My Ebenezer

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

2012-02-13T10:25:00.001-08:00

alright well due to some circumstanzes outside our control, i again
have poco tempo... mom knows why. she got her own little letter.

anyway i can sum up the highlights of the week in one word: LUIGI. yes
his name is luigi. we had his first lesson last tuesday, then again on
saturday then he came to church we saw him again on tuesday and we are
seeing him tomorrow and setting his bapt date. i want to do it on
march 7th cuz that's my half birthday and i am being transfered on the
8th... but we are going to let him choose. yesterday's lesson was
wonderful. his prayer was beautiful, and the thing is, he has already
been prepared for this. we thaught him the plan of salvation and told
him that at one point everyone has chosen Jesus Christ but most people
have forgotten who they are. one of the purposes of this life is to
remember who we are. we told him that all the steps to achieving
celestial glory have been revealed and that we can teach him them! it
was awesome. then when he prayed he thanked God that he had met some
people that would help him remember who he is!!!! how cute!!!

ok quick review of this week: last thursday: we met a family doing
house after everyone cancelled our appts. we talked to the dad at the
door for like 20 minutes then he introduced us to his wife and then
we left a prayer on their home. his name was emiliano and her name was
angela. it was interesting because it always seems like i have to get
down to the bottom bottom depth of the pit of despair, and then a
miracle happens.

last friday we taught daniele the word of wisdom. let's just say we
need to review. hahaha

saturday we saw luigi and talked about death because his friend had
just passed away on thursday so he had lots of questions.

sunday was fast sunday. i bore my testimony. i was feeling kind of sad
that it is so hard for people to come to church. we had two people in
church. that's ok but i really was let down. so bore my testimony
using D&C 101:32 which says that someday ALL THINGS will be revealed.
like WHY is it so hard to come to church? i will understand someday
hahaha BUT luigi was there, and he loved it and he hung out for 1/2
hour after too :)

monday was soooo much fun. we got to take an 1.5 hour bus ride in a
snow storm to aqcuaviva to see the costanzo family. it was FREEZING
(obviously) anyway we were supposed to have an appoinitment with
daniele after we got back, but due to the weather we were going to
have to cancel the appt. so i went into the bathroom to make a sneak
phone call. daniele FLIPPED out when in told him that we were in
aqcuaviva. he said "SIETE MATTE!!!!!!!" = you guys are MAD!!!!! he
said he was going to strangle us if we made it back alive. he said we
needed to call him when we got home OR ELSE. anyway we were fine. i
actually quite enjoyed it. cuz i didnt have to drive in it. hahaha but
it was better than walking around outside in the rain. but we did call
daniele when we got home and he was all worried, WAY worse than mom.
hahaha

yesterday was a good day all around. a few days ago i had thought that
we needed to go to loseto (where the bishop lives) on tuesday morning.
don't know why. still don't know why. it was snowing. we just walked
to an inactive's house, rang the bell, they weren't home, so we went
to the bishop's. his wife made us lunch, and then we talked about
missions. it was awesome. we read a very interesting passage of
scripture that i had read that morning in D&C 84. it says that when
christ comes we will all sing a new song, and the words are written in
the section!!! super cool. anyway so we read that and we asked
ourselves who will compose the music? i personally thing mack wilberg
will.... but who knows. slla mongelli said the angels.

anyway i got gma's letter with the story of george blazier THANK
YOU!!!! because i have been asked to make a pubblic appearance and
speak at a presentaion about the church about the pioneers!! so i will
be talking about my ancestors! italians LOVE this stuff. anyway thanks
for everything. anziano pedreira is fine ps. i saw the pictures of the
new house. i cant accept this!!! its ok im dealing with it. and that i
am going to have 2.5 nephews (or a niece!!) when i get back, even
though i left with 00000. ok i love you all!!!

all my love
sorella ashman

its raining...miracles and rain

2012-02-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

alright well i have like no time left cuz i had to deal with some
stuff so im just going to touch the highlights....
daniele felline is the best person i have ever known in my life. he is
reading the BOM and he is planning to read it again. yesterday we had
a really long lesson in which he just opened it up. he talked all
about his wife who died of cancer about two years ago and i was crying
really hard. we talked about aunt janelle and the pictures that you
sent me right before she passed away and how it wasnt even the death
that was hard, but seeing them suffer. it was a POWERFUL lesson.
last saturday we had a show down with one of our investigators who
worships himself. his wife has been a member for like 30 years and he
has never been baptized. he has come to church 3 times in a row. i
told him that his happiness is incomplete. its wonderful that he is so
happy with himself, but he is putting his trust in the arm of flesh
which cannot last. we invited him to have more. i told him that if he
has even a tiny seed of desire to know, that's enough! we believe in
him, God believes in him.
sunday night we went to a mass in LATIN!!!! it was soooo cool. mom, i
would probably like to go again if you are interested in that kind of
stuff when you come. it would be a really awesome cultural experience.
yesterday angelo, a new convert, told me he loves me!! it was so cute.
he thinks the world is going to end when i get transfered. haha
yesterday was a very interesting day, starting with that HUGE lesson
with daniele, then that evening we did splits and i went with maria
pia and fllo curci to this association of retired archeologists. there
was this couple there who was super interested and last night and this
morning the husband texted us!!! NO ONE EVER CALLS US!! its so
wonderful. i feel really good about them!! but its soooo sad because i
am going to be transfered soon (in a month hahah)! ahhhh not talking
about it not talking about it.....

alright to end today i would like to bear my testimony. when i was 16
i was suffering a lot from low self esteem (no one know this story by
the way), since i was so fat and my best friend got all the guys that i
liked. anyway it was just a hard time for me. anyway i was pretty
depressed for a long time. and one day i finally said "what is wrong
with me?? why am i so sad??" so i serached on lds.org happiness and i
found this talk gratitude: a path to happiness
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/04/gratitude-a-path-to-happiness?lang=eng&query=happiness+gratitude+path
and it changed my life. i had never thought that i was so unhappy
because i was being ungrateful. mom and dad had told me repeatedly
that i was so ungrateful that i just expected things to be handed to
me, but i didnt believe them. then i realized it was true. i vowed
that i would start being more grateful. i have changed a lot from that
time, and i believe that i am much more grateful, but if i ever lack
in my gratitude, let me just say the two most important words in the
english language according to pres monson:
THANK YOU.
that goes to everyone, friends, family, leaders, teachers, prophets,
temple workers and especially Heavenly Father. i don't know why He
called me. i don't know why it had to happen now here in this way, but
i know that this was in His plan for me, especailly when it wasnt in
mine, and i am grateful. i think He was probably just watching and
laughing as i made my plans to travel the world. He had something
better in mind. this morning i read D&C 78:19 And he who receiveth all
things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of
this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more.

all the things of this earth shall be added unto him even an hundred
fold, yea, more. then i say THANK YOU!!! i love you all and i am
grateful for the impact you have had on my life.

all my love
sorella ashman

pictures: i got my hair did, and my comp got cute glasses and i made
an awesome floor plan. bye!!

just another week...

2012-01-25T23:18:00.000-08:00

well the big news first: I AM STAYING IN BARI!!! its almost
unbelievable. my sixth transfer!! its very rare for that to happen.
three is average, four is pretty normal, five is kinda a lot, six
doesnt happen, etc etc. anyway there has only been one other sister in
the mission since president kelly got here that did six transfers in
one city. i have been on my mission for almost 15 months and i am
still in my 2nd city. hahaha and i am staying with slla sobeck. weird
to do three transfers with one companion too but i love her.
the highlights of the week:
friday we started teaching the bishops mom. :) her voice is soooooooo
low. you know when we play hand and foot and the black three goes
"BYE" in the deep scary voice? thats how her voice is. its so cute!
haha then friday night we went to a book presentation for michele the
ex mafia. he hasnt been meeting with us for a few weeks and you can
see the light that is out of his eyes. its sad. he was supposed to get
baptized in december, but he let his fears take over him and he
missed out on a huge opportunity. now he is dying spiritually. its
breaking my heart.
saturday was awesome. first we made pancakes for breakfast with
daniele, slla magno, and SURPRISE!! daniele's GORGEOUS daughter and
perfect son in law and their THREE count em THREE gorgeous children!!!
we were planning to fix a baptismal date that day, but with his whole
family there who we had never met before, we thought it more opportune
to introduce them to the church a little. we invited them for sunday
and they were supposed to come, but their 6 year old daughter had a
fever. anyway it was an awesome lesson, and they are an awesome
family. and they are all going to be sealed in the temple some day.
then we went to see antonia di benardo who fell and broke her foot.
she is not doing too good... that even we did a bomb lesson with pia
and catia, and they are moving right along. :)
sunday was wonderful. daniele came for the first time!! saturday night
we were thinking that we could conceivable have 7-10 people in church.
when the sacrament started we had one!! hahaha i literally giggled
during the passing of the sacrament. by the end of sacrament meeting
we had 3 people there haha anyway it was great.
monday we passed by daniele's house, then went to see pasqua the
bishops mom but she wasnt there, then we had a nice huge FHE with us,
slla magno, the curcis, the costanzos, the lagattollas, and maria pia.
it was really fun and there was tasty treats :) MP is so happy these
days. she announced to the costanzos who are not members that she got
baptized!!! she said it like she was 5. it was cute. during the FHE
however, we found out that one of the elders is having some health
problems, and that he would be going to the hospital the next day...
yesterday was the most roller coaster day ever. first in the morning
it was AWESOME. i felt very strongly that slla sobeck needed to invite
him to be baptized. i have done 8739247392649278 baptismal invites by
now. she never had. so we started by bearing our testimonies about why
we were on our missions. it was the first time i cried during a lesson
for a while... then slla sobeck told him that we have been praying
about a date for his baptism and we wanted to propose march 3. we
asked him when you receive the answer that these things are true will
you prepare yourself to be baptized on this day? (thank you PMG) and
he said, yes, as long as he had received the answer. anyway it was
amazing. then we went to see antonia who broke her foot again.... she
is super depressed. then during lunch we found out that anziano
pedreira was in the hospital, that he had lost about 90% of the vision
in his right eye, and they needed to do a CAT scan. we starting
fasting right away. the mission pres called me and asked me to go and
see him if we had time but not to cancel our appointments. well we had
appointments back to back, so we didnt actually get to go see him
yesterday but we went today.... man its really sad. he hasnt told his
family and he told us today that he didnt even talk to his family on
christmas so he didnt want to call and be like hey merry late
christmas i am in the hospital. ugh he is so strong he makes me want
to be better. i feel like a big waste of space compared to him. he is
from uraguay and he has been a member for like 2 years, one of which
he has spent as a full time missionary. his mom has cancer and is not
doing too well so he said he didnt want to make things worse at home.
anyway just keep anziano pedreira in your prayers..... i am really sad
about him.
so ups and downs all over the place. some people making huge leaps of
progress, some regressing, its just all under His control. i am sooooo
happy to be a missionary at this moment. i know that i am here for a
reason. i am so grateful for me eternal family and i love you all. i
am looking forward to my last transfer in bari, and then i will
probably go to rome!! keep up the good work.
all my love
sorella ashman

another nipote!!

