Che pioggia!!

Buon giorno, bella famiglia e amici!!

First of all I just have to warn you that there might be a lot of uncapitalized i's in this email because my shift key doesn't really work at all. I know most of you probably don't really care but i just wanted to let you know. :p

If there's one word i have to decribe this week it would be "wet". It started raining last Wednesday and hasn't stopped until yesterday evening. someone told me that tomorrow's supposed to clear up but then the day after it will go back to rain rain rain for the rest of the coming week. I might as well be in London! The cool thing (as Sorella Willis pointed out) is that this is probably the only time of my life that i will have the oppotunity to go outside in the cold rain on a bike where i'm guaranteed to get wet, so i might as well live it up! Really though, i just love riding around Verona with my bike, helment, and skirt, even in the rain, because it's one of those sensations that only a sister missionary can get! Plus, you get a really good view. :)

Reflecting back on the week, the thing that really made the biggest impression on me were the two scambios I got to have with sorella carter and sorella seare. I love scambios because they give me a new perspective on how i could be better in my own companionship and in my work. I love every single sorella in this mission, even if i don't know them all personally. Did you know that there's actually four sorella carters in this mission?!!? And two of them were actually together for a transfer. Carter 1 and Carter 2. :p Sorella Carter came here to verona and we had a great scambio where we saw our indian family and a couple of less actives. the indian family is doing well, but i don't really know how much they are going to progress. They aren't really interested in coming to church because it's just too much of an ordeal for them, and basically they told us that they're just interested in us coming to see them to talk about Jesus. i guess we'll see. It's interesting because i was just reading in jacob 5 this week and was making a bunch of crazy parallels to missionary work- investigators, x-investigators, senior companions, junior companions, and it just helped me realize that we need to be patient with our investigators. As we teach them about the gospel and help them to recognize these precious truths they will want to start making changes in their lives and "cast out the bad fruit." But that's only as we help them to grow the good fruit- there has to be a balance.

I also had a scambio with sorella seare in bergamo and it was so fun!! We are basically twins- we're both violin majors , both have really big, musical families that love to harmonize things in every possible way, and she knows jocelyn! She actually reminds me of her a lot- their smile is really similar! It was so fun to be able to do two scambios with her and just talk and learn from each other!

I'm so grateful to be a missionary and especially for the atonement of Jesus Christ which allows us to turn over a new page whenever we've made of mistake and just try again. It is unconditional. It gives me so much hope, especially as a missionary and i just want to spread it to everyone around me!

Vi voglio tanto tanto tanto bene... buona settimana a tutti!

Love,
Sorella Lyman