Update: Brie won't incur any import fees upon receiving a package! Yay!!
Sorelle Missionarie Frandsen
Via Villata, 28
00166 Roma, ITALIA
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