2012-01-05T20:34:00.000-08:00

oh dear oh my heck oh dear oh my heck oh dear oh my heck
niiiiiiiiiiiiice one!!!! i am so happy to be the zia of three little
babies!!! congratulations billy joel and jvc and i am planning to get
a dalmatian when i get home so i can contribute to the third
generation also.
this week has been a time for much reflection. i have 5 months left.
that is no time. NONE. i have the approx same time left that my little
companion has been on her mission. i have seen soooo many miracles. on
sunday we will see two more baptisms and at the end of february/
beginning of march another. bari has just exploded in these last few
months. why? i just keep asking myself that. why did i go 7 months at
ragusa working so hard and stressing myself out and being sooooo
obedient and not being able to see anyone get baptized? and why (even
bigger question) was IIIIIIII of all people chosen to witness this
beautiful period of fruitfulness here in bari? i have learned so much
in the last year, and i want to share a few things:
1. LOVE. what is it? i thought i knew how to teach people with love at
the beginning of my mission. i had no idea the love i could have for
these people. its hard as a missionary because we have goals and
numbers. they teach you to love and not think of people as numbers but
its kinda impossible. so i decided to stop caring about the numbers
and just planning well and planning according to the NEEDS of the
investigator. what happened? the numbers went up. we had more work.
and i feel myself making a difference- leaving a mark on this place,
and having a huge mark left on me. i am excited for you guys to meet
the new me. :)
2. THE SPIRIT. what is it? its ANY good thing. moroni 7:13-- anything
that inviteth and inticeth to do good. ever wondered if that prompting
was really a prompting? it probably is. and you know what-- if you
EVER start to make a decision that isn't right, you won't get too far
before a million red flags pop up. so just get some guts and do it!
when teaching a lesson, the Spirit works through you when you LOVE the
investigator. i have gotten so intent on listening to the investigator
that i will tell all the other people to be quiet during the lesson.
it's like "ssssshh!!! he speaks!!" anytime the investigtor is talking.
no one is allowed to interrupt. haha (keep in mind-- this is italy and
italians LOOOOVE to interrupt....) i feel the Spirit guide the lesson.
i want to share a very important lesson that i leared on monday. it
was one of the best and worst days of my mission.
starting saturday, i new that i was about to get tosillitis. (PS
getting my tonsills removed in JUNE. i am tired of this!!) on monday
my tonillitis was in full swing. last week we met the nice ladies at
the hospital, and monday we had planned to go see one of them. well
she wasn't available. so good thing we had plans B and C!! plan B we
were really excited about. we were going to see the spagnolettis and
work with the husband of a long time member. we called fixed the
appointment all good. a little while later the sister calls and askes
if we can come earlier becuase when her husband gets home then she has
to cook etc etc. i was like wait he isnt going to be there? what do
you think we are coming for? we want you two to get sealed! not just
have FHE. so lets put the situation in perspective here. i was super
sick, we had spent the ENTIRE day deep cleaning the house (as a
mission activity, every new years everyone does it) and i was just
feeling like junk. so i hang up the phone and yell "well we cant go to
their house" to slla sobeck who was in the other room and then i just
thought, "I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE. I WANT TO GO HOME" and i
started to cry. so what do you do when you are crying and you don't
want anyone to know? you take a shower. so i go take a shower and cry
and i'm talking to Heavenly Father and saying i am so tired of
scheduling everyone's lives and dealing with all of this. now we have
to see remo and he thinks he is a lost cause. he isnt reading the Book
of Mormon etc etc. and then i had the sweetest revelation. "hillary,
all of this was in the plan. you are supposed to see remo today. you
are making a difference in his life. this is just part of the plan. "
wow. that's the Spirit. that was so cool. so we went and it was
amazing. we really broke some barriers. i had no idea what to teach.
so we made a plan and didnt teach any of it. we taught him about the
Book of Mormon, that it is the only obstacle that he has to overcome.
he has obviously never received a testimony of it or else he would
have been baptized a long time ago. but before we left he asked what
he should read. we assigned him 1 nefi 8. it was a long day....

back to the reflections of the new year
3. OBEDIENCE. rules change according to the culture and situation. the
eternal truths of God do not. what are these eternal truths? LOVE ONE
ANOTHER and FOLLOW THE SPIRIT. they aren't very different these two
truths. use your heart, not just your head.

other things i have been thinking about/ goals
i am going to run a marathon at the end of 2012
i don't know what is going to happen in the future, but i know that
Heavenely Father will help me
my mission has become not easy but very very enjoyable. it is always
challenging, but i look forward to the challenges. they spice things
up.
i am going to read the Book of Mormon twice in 2012
and i have a long list of new year's resolutions that i wrote in my
CHURCH JOURNAL

ok so those are the reflections for this year.

highlights of this week:
last thursday we had an intense lesson with michele in which fllo
curci invited him to be baptized next week. he freaked out. i called
him the next day and told him that he needed to be baptized when he
was ready. he thanked me. then we went to valentina's house then that
afternoon we taught daniele who we are going to set a date with to be
baptized in february. he is feeling the Spirit so much. a few weeks
ago, i felt something amazing happen. his wife died two years ago. the
other day (i never cry DURING lessons) i felt impressed to tell him
and i promised him that his wife was waiting for this. and when i said
that i cried. she was there. it was not possible to deny it. she was
there. i wish i could have seen her. it was the coolest thing, i have
never felt that before, not even at the temple. anyway since that day
he is really getting convinced. he said that he feels calm when he
reads the Book of Mormon. thats called a testimony! yay!

saturday was new years eve. we saw daniele that morning and we had
planned to do a baptismal date with him. we practiced like 8 times
that morning because slla sobeck is going to do this one. then we went
and it wasn't right!! i was so sad because i want him to get baptized,
but his son in law's dad passed away and so he had to go the funeral
and he was just super out of it, but we followed the Spirit and talked
about death and what happens after etc etc. it was great. we had to be
in at 6 pm and thats when i started feeling the tonsillitis coming on.
i decided to design some dream bedrooms for the other sisters. i have
been missing my prismacolors..... but i have a set of 12 pencils from
ikea that daniele bought us for christmas hahaha

sunday was another big time spiritual day. we went to the hospital to
visit the bishops dad. he is NOT doing well. but for some reason, he
keeps insisting that we go because he wants his dad to get baptized
(the stake president AND the bishop both insist because they are
brothers and their parents are not members... weird) so we went not
knowing beforehand what we should do. so i thought well what do i like
to do when i'm sick? watch movies. there was no TV, so i thought i
could read him a story. we only had the Bible, so i read about Jesus
walking on the water. and the Spirit came! it is a much longer story
than that but i'll keep it simple for now. then we decided to go past
slla valenti's house. she is 88. she walks to church every sunday and
she is super kicking. anyway that was a great lesson because her non
member daughter was there and WE got taught by her. as i watched the
bishop's mom with her husband i thought about the emotion between a
husband and wife. its completely foreign to me. so i asked fllo curci
who was with us what it feels like. its like a family member but you
have different parents and so that makes it feel like a frienship? or
something totally different? i dont know! i dont know what its like!
so when we went to slla valenti's i was still thinking about that a
little and her daughter is divorced so we just talked about marriage a
lot. it was VERY interesting. i loved it.

yesterday english course was sooooo funny. one of the students emidio
asks the randomest questions. and so he asked about the verb "to crow"
and then tommaso said "you are the secret english digger!" hahahah!!!
and emidio told francesco "you are english like the sisters!" anyway
english course is always agood laugh. mom i will take you to english
course in june. then we went to get a pizza with daniele :) he said
that being in our presence is an honor. he is so cute. i put a picture
of him. thats at his house when he bought us breakfast before we went
to ikea last week.

anyway things are going great. too great. this isnt even a mission.
it's just one success after another. its because you guys have been
praying havent you?? thank you all.

all my love
sorella ashman

buon natale di nuovo!

2011-12-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

well i am now in my 10th transfer...... my fifth in bari. it was a great week, but i forgot to bring my agenda, so i don't remember everything that happened so i can't do the weekly run down :( saweeee.... (that reminded me of GWAMAAA AWNT MAWIIIII WEW AW YOU?????!!! hahahaha dad!!)

i just remember saturday night was soooo fun. we called our fave investigator daniele and asked if he had plans. he said no so we invited him to come to our ward activity to go and visit at an old folks home. he said he would like to come! daniele is like 60 something, super funny. reminds me a lot of dad actually. anyway so this was kinda his first exposure to the church so we were a little nervous. anyway it went well.... hahaha ok let's just put it this way. he ended up being a taxi for us and slla curci who has alzheimer's who hardly ever leaves the house, and maria pia our investigator who is getting baptized in january who is 74 years old. we were laughing cuz he had to drive us all around the whole city of bari all night and sit in the old folks home with a bunch of people he doesn't know. but the bishop and him totally hit it off. anyway i felt bad and he was like "i'm going to kill you both" hahahaha!!! he is soooo funny. but it was actually all good. he is so good humored. he was very accomadating and i told him that the Lord would bless him for his service to us. anyway, he loves us so much that i don't think we could ever do him wrong. he gave us huge warm scarves for christmas. we are giving him a picture of.... us. and one of the temple hahah

anyway sunday we went to bitonto and i learned some doctrine that will blow your minds. how many wise men were there? and who were they? there are some guesses!! i will let you all know when i get home ;)

this week was a little off because one of the elders in my district went home!! yeah in a bad way..... anyway we are praying for him and his ex companion. it was sad because he got here and then he left within 3 days so..... anyway. pray for him too.

anyway that's about all i can do for today. i am super antsy to talk at you all. 10 am. monday. be there.

thank you for all of your love and support. sorry if my letter is lame today. i am a little internet point trunky. and i am just too excited about christmas!! i am doing great, even though i am chubby. ;) i miss you all, i love you all. i am so grateful for this season to remember my Savoir. the other day we ran into some american JW missionaries. they were like "did you know that Jesus wasnt born on december 25?" i was like "yeah, but i don't there is anything wrong with celebrating the birth of our Savior. whether we do it in april or december, i am happy to do it!" anyway i meant it. i wrote a christmas poem and everything this year! (but its in italian) i will talk to you all on monday.

buon natale!!!

tu sei brutto!!

2011-12-23T15:19:00.001-08:00

well it has been another exceptional week. lots of good things happening. i couldn't ask for more. last friday was the ward talent show. i sang last, not because i planned to be the closer, it just happened that way, but it went really well. i sang our old friend "the stars and the moon" and "lullaby" i have them both on video. people liked them both. i dedicated "lullaby" to you, mom, and everyone thought it was so tender. anyway there were probably about 100 people. most non members because one of the members is a music teacher so all his students performed and they had all their families there. it was just really fun.

saturday morning we taught michele about sacrament meeting. it must have done its trick because the next day he came and stayed for all of sacrament meeting. then we worked with the future missionary carmen. then we went home and slla magno called and asked if we had a spare minute that afternoon. i said that we had a spare minnute in 45 minutes. she said ok ok come then! so we went over to her house. as we walked we got the phone call from slla kelly that we were going to be together for another transfer in bari (no big shock there...) when we got there, slla magno said she was gonna give us a treat. so she goes into the kitchen and comes back with two huge mountains of tiramisu (mormon style) it was sooooo good. now keep in mind we had JUST eaten lunch. then we found out why she wanted us to come over--- she wants us to teach her how it play the piano!! hahaha she is 75 years old. she is so cute. then we had to book it cuz we had to catch the bus to go see the costanzo family. i LOVE the costanzos. they have been investigators for a looooong time. we are trying to decided whether we want to focus on them. i am thinking yes. anyway so we read a story with them that's called "you are special" it is soooo great. they also have a special needs son, so it was great. well after the lesson, they were like "ok let's eat a little snack and then we will go" so they pull out a family size bag of potato chips. then a two liter bottle of coke. then a 2 kilo bag of taralli (they are kinda like chips). then a whole bunch of focaccia (which is like a bread pizza hybrid). they said that they didn't want any left overs!!! i was DYING and you guys know i can pack it in.... then they brought out the cookies!!!! i was about to cry. then we all got in their teeny car and they drove us through the crazy italian streets, and i almost thought i was gonna be sick. anyway then we had a lesson with valentina, our twelve year old who is getting baptized on jan 8th and then we had to walk home for an hour. it was great :)

sunday was fun. church was good, michele, maria pia and valentina were all there. then we realized that we didn't have a lunch appointment... we were kinda loitering around in the church cuz we were looking for someone to take us. not because we want a free meal but becuase its really important that we spend time with the members... anyway so we told the bishop that we needed somewhere to go and he made me call his parents in law and ask if we could eat with them. they said yes so we went to their house and it was great. i LOVE the bishop. before we left the church he was asking us all about our work and stuff. he is very happy with the work that we are doing. the food was incredibly good. we had penne pasta with cauliflower. it was sooo good. then bishop took us home and we went to choir practice and then we watched the first presidency christmas devotional. I LOVED THAT JESUS MOVIE!!!!!!! did you guys watch it???!! it was sooooo good. i just went on lds.org to see them again...

monday a huge miracle happened: our ex investigator gerald who is the african rebel spy, called us from africa!!! it was incredible. i can't believe how much of an impact the little things that we do has on people.... for lunch we had a potluck with the anziani and carmen and then we filled out her mission papers!!! the afternoon we had three awesome lessons: first the costantino family, then valentina, then maria pia. maria pia was telling us how she is ready, she is already making the necessary changes in her life. she is ready to fast, to drink decaf coffee (we are still working on this, but its a step in the right direction... lol) and she said "i had had a testimony without realizing it..." AHHH!!! all it took was our fast.... and the Lord's help hahah.

yesterday was interesting..... we woke up at like 5 to go do slla sobeck's fingerprinting but we didnt get to do it. we just hung out with the anziani.... then we walked around in bari vecchia for a few minutes because we were already there... then we saw michele and read 3 nefi 17. the Spirit was so thick you could have cut it with a knife!! it was great. he said he felt it. as we walked up to the church this old man saw us and said we were beautiful and michele was like "yeah and im ugly" and the old man said "yeah you're ugly!" and he hit him. hahahaha!!! then we had lunch and then we had an interesting experience. i called angelo around 3:30 and he said he needed us to come right now. so we left the house and went to the bus stop. he works about 30 minutes away on foot, but 5 on the bus. well. we waited for the bus. i was freaking out cuz he said he needed us. we waited for over 30 minutes for the bus. we got to angelo's at 4:15. i dont know why that had to happen?! all day i was thinking, why couldn't we have gotten there when we wanted to? tba... ;) anyway so he was not doing well. he has brochitis and was feeling super sad. we told him we would walk him to the doctor's office and then we made a detour at his friend gabriela's house. she was super nice, but as we sat down i saw the clock. it was 4:45 and we had an appointment at 5. so i said sorry to be rude but we have to leave... anyway we left about 5 or 6 minutes later. then we had a very important lesson with remo lassandro, the husband of a long time member. we asked him what he ever does for God in his life. he didnt have an answer. we told him that prayer is the foundation of everything. anyway it was a good lesson. then we went to the church and sat in on the relief society doctrine study class, then we had english course. :)

things are going great here. i am sooo happy to be in bari and have all this work. pray for michele sciacovelli. we really want him to get baptized on new years eve.... so symbolic!!
love you all
sorella ashman

Alma the younger lives again!

2011-11-24T07:52:00.001-08:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIRIAM!!!!!!!! you are legal!!!! go vote!!! yay!!! i am so happy for you. i love you!

last thursday i learned that marinella lagattolla is by far the best member i have ever had at a lesson. she has been baptized for three weeks and she is perfect!!! we went with her to teach daniele, the man who we found doing house a few weeks ago. the lesson was incredible. INCREDIBLE marinella's testimony was the icing on the cake. at first when we came over he was like "yeah you know i am happy to have you here, but i just invited you for politeness." bla bla bla anyway so we tell him about the restoration and he loved it. i told him how the Spirit works and that he might get goose bumps or feel warmth etc etc and he was like "thats interesting!" like in a good way. anyway the lesson was awesome. when we invited him to be baptized he said he would think about. we gave him the Book of Mormon and he said that he would devour it. it loves to read. he also said that in one week he was going into retirement and then he would be free to dedicate himself to our message. sweet! he is obsessed with his grandkids. his house is wallpapered with their pictures. anyway it was a perfect lesson, and we are going to invite him to be baptized on december 31.

friday morning the other sorelle got a phone call from a member whose girlfriend was supposed to get baptized this weekend. he told them that they needed to do the baptism the next day!!! AAAAAHHH!!! it was exciting but there was a lot to get done. that afternoon we saw jared, the african who is a rebel that could be killed if he goes back to africa. he left to go back yesterday because his mom cries so much and begs him to come home. we also found out that his name is GERALD not jared. thanks nigerian accent..... anyway this lesson was out of this world. we talked about baptism with him. we asked him why he loved infant baptism and he explained about how when a child starts young than he shall not depart from it, that scripture. and i was like you're right. and thats why we bless our babies and teach people to have big families. but what is baptism for? remission of sins and making a covenant with God. a baby doesn't need it. anyway more stuff like that, then out of nowhere he asks where is your church? are there any black people? does your preacher speak english? so we answer his questions. he then said "i think i am beginning to be interested in your church. it must be a very good church." i think my mouth just dropped. from the first lesson him yelling at us to not teach about joseph smith or the book of mormon, to this. WOW. anyway so we knew he was leaving to go to africa and it is a huge risk. we gave him a present. a book of mormon. i don't know how he took it because we wrapped it and told him to open it by himself. i told him though that this gift is the most important thing that we could ever give him. he was sooooo grateful for the gift. i was like wait til you see what it is before you thank us. haha.

that evening we had an AWESOME fhe with sorella magno (the 75 year old is getting married) and maria pia who is sooooo close!!! we talked about forgiving ourselves. it was a great lesson. fllo curci didnt really get it, but he is a man. the older ladies were eating it up though. when fllo curci gave us a ride home he was talking about how husband is such an ugly word compared marito. its true. then curci was like hu hu hu husaband. its so ugly! (yes he speaks some english) it was really funny.

saturday was soooo fun. we did one of my favorite things in the world: BLOOD DRIVE!!!! it will probably keep me from donating blood for 5 years in america but i hope not.... it was sooo fun because there were so many members there. anziano mickelsen and i ALWAYS talk about italian grammar and that day was no exception. we were talking about the subjuntive tense and he actually has this little book allll about subjuntive. we were reading some together and the other members were listening then we got on this huge discussion about the subjunctive and it was almost like who wants to be a millionaire because phone calls were made and things were discussed before we realized the final answer. (anz mickelsen and i were RIGHT!!!) anyway the entire waiting room was involved. it was fun. the nurse who took my blood asked a million questions about us and she asked if we missionaries were dating. hahaha italians always like to know about things related to "love". soooo many people want to know our point of view on cohabitation etc etc. anyway then we went home finally and then we had the much anticipated meeting with michele sciacovelli (sha ko velli) to set his baptismal date. alright this lesson was super difficult for several reasons. before we got there, i got phone call from a member who is a plumber who wanted to go over and do some stuff at our house. i told him he could come get the keys from me at fllo curci's house. he said that was fine. also, we had to hurry to get to the baptism and we had to call the mission pres to get permission to ride with fllo curci and michele in the car because slla curci didnt feel like coming. so all of that had to be dealt with while we were trying to set a baptismal date. anyway let's just be grateful that michele is already elect. one of the first things that he said was that he wanted to get baptized and get batized soon. so we were like well that makes it easy. how about december 10th? he said "of course!" alright thats done! elect people make missionary work too easy. i love elect people. well the member plumber came to get the keys from me, then when he brought them back, i told him to bring our cake that we had made because otherwise we wouldnt have made it to church in time. then we got in curci's fiat 600 and went to the baptism. michele LOVED it. it was a very special baptism. this young woman, stefania, sang with the stake choir back in september and has been coming to church and intstitute ever since. her bf is a member, and the strongest family in bari lives in the palazzo with them, so it was inevitable. this week she is in swizzerland to do baptisms for the dead at the temple!

sunday there was another baptism!! hahah!! it wasn't a convert baptism though it was the daughter of the bishop of the other ward. it was beautiful, especially becase the little girl sang!!! it was sooo cute. her name is jasmine so you can see the cake they made her :)

monday was interesting...last wednesday, the bishop gave us a referal for a family of ex investigators. he said he tought it might be time for them again. it was great because i had also felt like that a while ago when i saw their names in the area book. anyway we used our faith and we set our goal for this week at 8 new investigators (the average is 2) because we wanted this family. they would have been 5. so we got on a bus and we went to adelfia. we rang the citofono and the young daughter said her mom wasnt home and that we couldnt come in. so we went to the relief society president's house. surprise! she let us in and then asked if we wanted her to come with us to go and visit another family of ex investigators and i was like sure! so this family i had heard about them- ameli and marco- they seem like they are already members. they are AMAZING. i don't know why they ever stopped taking the lessons. anyway it was nice time with them, we shared a spiritual thought, then we went back to the first family. this time slla iacovelli rang the citofono and the mom was home but she said she didnt want to talk to us. she convinced her to see us. this woman was angry. she said that she had been tricked and cheated by certain members of the church and she didn't want to have anything to do with the mormons. well i wish that i could say that by the time we left she had agreed to baptism, but fortunately our Heavenly Father works line upon line, precept upon precept. she did soften up a lot by the time we left and when we asked if we could pray, she said of course and knelt right down. i am not sure why we were supposed to go there, but i am glad we did. the bus ride home was fun. i like to sit in the front. its kinda like mr. toad's wild ride because you see these obstacles and you're about to hit them, and at the last second you just barely squeek past. anyway i talked to the bus driver all the way home. he was great. and he was super against praying to statues.

tuesday we saw michele again. we got to learn a lot more stuff about him. friday his book comes out and he has asked me to speak at the premier about how he has changed his life etc etc. anyway i asked how it happened that he changed his life so much. he told us that he was illiterate when he went into prison, but that in prison your ONLY contact with the outside world is through letters. (i thought hmm sounds familiar!! hahhaa jk mission is not prison!) but he started writing and something strange happened when he wrote-- he felt better. then he started reading, then he started devouring all these books. he got a diploma in prison and he is now going to school for another. he is just the coolest person ever. and now he has found God and he is so happy. he said the FUNNIEST thing in the world. ok catholics here think its like a sin or something if your parents dont baptize their kids, then there are the other catholic ordinances. anyway he was like "now if i tell you this, don't be scandalized." curci said "nothing can scandalize me" then michele said "I NEVER GOT BAPTIZED. I HAVE NEVER DONE THE CRESIMA OR CONFESION" i busted out laughing. and i said "even better!" hahahhaahah!! he laughed too. then curci explained that it doesnt matter if someone is baptized 100 times in another church. anyway that lesson was great. when we started he was like "i'll say the prayer!" he has never prayed before. it was soooooo cute!! he got a little choked up. the afternoon we proposed a baptismal date for maria pia for january 7 and we talked about all her concerns about baptism. she said she would think about it. she also asked when we are leaving. she wants to do it when i am here. i love her. she kinda reminds me of gramma dorothy. anyway she is gonna get baptized.

ok a few random things:

christmas phone call will be happening on the 26 if that is ok with everyone. since christmas is sunday, they are giving us the 26 as our day off. i want to do skype. it will be the morning for you guys. let me know

i was actually quite glad to hear about grandma norene. sister kelly called me last night. i do wish that i could have seen her another time, but i am glad that she was such a great example to us all. she really changed many lives.

my address is

via giulio petroni 99-B

70124 bari

i hope thanksgiving is great. if there is ever a moment of silence maybe if someone needs to say a spiritual thought or something i would like to share something with the whole family. if this can be read i would appreciate it. i am so grateful to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. i am so grateful for all of the undeserved yet ever present blessings that my Savior provides for me everyday. i am grateful for agency and i am grateful for plans that don't go the way that i thought they should. when that happens, it means that He has something even better in mind. i am so grateful for my eternal family and especially for my wonderful and self sacrificing parents. i am grateful for the constant exmaple of my great grandmother Norene, and i am grateful that she has been released from her period of trial and has enetered into the joy of the Lord. today, however, i am grateful overall for one thing: the Book of Mormon. it has changed my life. i know that if anyone wants to be happier they need to read the Book of Mormon DAILY. i am not sure why this is my message for you all, but i want us all to put in a more effort to read and study to Book of Mormon. i am grateful to Joseph Smith who gave his life because he knew it was true. i know all of it is true, from Kolob to faith, from the temple ordinances to church attendance. the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the way, and there is no other way save in and through Jesus Christ. this is His church. this is His work, and the Book of Mormon is His book. in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

double baptisms!

2011-11-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

yes it was very nice to talk to you all last week. i am glad that the funeral went well. i havent really talked to anyone here about it cuz i dont seem to be able to without crying! hahaha but yesterday during a lesson it came out and not that i didnt cry, it just seemed to be the right thing to say. anyway we are putting the cart before the horse.

last week was CRAZY. monday was halloween, and i found out about janelle. tuesday we moved. wednesday was p-day. thursday was a disaster.... ok so slla johnson who was serving in the city next to us called taranto and her comp stayed with us cuz sis johnson had to go to sicily in the morning and sister olsen couldnt stay alone. so thursday morning johnson had to take the bus at 8:15. except that the bus actually left at 8. we got to the bus station at 8:07. which is cutting it close even for the 8:15 but we would have made it. anyway we then had a crisis and didnt know what to do, so we called president and he with the assistents arranged a flight for sis johnson from bari to rome to catania. then we had to find someone to give her a ride to the airport. as we were standing at the bus station in the middle of the crisis, my phone rings. it was annalisa. she told me that they didnt want to take the lessons anymore but that they still wanted to be friends. i was pretty much destroyed when she said that. we cant really have 'friends' here.... its like investigators or nothing.... anyway that was a rough morning hahahah we then had to teach two lessons. good thing there were four sisters though because we did splits and went to teach the two lessons at one time!!! i saw orazio and maria with sis johnson and we watched some of the testaments. it was awesome. i cried. maybe because i was so stressed about everything. then we had to get sis johnson to the airport. orazio and maria took her. they are the best. then we went home and finished everything, cuz the house was still a disaster. then we went to the station to get our new companions. i didnt know who mine was going to be so when i met sister sobeck i was pleasantly surprised. i had to break my italian fast though. i didnt speak english for 4 months!! im just sayin. she looks just like my roommate hillary when i was alaska. she is a super hard worker and she asks lots of good questions and she is the best little greeny you could ever hope for. i love her. we went to get a gelato and then when we got home we ate spaghetti with tomato sauce that i had been cooking ALL DAY. it was delish.

friday we kicked butt. we taught four lessons in one evening. the new house is a miracle because its so close to everything!!! the time we spent to walk to and from the old house is the time it takes to teach a lesson. one of our new investigators is anna. she is an older woman who owns a shoe shop. she bought us orzo and sister sobeck loved it!! jkjkjk she hated it. she made her niece listen to our lesson too. she was like 'come here! sit down and listen! this is important!' hahah it was awesome. then we saw angelo and marinella, then maria pia and we asked her to think about getting baptized around christmas. then we saw fllo costantino and his mom who is literally insane. she has the biggest crush on me that anyone has ever had. she likes me more that giulio. she gave us some whole wheat pasta and sauce to cook at home and she made us eat a bunch of cookies bla bla bla. then we went to the store to grab some milk and the anziani were there!!! it was awesome. another plus of this transfer is that my firstborn son, anziano pedreira is now in my ward. we served together in sicily when he was born, and i was SOOOOO happy to see him i almost didnt believe he was coming. i love the anziani.

saturday was great. we waited at home for the anziani to come get some things they had left, and 'we'll be there in 10 minutes' turned into an hour. then sister olsen from taranto called and said that her comp left her camera at our house and that if we could take it to a member's house that morning their bishop was in bari and would go get it. so we went to the valentinis house to give them the camera and there was this cute little couple there who are basically living my dream (except they are both american) but they are missionaries in sicily. they both served their missions in italy and then they wanted to come on a mission so they just decided to go to italy and then from there they worked everything out. so they were pretty awesome. then we saw angelo and marinella and we gave them sone presents for their baptism. a tie for angelo and some earrings and a hair clip for marinella. she wore them both to the baptism. we all got matching earrings. :) then we gave them a huge carton of orzo. they were soooo happy with the gifts. then we had to go back home. we ate curry and then we did another hour of study because greenies have to study for an extra hour everyday for the first two transfers. then we finished all the prep for the baptism and then we were going to go to fllo curci's house and lo and behold, there he was! so we walked him home and talked to his wife for a little. she is not doing well. she has alzheimers. anyway he thought it would be a good idea to visit his friends. so we went and we taught them and it was awesome!! sister sobeck shared a beautiful testimony and i told them all about my decision to go on a mission which wasnt easy. i included a teeny bit of giulio in my story and then after the lesson fllo curci started grilling me about my love life and i ran away (literally). he always invades my personal life. hahaha

sunday was the best of times and the worst of times. the fast and testimony meeting was off the charts. there is never a pause in the meeting. i bore my testimony TO angelo and marinella about when i went to the sacred grove. it was seriously one of the best fast and testimonies i have ever been to. after church i found out some really heavy news. we went to lunch with the juan family. i LOVE slla juan she is the one that is supposed to give me job when i finish my mission. anyway, as we were on our way, i asked who her husband was riding with because he wasnt with us in the car. she told me that her husband wasnt living at their house and that they were separated right now. and i was shocked. heres the thing. in sacrament i noticed that they never talked to each other, rather they talked to the kids. and they never sat by each other. but seriously. lots of people here are obsessed with their kids. when i found that out it the hardest thing ever. anyway she is planning on moving to america with the kids. she asked if we have any divorced relatives and i was like well my grandparents, but it was a loooooong time ago, but sister sobecks parents got divorced a month ago. i hate divorce. anyway that sucked. and i am still heartbroken. we have been praying for them every prayer.... well then we had to go to the happiest thing in the world. i ironed their clothes, then we went to the church. the other sorelle were there and were already filling up the font (bless them). anyway angelo and marinella arrived and they got dressed. there also happened to be stake choir practice. guess what angelo did? he just went right up and started singing with the choir! it was sooooo cute!!! hahaha the baptismal service itself was great. it was wonderful. i sang 'i believe in christ' with slla hicks. the talks were wonderful and when they got baptized they were so happy!!!!

marinella literally laughed she was so happy. it was the best. but even better, their testimonies after their baptism. WOWOWOWOW. marinella is ready to be a relief society teacher. here's the thing. she doesnt talk a ton, so i didn't know all that was in her. but the Spirit really did His work and she GOT it.

monday was fun. i forgot that the greenies have to get their visas and what not. i forgot when you train you also agree to that.... hahah oh well. anyway so we ran around all morning doing immigration stuff. it was all worth it though when this man sneezed reallyREALLY loud and then yelled MADONNA MIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! when i get home i will reinact it for you. then we got gelato after we finished. then we went home for 30 minutes, then we saw my favorite african jared! it was a BOMB lesson. we read acts 17 and talked about having a personal relationship with God. then i felt like i needed to ask him about baptism. so asked him what he thought about baptism. and he said that all babies are born with original sin and they needed to be baptized bla bla bla. then the Spirit worked Its magic. instead saying NO ITS NOT LIKE THAT i said 'jared would you be willing to hear a different point of view?' he said yes. then i explained things as they are, that Eve chose to eat the fruit knowing that there was no other way. and i asked him to pray about it. last time we asked him to pray about why we met. he did and he doesnt know why yet, but he knows that it is for a reason. after the lesson we had a fun experience. we were going to visit some less actives. i had fixed the appointment but when i called to confirm, they cancelled. i felt like we should go anyway. then there was this young man who looked like he really wanted to talk to us so i opened my big fat mouth. he was so cute, he was from iran. we ended up taking the same bus and talked the whole time. then we got off and i didnt know exactly what to do. sister sobeck was like 'what are we supposed to do now?' and i was like 'lets get on this bus' so we got on and there was this man who really wanted to talk to us. so we talked to him. he said he wanted to come to church. he is a person who is truly truly searching. then i dont know why, but i invited him to come to the FHE that we were doing at fllo curci's house. he came!!!! hahaha it was awesome!! then he had to go. then we did the fhe we had planned with angelo and a less active family. it went well.

yesterday i fell into simpatizzante love. nicola. the one that looks like giulio. if all investigators were like him, the world would be a better place. anyway we taught him after english course and it went really well. we started teaching the restoration and it didnt feel right. but i didnt know what to teach him so i was praying please please let me know what i need to say!!! and then my 'companion' (we were doing splits) said 'how often do you pray?' just out of nowhere. and it just went all uphill from there. he said the closing prayer and he asked the the things he doesnt know can be revealed to him as soon as possible. anyway it was awesome. life is just awesome.

congratulations vanessa and jeffereson!!!!! i wanna know what names you are thinking of!!! i have a long list. ok everyone this letter is tooching long. sorry. hope you enjoy. the church is true. i am a witness that it works :) hahaha

all my love

sorella ashman

THE WORLD HAS NO IDEA WHAT LOVE IS!

2011-10-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

heeeeey!!!

well things are going great. i wanna stay here forever. and i might do it. being with sorella hicks makes me feel like a huge sinner though because she is perfect. and i am realizing more and more the spiritual cancer that i have had without ever knowing it. its great to have someone different than you because you even each other out. she is seriously the best. she is quite, tidy and simple. have any of those words ever been used to describe me? uuuuuuh.... yeah i didnt think so. i was such a horrible child. im so sorry. not that i am much better now...

anyway i want to start by telling you all about the story that i am writing. while we were reading the Book of Mormon the other day, i had the thought i my writing skills must be going down the tubes, even though i was a pretty good writer (in english and italian) when i was a student. so i decided that i wanted to write a story. its not just a two page fun story, its already 10 pages by hand and its just getting started. i think it will be like 40 pages. not a novel but you know. anyway, its about me and what will happen if i stay in italy. miriam comes to visit and run a half marathon with me. at the very beginning for about a paragraph life is perfect with me and my hot husband and then my friend carmen (a member here) comes to our house because she got kicked out of hers and then the story goes from there and all the problems that happen. anyway yesterday slla hicks was sick so we sat at home all morning. she slept and i wrote the story. (i also have a weiner dog in the story hahahaha!!!) anyway as im writing it, i am seeing myself, as selfish and distracted as i am, and also seeing that im not always right. i read the story to slla hicks and im thinking that ive created all these problems for myslef in the story and when i finished reading what i have so far she says "poor husband" and i was like "poor husband???" then i realized that she was right and i was a selfish pig. hahahaha when i get home i will type it and translate it in english.

last thursday there was an awesome huge miracle. we had a lesson with angelo our new little love. fllo curci got there before us, and they had talked about how he needs to quite smoking. then the Spirit overcame him and he said, "fine i dont smoke anymore" and he threw his lighter and cigarettes in the garbage. now dont get too excited because he has smoked since then, BUT very very little and not for the last two days. he was smoking three packs a day, and though he didnt quite go 100% he is now smoke free :) that afternoon we saw annalisa and stefania and we talked about the restaurazione, but they had so many questions about.... well lets just say "the law of chastity"...... i told them next time we see them, we are teaching the law of chastity and they can ask us whatever questions they want. one of the questions they had was "isnt it sad for you to know that when you are in love with a person you cant share that love fully?" i almost slapped them across the face. THE WORLD HAS NO IDEA WHAT LOVE IS!!!!!!!!!! after their lesson we saw grazia and gianni. they are a lovely couple (she is GORGIOARMANI!!!!!!) she has been separated from her husband for a while and gianni is her new boy. they live together, but grazia is having problems with him and she is scared because she was already separated from her husband and doesnt want to be separated again. anyway gianni is younger than her and she basically feels like his mom. but grazia is an ex investigator and she is smart because she knows that the answer to their problems is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. good girl. we have to work a lot with them....

friday we saw orazio and maria and we taught them the word of wisdom. they are not ripe yet. we set a date with them and i know that we needed to set it, but it might have been to show them (and me!) that this is real and that they need to be baptized. the lesson went well, but they still dont have a testimony of the Church so they weren't convinced about the word of wisdom.... hahaha that night we had a big fat party. slla magno, the most perfect person on the planet, organized this awesome activity at her house with 4 investigators (antonia dibenardo, maria pia montone, alessandro, and then another friend of sis magno) and it was just the bees knees. she even made focaccia (mom, dad and mim do you remember focaccia??? that delicious salty bread???? in bari its a little different, but you get the idea) we talked about faith. there was a really good discussion, lead of course by fllo curci. when you guys meet him man o man..... he is a character. he is awesome.

saturday was awesome. slla hicks was kinda sick so we didnt do much the morning, then the afternoon we saw jared, who is our new african investigator. he is AWESOME. the first time we saw him, he was all hung up on joseph smith. so we planned a lesson with no joseph (even though it was hard for me because a HUGE part of my testimony is about JS especailly since i went to the sacred grove) anyway so we talked about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then he was like "this is what you all need to preach. dont talk about joseph smith blah blah blah" and i said "im sorry jared, but have we said one thing about joesph smith today? our message is about Jesus Christ, and joesph smith is a part of it, but its really about Christ." BOOM! anyway then we talked all about prayer and we left him the commitment to pray to God and ask Him why we met each other. then that night there was a baptism. giuseppe dabbicco, who is the boyfriend of a member. the baptism was incredible. the girlfriend was sooooooooo happy. she gave a talk and she bawled the whole time. it was so cute. he had to get baptized twice, just like me. but man the Spirit was strong!!!! then after the baptism, fllo curci asked me to share my testimony so i did and then the baptism just happened to happen the same day as the ward dance party. now here's the thing, everyone was saying that missionaries can't dance, but its not written anywhere ANYWHERE that we cant... anyway... i think we can. so we did. and it was the most fun i have had in my WHOLE mission. and i am NOT just saying that. i spent the whole night twirling around the daughter of one of the investigators and feeling supremely momish. it was wonderful. and then one of the other little girls came and wanted to dance too and i had one little baby on each hand and it was sooooo fun.

sunday ROCKED!!!! it was POURING rain alllllll day (its weird for me that there is enough water in the air that it can rain all day... hahaha in henderhole if it rains, it rains for 30 minutes and thats it.) angelo and his beautiful wife came to church!!! they loved it. she was thrilled that he went to church and they said they are coming to our church from now on. his wife's name is marinella. she is sooo different from him, but we all know now how i feel about having your compliment. :) after we had a huge lunch with the puglisi family and it just so happened that the girlfriend of the guy who got baptized on saturday is the granddaughter of a member who lives in ragusa, who is married to the father of another member here in bari (she is a widow and he a widower) yeah its a really complicated family tree, but long story short, a couple from ragusa was here too and i was SOOOOO happy to see them. i LOVE them. and we all had lunch together. it was bomb. then we tried to do a bunch of stuff but nothing was going well, so we just went to the young single adult activity and it was wonderful.

monday was awesome. we taught angelo and his wife together. she is sooo great!! i cant stop saying how much i love her. then we went to see titta. she could have a whole book herself.... ill save it for another time. then we spent the whole afternoon with angela cafagno. she is a member that was baptized 7 years ago. she is my favorite person in bari. i'll just be honest. we went with her to see slla lassandro and her husband who never got baptized even though she was a member when they got married. there is still hope!!!!! then we had fhe with antonio at slla magno's house. antonio told us that sunday night he was out until 5 am at the discoteca. i was a little shocked. and i told him that that's not really something you do on sunday!!! but i was too hard on him and i felt bad. i know he's just a baby, but i felt partly responsible because i must not have taught him well enough.... but its all good, i just hope he didnt drink anything. that night as we were walking, we saw a huge stack of board games in the garbage!!!!!! so of course i took the harry potter game--- never used!!!!!!! and its in italian. haha!

yesterday we stayed at home in the morning cuz sis hicks was dying (by dying i mean still sick). i wrote the story and she died. then that afternoon, we saw fllo costantino, who is less active, and his mom who is not a member. he is so cute, he needs some love because he has no friends in the ward. his siblings are active but they all live in other cities. and we found out that his home teachers never come. so thats no good. anyway, then we saw angelo again. he says he wants to see us as often as we want to come :) it was an ok lesson. i wish marinella had been there, but she was sick. anyway it was good.... then we taught english course and fllo curci walked us to the church and as we walked i told him about how i am rebellious and i used to fight a lot with my parents and that i dont trust some people and he loved it. he loves hearing things about people, especially their weaknesses. he says it is a very big problem as he smiles from ear to ear. hahaha english course was great. we taught the students how to play baseball and football and we decided that next week we are going to have a kickball game.

ok that is about it.... i hope the letter is good, we are kind of in a rush. also sis hicks doesnt take as long as i do....

about the end of my mission..... :(:(:(:(:( my release date as of now is june 1 2012. i might extend but probably not, since i already got an extra transfer in the field. start looking at flights. i dont care who comes. you can all come if you want to!! lodging and food i am sure will not be problems. we will stay with members. they wouldnt have it any other way. and i think we do 15 days or so? its all up to you. you should arrive on the 31st of may though. and we'll go to sicily :)

thank you so much for everything. shout out to vanessa jr. and aunt janelle for her birthday!!!! ya hoo!!!! tanti auguri bella!!!

i love you all i miss you like crazy.....

all my love

sorella ashman

Almost 11 months :-/ che strano...

2011-10-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

yeah it seems impossible but its true, in a month, i will have been on the mission for a YEAR!!! its so weird!!!

to be honest, i have been incredibly confused these last few days and weeks about what i want to do. i know i dont need to worry to much about what happens after the mission, but at the same time its hard for me to NOT think about it when there is the possibility for such huge changes in my life. i was pretty much convinced on italy until dad sent me his last letter with pictures of the house on spring court pond which i love so much. its like i won the price is right. all of this could be yours!!! but instead its like im choosing to live in a tiny little box with no central heating or cooling surrounded by thousands of people on all sides in a foreign country. slla hicks and i started a list of the pros of living in italy. its coming along quite.... slowly. so far we have vespas and bidets. ok im just kidding. the real reason i would do it would be to help the Church. because like we all know from my big fat greek wedding women are the neck. its really us that are in charge. and the Church in italy needs help!!! and the house where i live in the end isnt important. what happens inside the walls of my home is. oh and if i do end up living in italy, vanessa, i wont leave america without spending much time with you. (that goes for everyone, but she expressly asked so i had to calm her fears.) ok i dont need to or want to think about it anymore.

this week was AWESOME. seriously one of the best weeks i have had in the mission so far. last wednesday we had corrolation and then the bishop came and asked if we would go to visit an ex simpatizzante who needed a blessing. her name is antonia and she has been suffering from depression. she was taught by my mom, sister foote, who was also born in ragusa, then transfered to bari. funny huh. anyway she was supposed to get baptized but doesnt like the decima, and its hard because she isnt 100% mentally stable. she has medication etc so she is pretty good, but her depression is really bad. she needs our love!!!! and we are gonna give it to her gosh darn it!!! anyhoo the lesson went well even though it was completely unplanned.

thursday we had another miracle lesson, quite similar to the one with antonia with another ex investigator, an older single woman, named maria pia, who also was supposed to get baptized but doesnt like the decima and has depression. strange. we want them to get baptized the same day. anyway, its really nice being the missionaries who get to reap where the others sewed. i havnet been able to do it that much. let me explain- when you first meet an investigator, you need to teach them the basics, and you need to teach them all of the things that in preach my gospel. yes you teach them to their needs but at the same time, you are preparing them for baptism. you are preparing them for the baptismal interview. when someone has already had the baptismal interview and passed, they know their stuff enough that you can pretty much teach them whatever. so with both maria pia and antonia, its really about them. not about what we need to teach from preach my gospel and its really nice. most of my mission has been finding and teaching. when sister foote left ragusa, literally every single investigator changed. then i was there for another 6 months, and when i left every investigator was one that i had had a part in finding. when i got here they had one investigator, with whom i still haven't had a lesson, and so again, these people that we are teaching are people that i have had a part in finding. now that we have reopened the doors with maria pia and antonia, its great. the other missionaries did all the hard work. thank you sister foote and anziano knutsen!!! ok that was a long tangent, but now you get to see inside the missionaries' minds. that afternoon we ate in a restaurant for lunch hahaha just because i felt like it and it was really close to our house. it was sooooooooooo good. mom (and whoever else) when you come, we are there. then we taught english course, and then we had a lesson with annalisa and stefania!! the teenagers (van they are 16 and 17--youngissimo) this lesson was DA BOMB. (thank you again toonchic. actually in italy when you say something is a bomb, its a good thing. ahahah so you are right it was italian slang that was influencing me. and yes counting in english is still much easier. thats strange) anyway. stefania told us that she was reading the BOM and her dad asked her what she was doing, and so she told him and he told her that he and her mom had sutdied with the missionaries in the past!!! woah!!! then she told us that she had prayed truly and sincerely to know if the BOM was true, and she said she didnt get any answer. but they both said that they still dont think its true because of the plates. ba. anyway we analized their questions and their prayers and then we all knelt in a circle and prayed together to know if the Book of Mormon was true. well im convinced. i dont know if they felt it, but literally i felt a tingle come over me- yet again- saying that it was true. its amazing.

friday we planned and then we went to see another old woman ex investigator, maria simone. she is great. i love her. she is super sarcastic and frank. she hasn't had a baptismal date like the other two, so we are starting from almost the beginning, but she said that our visit really made her happy and she wants us to come again. she has been friends with one of the most faithful members for 40 years. that evening, we went to see the valerio family. they have been inactive for about 25 years, but they are now coming back to church because they know they messed up going inactive. they have six children who are all baptized and inactive. if we could get them to regain their testimonies fully, they could revolutionize the ward. this meeting was really lovely because we just happened to see sister santoro who is sis valerio's visiting teacher and we all went together. sis valerio opened right up with sis santoro and they were talking about how she doesnt have the faith to pay tithing how that is what keeps them from coming to Church and going to the temple, and many other things. it was really good because if we want to help these people we need to know them. if they think that we are just missionaries who come and go they wont open up, but if we go with their visiting teacher bing bing bing!! i won the price is right again.

saturday we went to see beatrice and silvia, and yet again, they havent read anything and they dont believe that the Book of Mormon can help them. anyhoo we discovered yet another problem, its not enough that beatrice destroyed the house, that she works 12 hours a day, and that silvia has no work. now we find out that beatrices son is verbally abusive because his father and grandfather also were and that he yells at both his mother and sister and demands that they do things for him when and how he asks. they both said its unlivable at their house. i don't know what else to do, besides get the members involved. but its hard because beatrice never has time. anyway in the end it went really well. silvia requested that we pray. haha i love prayer requests. then we went to lunch at orazio and maria's house. it was sooooo good. she made spaghetti with clams. she knows how to cook this one. then we went to watch conference and after we went to get a panzerotto with the young adults :)

sunday was the best day of my life. the morning we went to see titta in the hospital. i want to have a skin disease so i can stay in the dermatology department. its seriously like a hotel. ok its ugly and im sure the food isnt great, but you stay for free, you can go for a walk and they have vending machines and big trees. the hospital here is a whole other animal. its sooo weird. then we went to watch conference. brother desantis brought us lunch in the church so we ate there and then we lived in the church. it was awesome. about 20 minutes before the last session started, angelo walks in (the miracle from last week that accepted his baptismal date immediately) he came and sat next to me, and about half way through, he had to use the bathroom. then he never came back...... we were worried that we had lost him. but dont worry, youll see what happens. in the end, the thing that was super awesome was that for the evening session orazio, maria, antonia, mariapia, and angelo all came!!!!!!!!! 5 investigators in church!! the most ive ever had. :) plus i learned a TON of things. i think my fave talk was the first of the whole thing. elder scott talking about how scriptures learned by memory are our true friends.

monday was great. we had district meeting and then we ate lasagna with the anziani from the libertà ward because we needed to teach a lesson together with them. so after we ate, then we went to the train station to teach jared, a young man from nigeria (ok probably about 33-35 years old) he was great. he loves the Bible and when we told him about joseph smith, he was like "i dont need to know him. he is not important. do not preach the word of joseph smith. you need to preach the word of Jesus Christ." he was a little confused. but just the same he was super. we are going to see him again. then we got gelato to celebrate. then we had an appointment with angelo. we didnt know if he had completely dropped off the face of the earth or if he just wasnt feeling well or what. so i called. he apologized for his behavior. he said that he hasnt been in a church for 10 years, and he freaked out. anyway he was busy but we fixed the appointment for the next day. we then decided to visit the oldest member of the ward, slla valenti. 89 years old and still walks to church every sunday with no problems. she got out all her pictures from when she was baptized and the letters that the missionaries wrote her etc etc. we were there for an hour. hahaha then we left because we had another appt at 6 with this guy we had met on the street and fixed the appt. on the street. we figured he wouldnt come, and he didnt. but then all of our back ups weren't working out, but fllo costantino was in my mind. he is a single older man who is a bit strange but super nice. he lives with his mom and has no friends. i called him. he said he could come to the church right now! it was sweet. so he came and we did a FHE with him and he was all happy. then he gave us a huge bag of cookies and walked us home.

yesterday was off the charts. started out with orazio and maria. they are the greatest! we asked them a bunch of questions to understand the journey that they have made so far. orazio has come leaps and bounds. maria hasnt touched a page of the BOM but she feels the Spirit so strong, and she keeps asking and thinking about the restoration film. anyway one of the quesitons was "do you feel like you have come closer to Christ since we have been meeting together?" maria says "a little" orazio says "i refuse to answer. the answer is too obvious." HAHAHA!!! I LOVED that answer. orazio is such a tough guy. anyway, we were dying to get a baptismal date with them. its been a long time. i dont think i've ever had an investigator for so long without fixing a date or dropping them. we told them that we think they are much closer to Christ and that they could be ready to be baptized on october 22. all four of their eyes popped out of their heads. but they said they would pray about it. i dont know why, but the Spirit really told me that that is the day. i was going on total faith then because we had chosen that day a long time ago, and they aren't ready right now. in fact, the first thing that orazio did when we got there was show us these two HUGE barrels of wine that they are making. and maybe it won't work out for that day, but i know that i did what the Spirit told me to do. then we saw angelo. he is an angelo. he is soooo wonderful. we saw him with fllo curci and it was great. he is going to come to church again on sunday and try. he said he shouldnt have run away from his fears, but he should have faced them. so sunday he is going to face them. the afternoon we saw maria pia and it was perfect. she is super sweet. she told us the story of how she found the church. the ex wife of her dead son is a member. her name is sabrina and she lives in rimini (near fano where i lived in 2004!) sabrina told her to go to the church and viola! she came. that was 2 years ago.... anyway we read the BOM with her, we told her that she is ready for baptism whenever she feels ready. then we had a huge miracle. there was a bus at 6:20 at her house that would take us home by 6:30 and then it takes 20 minutes to walk to church for english course. well at 6:15 we were at the stop. at 6:35 it still hadnt come. we were chatting with an ex investigator that we saw there and then we lost all hope and decided to run to the church (it would take about 50 minutes on foot walking). we started running and then we heard a whistle. the ex simp was signaling that the bus was coming!!! i saw the bus and i thought "there is no way" but thanks to adrenaline, as the bus passed the busstop (literally running at full speed) i pounded on the door and he let us on. we got to the church 1 minute late. it was fun. after english course, we saw antonio, who is a joyous treasure.

whew. it was a great week. thats all i have for you today. ok except i bought a scarf with the pope on it. hahahahahahaha

i love bari, i love italy, i love being a missionary. the work is the best its ever been. thank you for your letters and support.

all my love

sorella sh

There can be miracles when you believe

2011-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

sister hicks is incredible. she is so much like trisha its uncanny. she told me a story yesterday about how she yelled at her little sisters ex boyfriend because he wasnt being respectful to her sister and i just thought that trisha would have done the same thing, always in defense of her little ducklings. i LOVE sister hicks. shes also a lot like my other home girl kayla wilcox. we work really well together. every night before we go to sleep we tell each other how much we love each other. its really been a gift from God to have her. she works sooo hard and her testimony is beautiful and she LOVES EVERYONE. she is..... undescribable. i am so grateful for her.

anyway thanks to the arrival of this angel from oklahoma, we have had MIRACLES already. the day of the transfer sister lecates went to catania at 8 am and i was left with the sisters from taranto. we talked to a ton of people that day and it was great. slla lecates and i didn't do as much as i would have liked of street contacting. that morning then we had our weekly meeting with fllo curci to start to work with him to teach his friends. this is the program that we are doing with the members. we picked two families with which we want to work closely. one is curci, the other is puglisi. we have already started with curci and will start next week with puglisi. curci gave us a list of names and we trusted in the revelations that would come and we prayed and we picked two people. it was cool because the person that slla lecates picked was my second choice and vice versa. so we are sure that we picked the right ones. then two days ago, curci called me and said that he just happened to run into both of them in the street. he was all surprised like "sisters! you really did receive revelation!" hahaha it was cool though. after that we had lunch and then when we went out again, we did a bunch of street. we talked to this older man named angelo, and didnt think anything of it (to be continued!!) then we went to curci's again for a lesson with these ex investigators who we think its finally the right time! grazia and gianni. but because they were late to pick us up we literally had 15 minutes to do a lesson. but in the end it went really well. then we literally ran to the bus stop to go to the station to pick up slla hicks!!!!! on the bus there was a young girl named estelle whose father is french and she happily told us that she was the lead ballerina in the nutcracker and invited us to come. she was super spunky and super excited to meet americans. haha her babysitter said she wanted to come to church.... let's hope so. then we picked up sister hicks and the news elders (THERE IS AN ALBANIAN!!!!!!!!) and got gelato and went home.

friday we had a lesson with antonio, then with annalisa and stefania. that lesson was a BOMB. it was awesome. stefania said the opening prayer, annalisa the closing. that prayer of annalisa was incredible. she speaks with God so tenderly. she always admits to Him that it had been a long time and she asks for forgiveness. italians are so mushy. i love it. then we had another MIRACLE!!! a few months ago, we contacted a woman doing house named lucia who was friends with the bishops wife 30 years ago. well we organized things with the bishops wife and we took a risk and we went to find lucia. she was there. and she was soooooo happy to see slla mongelli. she gave her her phone number and it was just beautiful. i wanted to sing reunited and it feels so goooooood.... then we went to see a less active family, the valerios. they are so wonderful. they always feed us. and it just so happens that one of the people on the list that fllo curci gave us is a really close friend of theirs, so we talked to them about setting up an appointment. they were all in favor. then we had the long walk home and got to know each other better.

saturday we saw orazio and maria and it was AWESOME. we talked about prayer and then fllo valentini gave maria a blessing because she was in a vespa accident last week. after that we tried to see beatrice, but she wasnt home, so we decided to visit sister avantario instead. she is a widow since march and has a lot of health problems. she is sooooo sweet and needs some love. after lunch we saw annalisa and stefania in the park to help annalisa with her english homework. this girl is SMART. then they walked us to the bus stop and annalisa asks "what will we do in the celestial kingdom?" and i told her that we become like God. her homework was to read romans 8 which says
16 The Spirit itself beareth ^awitness with our ^bspirit, that we are the ^cchildren of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; ^aheirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we ^bsuffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
basically that we become like Christ and i was telling her that God isnt some unknowable being and its not blasphemous to think that we can be like Him. He is a resurrected man. and we will be resurrected and can become like Him. somehow, her mind connected this to Him being a father. and somehow her mind connected that to a mother. she asked " does God have a wife?" and i said "does he have a son? i dont see how he can have a son without a wife." woah! minds were blown. really it was a very sweet moment. the Spirit testified that it was true. and we all felt it there at the bus stop. then we went to go and visit titta (an eternal investigator) at the hosptial. but as we were walking, i saw a man in a clothing store and even though we already almost AN HOUR LATE, the Spirit told me to talk to him, and i promised myself that i would never be so rushed that i ignored the promptings of the Spirit. so we waltzed right into the store introduced oursleves and starting getting to know this man. he instantly said that he knew who we were and that he had a Book of Mormon. we talked about his family and he said he knew that what we taught was true. he had studied previously with the missionaries, and the only thing that was missing from him was the time. then slla hicks bares this testimony about how she wants this happiness of the eternal family for him. he says "i know. its just a question of time." so sad. and yet so common. then we saw titta in the hospital. this was an incredible experience. i was fasting for trisha this day so i think i was feeling the Spirit even more strongly than normal. socialized health care is different, let's just say that. the hospital here is like a university in america, because in america a dermatologist has a private practice. here there is a dermatology building at the campus of the hospital. and neurology, psychology, etc etc. VERY different. but anyway it was fun to see titta. she seemed happier than ever before. she had her hair all done up and her make up. titta is about 45/50 but has the mind of the 11 year old. she is a treasure. we went and sat down on the bed with her. she was asking us a bunch of questions and then she saw the Book of Mormon, and she says "lets read the Book of Mormon!" "ok titta!" so chapter 17 of 3 nefi came to my mind. its about Christ healing the people and blessing the children in america. we read it all together and the Spirit was incredible. two young american girls in a hospital with this woman who is like a child. that chapter is amazing. we read it and then we kept talking. about 15 minutes later, she says, i want to read it now. so titta read the chapter to us. it was amzing. i couldn't hold back my tears when she read
13 And it came to pass that when they had all been brought, and Jesus stood in the midst, he commanded the multitude that they should ^akneel down upon the ground.
14 And it came to pass that when they had knelt upon the ground, Jesus groaned within himself, and said: Father, I am ^atroubledbecause of the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel.
15 And when he had said these words, he himself also ^aknelt upon the earth; and behold he ^bprayed unto the Father, and the things which he prayed cannot be written, and the multitude did bear record who heard him.
16 And after this manner do they bear record: The ^aeye hath never seen, neither hath the ear heard, before, so great and marvelous things as we saw and heard Jesus speak unto the Father;
17 And no ^atongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father.
18 And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of praying unto the Father, he arose; but so great was the ^ajoy of the multitude that they were overcome.
19 And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise.
20 And they arose from the earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And ^anow behold, my joy is full.
21 And when he had said these words, he ^awept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and ^bblessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them.
22 And when he had done this he wept again;
23 And he spake unto the multitude, and said unto them: Behold your little ones.

wow.

sunday was another cry baby day for me. we had stake conference. i sang in the choir and i think the fact that i was fasting really made me sensitive. the stake president started by telling us to realx. to just let the Spirit speak to us. we sang praise to the man for the opening hymn and AGAIN my testimony of joseph smith was strengthened. when the stake president gave his talk, he talked about angels. he quoted d&c 84:85 and he talked about one of the sisters in our ward, slla magno, who personally has sent 10s of thousands of names to the temple. she really is an angel. grazia and gianni and annalisa and stefania came to the conference and it was another miracle.

ok i think i say everytime that this is the biggest miracle that i have ever seen in the mission, but this time it really is. do you remember the man angelo that we met thursday during transfers? well we set up an appt for monday afternoon. i wasnt expecting anything. i was actually a bit sceptical. well sister hicks said the opening prayer and it all started from there. the Spirit was already strong. angelo had tears in his eyes. then we started asking a few questions about him and he opened right up. this man has had FOUR heart attacks and the most recent, he said he knew he was dying and as he was dying he drove himself to the university-- i mean hospital. somehow he lived. he doesnt know why. but he knows that the pope doesnt have his answers. he said already from the beginning he was feeling the Spirit. we were 20 minutes late, and in general it would have stressed him our but he felt so calm and peaceful with us that he didnt care. then we talked about how the gospel has been restored and how he now has the opportunity to see the changes in his life and restart (even though he is 70) and she said he wants to. so we told him that if he will prepared himself to be baptized by someone who holds the restored priesthood of God on october 29, that he will have more blessings than he has ever had before. he said he cant wait, and he hopes that his wife will see it to. then he said the closing prayer, and when he finished he says "what is this warmth that i am feeling? i dont understand, its like a pressure but its good." it was so awesome. SOOO AWESOME!!!! so pretty much we are being blessed for some reason and finding all the elect people in bari.... i am so grateful!!

yesterday, angelo called and said that he was reading the Book of Mormon and he was super confused that someone was commanded to kill someone else.... hahaha anyway he is reading the Book of Mormon. then we followed the Spirit and got on a bus and as we were on this bus, i thought i need to talk to someone. and there was a woman who reminded me of my gorgeous mother. i really wanted to talk to her, but there was a lady sitting across from her. just as i thought that, the lady got off the bus, and i swooped. turns out this woman is the aunt of one of the members!!! haahahaa it was awesome. we did a lot of house yesterday morning..... then in the afternoon we were kinda going around with nothing and we saw this young man and we stopped him and turns out HE was supposed to get baptized two years ago, and he asked if we could have a family home evening with the desantis family. he is practically a member, but just didnt actually get in the water.... who knows why.... but we will find out. miracle after miracle family.... then we started teaching temple prep to one of the members, angela, who wants to go to the temp. she is 27 and she is amazing. she really really wants me to live here. she asked me to be her escort when she goes to the temple. she said i have changed her life. i dont know how, but she can think whatever she wants haha. and then we had english course which was awesome because a ton of students came!!! including two ex student/ ex investigators. after course we were outside and a very young and scared looking girl came up and started asking us about some nun house. long story short, she is a guest there and we helped her find it, but she came from napoli by herself and we gave her our phone number and told her to call us because she for sure is going to be lonely. she was super cute and reminded me of me in 2009....

anyway thats it for this week. happy bday shout out to the best mom ever. your shoes are FAB!!!!! and i love the st. francis painting, i want one too!!!! miriam good luck with college everything. i know you will be the best fotografer EVER!!! and yes mom send me the package. i was wondering when it would come!!! but put a picture of Jesus on it and its sure to arrive.

k all my love

sorella ashman

Transfers!

2011-09-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

The big news is transfers!! slla lecates is going to sicily!! she will be in catania, and my new companion will be slla hicks. i am now the queen of bari!!

lets do some highlights of this week

1. antonio is now the member who helps us in the lessons instead of the investigator. its amazing!! he is a beautiful butterfly!

2. annalisa the 16 year old girl is quickly becoming a bff. do yall remember how i always seemed to relate well to girls a few years younger? miriam and lindsay, laura weedman, etc. yeah she is also on the list

3. orazio and maria are turning into beautiful flowers and preparing for baptism probably within the next month or 2. they just need to pray!!!

alright so sorry about that... but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

alright not that i am trunky AT ALL (actually the opposite) just for everyone's information i have been offered a job here in bari with a company that was started by one of the members, raffaella juan, (she is married to a mexican!) who has a translation company. they translate for all kinds of things, and right now they are working with the MTC to translate a series of DVDs called "the district" into italian. they want someone who is a native english speaker, and i told her that i want the job. the probability that i will be in italy for a long time is very high. man i miss you guys. its really hard for me to accept that we will be far away from each other, but for sure we appreciate each other more. i really love my family. i dont know if i ever told you all about when i was 16 and vince was on his mission or in college (in some way he had left home) and i realized that our family would never be the same again. i was in cold stone washing the dishes and it hit me! we would never all live in the same house again! and i started to cry. haha its really sad, but at the same time its just the way things are, and if we stayed at home forever we would be like Adam and Eve before the fall. it was a good life all together back in the day, and i love you all. so stay faithful to the covenants that we have all made in the temple (miriam soon) and we will all be together FOREVER!!!! mwahaha shout out to awesome parents who created such a bomb diggity place to live.

all my love

sorella ashman

Pay it forward

2011-09-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

hey hotties!!! how are you??? this week has been off the chain. and i am slowly realizing that i LOVE american slang and how much i use it.... we feel so bad for the students in english course cuz they just dont quite get it..... wa wa its one of my fave american tradishes. we told them yesterday thats its totes norm to leave off the last syllable of a word when your with friends like just to be funny. haha poor kids...

last wednesday was my birthday and it was exceptional!! we went to a chinese restaurant and it was DELISH!!!!! i was thrilled to have something other than pasta. (ps its not a joke. italians literally eat pasta EVERY MEAL. literally) anyway we had quite a few birthday miracles. one: orazio, the man who read 300 pages in the Book of Mormon called to set up an appointment with us and introduce us to his wife. and the biggest miracle of my mission!! (not really) ok so i kept telling sorella lecates how no one calls us without being contacted first. orazio was close. he called us when we had only seen him once but i kept saying sorella i know that someday someone is going to call us and say that they want to know more etc etc. well last sunday we met these two 17 year old girls at the park and they said they had to write a paper for school about religions etc etc and so they asked us some stuff. anyway wednesday night we were at a young adult activity. the phone rings. "pronto?" "si ciao, sono annalisa." "ciao anna lisa! come stai?" "bene bene. senti, volevo chiedere se ci possiamo verdere domani mattina?" TRANSLATION "yo, its annalisa. can we meet up tomorrow, homeslice?" UH YEAH!!!!! so our thursday morning was organized by the investigators... it was awesome. we first went to orazio's and met his wife. while we were waiting for her to come, he says, this woman is the best woman in the world. it was just a cute little comment for someone like orazio who is super cool. but he was totally right. right from the beginning maria was a DOLL. she is much younger than orazio (as is the trend here....) and LOVELY. anyway the lesson went great. orazio says the same thing over and over but its because he doesnt know what else to say and doesnt want to admit that he loves the message of the gospel. hes too cool. we taught them the plan of salvation and maria was like "wow i have never heard this before!" and we were like well NOW YOU KNOW!! so pray about it!! and read the Book of Mormon. and come to church! anyway, then orazio made me sing for them because he has a jazz studio and i told him i loved to sing jazz. so i sang and then we went to teach the girls. i was thinking that they were older than 17, at least 19, but they are very mature. annalisa and stefania when we got there, they had really done their research. they had a 2 page list of questions, everything from the black having the priesthood to tithing to whether we worship Joseph Smith. not your normal 17 year old... anyway the lesson was great. then we went to pick up the stereo system from the other chapel for the TALENT SHOW on friday!!! that afternoon we did the trial run and organized all the tables. we brought the tiny tables from all over the church in the chapel\ cultural hall and set up the atmosphere like a little restaurant. we were super tired and literally slla lecates and i did EVERYTHING. like the baptism. (see how this country needs help spiritually?) but all's well that ends well... we then had english course and after that my accompanist, francesco scarola came to do the trial run with me and everything went well.

friday was the big day. i knew that not everything was perfect but the goal was to get investigators there to introduce them to members and to strengthen our realtionships with the ward members. well the evening really served its purpose. it was INCREDIBLE. orazio and maria came, annalisa and stefania came, and tons of other investigators and less actives. i was happy with my performance. oh another fun fact, the MC fratello signorile, is 85 years old, reminds me a lot of gpa charlie (happy birthday to him ps!! i feel so bad that i didnt get anything written to him in time.... im a horrible person.....) and he made me be vice mc. so the whole time i got to sit on the stage with him. i felt like vanna white, or the chicks on the price is right, like the pretty face with the swarthy old man host. hahaha anyway it was fantastic. stressful in the preparation but in the end it went great. especially orazio and maria. :)

saturday we saw beatrice in the morning and WE HAD ANOTHER BAPTISM!!!! hahaha! the elders in our ward found a golden and i mean GOLDEN investigator, a man from the phillipines named jimmy. they started teaching him on the 23rd of august and he got baptized on the 10th of september. it was like an emergency baptism because he only came to church 2x and as a rule, one must come 3x before he can be baptized. jimmy so badly wanted to be baptized and was preparing for the 17th of september. so when jimmy dropped the bomb that he was going back to the phillipines because he couldnt find work here, the elders were pretty much destroyed. thank goodness for a huge miracle. the zone leader called them out of the blue to see how things were going. they explained the story and the zone leader said "call president and talk to him. in extreme cases, these people can be baptized!!" so they did. and he got baptized. and he is going back to the phillipines this week. it was AWESOME. one of the strongest testimonies i've ever heard. jimmy is the person that you think only the other missionaries find. (well technically its still true haha but i really feel involved. we are all a team here) but it really happened!! then he was confirmed on sunday and it was just beautiful. bari is exploding!!

sunday was september 11th and i wish that i had been more patriotic. the more i think about how i am probably going to live in italy for most of my life, the more i love the fact that i had the opportunity to grow up in america. i had so many experiences, i have travelled and learned how to be indepenent, i am educated and i have had many different jobs. i have more life experience than many people with twice my age, and i owe so much of it to my being american. with that said, i have no clue why i was so fortunate, and now its my turn to give back. i have been thinking so much about culture in these last few days and how we are the product of what is around us. its hard to explain. i think i was afraid of living in italy because i was afraid of losing my culture. but it doesnt have to be like that. i plan to live in italy so that i can pay it forward, keeping my culture and beliefs and adapting to the lifestyle that is presented to me. i fully intend to have an ital-american home. i love america and i am so grateful for the unity that we have as americans. once when i saw americans in ragusa it was instant friendship. they gave us their addresses and facebook accounts solely based on the fact that all four of us were american. i want to thank my father and grandfathers and all my other ancestors and relatives for the service that they provided in the defense of freedom. as much as i love italy and can't wait for the day that i have an italian passport, i will never not american. alright shout out over. i also love albanians, don't forget that, because sunday night we went to contact a referal from the zone leader. this woman is albanian and a lawyer!!! tight!!! but unfortunately in the end she couldnt make it to the appt. but we will see her soon.

monday was great. sunday night we set lots of goals of how we would improve this week. the last two weeks were hectic with 2 baptisms and the talent show. this week though, we are busting our buns. to monday we went to the less affluent zone called japigia, that at first i didnt like, but after this experience i changed my tune. we were looking for this less active family and we asked a woman for directions. this woman was FLY. she had like half he head shaved and she was wearing flowery leggings. pretty much she was awesome. she was SUPER nice and asked everyone on the street where it was. we thanked her and started to leave, then she called back to us and asked if we wanted a ride. so she took us. we talked in the car about who we were and i told her that to thank her, i wanted to give her a pamphlet. so i gave her a restoration pamphlet and then i asked for her phone number. she says "listen, im catholic." and i say "that's wonderful. we aren't here to change people's religion. we are here to share our message. if the people accept it, it will be them who change religion." she laughed and gave me her number. her name is carla. she has 2 kids and is divorced. she was awesome!! then we saw the valerio family, less actives who really really are trying to reactivate themselves, but are facing many difficulties. they are SUPER humble but everytime we go to their house, they insist on giving us something to eat and drink. fortunately, the relief society president yesterday announced to all the sisters that we are vegetarians :) i was so happy and they couldnt cook their chicken for us.

yesterday morning, we killed a few investigators, did some house, and for the first time in a long time i was truly nervous to teach a lesson. we had another appointment with annalisa and stefania, and they are so special i didnt want to mess it up. it was strange, because if you know me, you know that im not shy and that i am confident, but i was literally nervous. i love these girls, and i really wanted to teach a good lesson. so we made a list of questions for them and the lesson really did go well. more or less we got to know the girls better and talked a LOT about marriage, because both of them (especially annalisa) have lost all their trust in marriage (remember though they are only 17... haha) but we found out that they have seen a few problems with marriage and family life, but thank goodness they are so young because they are still moldable. the best part was when we were talking about what the purpose of the missionaries is, to baptize. stefania is 100% catholic she says, but annalisa really wants to believe the church. one of the questions on our list was "how can you know that the Church is true?" and she said, by attending it. THATS RIGHT BABY! and praying of course. i guess in the end i am just super grateful that i was born into a perfect family in the church in america. why? THAT IS THE QUESTION and i dont think that i will have an answer in this life, but let me just say, i thought that my mission was a sacrifice, and that i was showing to my Heavenly Father how grateful i was for all the things that He has given me by paying the tithing of my life by serving a mission. HA! think of how much more richly i can pay it forward if i dedicate my entire life to the advancing of this work. i picture myself in the future with the missionaries ALL THE TIME. as much as possible because i do want to have lots of kids.... but i see the missionaries at my house, i see myself at the lessons with them, in meetings with them, i see myself with a baby in my arms and another at my feet and the missionaries by my side. everyone says that we need to stay missionaries forever, but putting that into practice is hard sometimes (especially in UTAH!!) but if i stay here, i KNOW i will see miracles and i will always be a missionary. who ever would have thought, mom and dad, that when we got that letter for the foreign exchanges in 2003 that this would have come from it? haha its amazing. thank you thank you thank you for all the opportunities that you have given me. i really hope that the celestial kingdom is packed when we get there. and i hope that i have done ALL THAT I CAN DO to make it that way. i love you all. i love this work, and i love my Savior Jesus Christ.

all my love,

sorella ashman

Tanti Auguri a me!

2011-09-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

(uncle heber voice) alrighty here now we're rolling alright now we're really rolling here!

obviously this was the best week in my mission.... it finally happened! ok usually i go in chronological order, but i think today calls for a specail start with THE BAPTISM!!! (i wish there was an emoticon with a little smiley face in a baptismal font....) this is the closest because its blue, like water. alright so the baptism was on saturday. i don't know how the missionaries in high-baptizing countries do it. we went to the church at 10 in the morning wearing grubby clothes because we had to clean the font before the baptism. it hasn't been used in a long time..... so we had in tow: our clean clothes, the baptismal clothes, our food for lunch, our makeup, shoes, books for studying, pretty much we were camping out in the church all day. well we got there and we started cleaning the font (see photo). then we had to fold all 40 of the programs and stamp all of the pamphlets for the massive crowd that we were expecting (the first convert baptism in 2 years!!) then we did our session of weekly planning where we plan the entire week. it takes forever. and we invited the elders to eat lunch with us (i made gnocchi that morning nom nom nom) so then we had lunch and i was thinking maybe we should start filling the font now, but i dont want it to get cold. and i think i remember them saying that it takes two hours so there is no need now. at 4 pm (the baptism was at 630) sister lecates says "shouldnt we fill the font? i think they said it takes 4 hours." "what?" so we run down stairs and start filling the font. the faucet has the water pressure of a drinking fountain. and the font is BIG. 15 minutes later, there was about an inch. we looked at each other. "grab a bucket sorella!" for the next hour and a half we then cominced to reinact the scene in fantasia when the brooms are filling up that room with water. let's say we were SWEATY and tired. i don't think that i ever realized what it meant when the missionaries talked about "filling the font." i just thought yeah you turn on the water. boom. no. it takes A LONG TIME to fill up a font. its almost as big as a jacuzzi. anyway all is well that ends well. literally the moment we said ok thats good, antonio appeared at the top of the stairs. whew. no one knew anything. but they were suspiscious about why the water was dirty and cold. i dunno! must have been the italian ghost....

anyway, we then all said a prayer together, and took some pics. then we went upstairs to see the crowd of people. i think there were probably 6 members there that weren't involved in the program and that's being generous. i sang "i like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain" that cute primary song and accompanied myself. its really sad, but next to our ward pianist i am the best pianist in the ward, so i had to play for the baptism, and we all know that i am not that great of a pianist, so it was really hard to play and sing together. but on the good side, no one else plays better than me so they can't say anything. anyway the baptism was awesome. i think the people that have to get baptized twice are the strongest members (ME!! hahah) but yeah he had to be baptized twice. the first time he didn't go quite under. fllo carlucci was pushing him under and saying "vai giu! vai giu!!" (get down, get down!!). after the baptism, antonio gave the sweetest testimony and it was great. the closing song was be still my soul. then we had to drain the font and clean it again. luckily this time a few of the young adults were hanging out with us. it took sooo long to drain the font!!! we were all hanging out forever. it took over an hour for the thing to finish, then we cleaned it and then we had to take all that stuff back home (we live about 20 minute walk from the church.) man it was a LOOOOONG day. luckily an investigator stopped us and gave us a ride.

the confermation was INCREDIBLE. i love confermations, and priesthood blessings in general. fllo curci the ward mission leader did the confermation. i love fllo curci. there was this wave of Spirit there. it was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. i really dont remember much of what was said in the blessing but when he said 'receive the Holy Ghost' it was beautiful.

alright so thats the big news. other things that have happened this week:

last thursday we had a lesson with michele. he is so funny. he really wants to be baptized but because of his back problems he literally thinks he will die. he promised to come to the baptism and to church and didn't come to either. its so sad when people miss out on the blessings that they could have had.... we did the lesson with fllo curci and curci was saying that michele is one of God's elect. well i know that's true too but if michele doesnt start coming to church he is not living up to his electness potential!!!!

friday we went on a wild goose hunt in Disneyland to find the house of beatrice, this wonderful woman that we met a few weeks ago. it took forever, but eventually we found it. and the house is gorgeous. she then dished out two huge things of gelato, we took a bite and realized that it was coffee flavor so we had to decline, which is a lot harder than you think when you know this woman has nothing and it was almost like rejecting the widows mite because she won it playing a slot machine if you know what im saying. that night we saw antonio and watched how rare a posession and then we did a bit of street contacting. as we were heading home, i saw a man and i felt like i needed to talk to him. at that exact moment about 18 things happened. the light on the street corner turned green, so we needed to cross, he was coming the other way, walking very quickly and the phone rang. 'sorella!! go stop him!!' i yelled and slla lecates flipped out cuz she doesnt like to do street alone. so im trying to talk on the phone to the lady who is asking me a gagillion questions about the songs that i am going to sing at the concert on the 16th and im trying to be nice but she was seriously annoying me and im trying to stop this guy and slla lecates is just walking along an finally i got off the phone and i said 'excuse me!! we want to ask you something.' and it was obvious that we were following him. anyway we ended up talking to him for quite a long time... too long surely but i wanted him to know the message that we were offering. we talked a bit about our potential to become like God and he said he didn't want to become like God because he was content with things the way they were. and i said that was the stupidest thing i've ever heard and that we were there offering him a huge chocolate cake for free and he didn't want any. anyway, for some reason this approach really affected me. because i was sure that we were meant to talk to him, but in the end i have no clue why and i had a flash back of the hundereds, probably thousands by now, of people that i have talked to. the majority of people say no on the spot, a few people listen, a few of those people give you their phone numbers, and a few of those people become investigators, and very few of those become members. i felt really sad when we finally said goodbye to francesco because i was feeling like the ultimate missionaries ever in the Book of Mormon in mosia 28

3 Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soulshould perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.

4 And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinitemercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.

i was really thinking about these verses, and how badly i want to help these people! i want to take away their agency and make them be obedient but then slla lecates called me satan. then we went home and i cried. i have been having a lot of breakdowns lately. i think being it italy so long is doing stuff to me.

saturday-the baptism.

sunday the confermation. AND a huge miracle. i dont know if you all remember our ex investigator andrea. he was amazing and then we couldnt find him again because he missed an appointment and he doesnt have a cell phone. anyway we were in relief society and the usher came in and called us. and there was ANDREA!!!! wahoo!!! he was asking us a bazillion questions about his friend paolo who was the person that introduced him to the missionaries and we were like ok andrea. calm down. hes not interested. anyhoo it was awesome to see him but then we found out that technically he is in the other ward so monday we passed him to the elders of the other ward. hes like a little christmas present for the elders with a bow and everything. also one of the primary kids shared his testimony and he said he wanted to be baptized by his mom. hahahaa. then we had lunch with the palermo family in adelfia. after lunch we came back and we did a test run with fllo scarola for the talent show on friday. it went well but i think i just have to sing somewhere over the rainbow because sadly the music that you sent me mama hasnt arrived yet thank you so much and i will use it when it gets here but until then...birds fly over the rainbow...

on tuesday we saw fratello viscanti for the first time since the baptism. it was incredible. he was completely different. the gift of the Holy Ghost is soooo cool!!!! he carried himself in a completely different way. he was more confident more, calm, and had a different light about him. it was awesome. he was a beautiful butterfly!!! we made him write a letter to himself and it was beautiful. he wrote it on the computer so i think i will just have to print out a copy for myself and keep it forever!!! after we went to celebrate my birthday with a crazy but so sweet eternal investigator, titta. we went to get something to eat and as we were waiting for the food, there was a woman who came up to us and asked if we were mormon missionaries. long story short, she was the wife of the branch president in tirana albania!!! hahahahahahahaha i love albanians!!!! anyway it was super cool. she came here to visit her daughter who lives in bari for 19 years. but is not a member!!!! her dad is the branch pres.... sad. we gave her a family proc in albanian and i am going to write to my albanian friend from the MTC who is now in temple square and tell her. it was beautiful. when i finish the mission i am going to albania and israel. without fail.

today has been awesome. we did some shopping but i didnt get anything. just a gelato... then we went to a chinese restaurant and it was awesome. :) i made a huge chocolate cake with ricotta inside. yummy!!

anyway i am super tired of writing because this is the second time we are here at the internet point. i love you and miss you all. i am old now!! we are all old. mortality is weird isnt it? its ok cuz we will all be together forever. and i get to design all your celestial houses ok?

all my love

sorella ashman

my favorite malady!! tonsilitis (this is really long but really good!)

2011-08-31T13:18:00.000-07:00

well it happened. you know how hillary NEVER gets sick? except for that occasional bought of tonsillitis! yeah. it was a rough weekend hahaha and i didnt have good ol' dad to call in a z pac for me. well lets rewind. to last week. we went to acquaviva to see the costanzo family. these people are the most HUMBLE SIMPLE people that have ever walked the planet. BUT (ok how do i say this...) they are not stupid but they just dont think for themselves. they are catholic literally just because their parents raised them like that. thats it. its tradition couldnt matter less if its true. they have never even thought to question catholicism. it was interesting. many of our investigators are very intellectual, very much thinkers. these people just say 'well the priests say its like this...' but they are sooooo nice. they are literally humble also in the sense that they live off the earth. they gave us to eat figs, cherries and pastries, the figs and cherries from their own property. they have a son who is mentally handicapped, and he is a doll. his name is tomaso and they always say 'vero, toma? giusto, toma? che dici, toma?' its so cute!!! pinch their little cheeks!!!! they need to be baptized. the next lesson we teach them is going to be about KNOWLEDGE and finding our own answers

thursday we had a lesson with love of my life antonio then we went to disneyland-- i mean carbonara. its a part of bari thats soooo cute old fashioned everything. you get on the bus number 4, you pass under this bridge and then a tinkerbell comes and poofs you into animated characters and when you get off the bus birds come and sit on your shoulder. its really quite wonderful. but really it is another world in carbonara. bari is more or less with the times. carbonara is at least 157 years ago. we stopped by slla avanatario and there was also sorella juan with her two sons (she is married to a man from mexico-- i couldnt bring myself to call him mexican because for some reason that has become a really negative thing in america to call someone mexican) and her sons are sooooo cute. there are seriously like dungen............ dungen..... dungen..dungen dungen BUTTERBALLLLL!!!! both of them. and when the mom said, ok its time for the prayer, the younger one, who was sprawled out on the couch looking at the ceiling half dead with boredon springs up FINALMENTE!!! they are soooo cute. then we went on a nice little adventure. we asked the son of slla avantario where strada 'la grave' was and he showed us how to get there and he said, its kind of far though, it might take you 45 minutes to walk. and i thought psssh we are missionaries. watch us do it in 20-- 22 max. so we start walking, and we walk past this complex with an open door. we walk inside and there is door with a baby announcement on it. we rang the doorbell and they didnt answer so we kept going. the city started to fade away.... and pretty soon we were in siena out in the vineyards at nonna's house (i know you all remember!) and i was thinking ok either we took a wrong turn or he wasn't kidding... so we kept going and as we walked we made the most of it. there were fig trees everywhere where we picked the figs. there were delish! and made our hands super sticky. then we saw some pomegranates! it was a feast! so pretty much that whole time we were in the middle of nowhere we were looking for the street la grave and then when we came to the end of it, we realized that that street IS via la grave. not that it leads to via la grave like i was thinking. anyhoo now we know. also happens to be the street where orazio lives. (coincidence? i think not!) then we went home (after getting a gelato...) and BEATRICE called us!!! we did a lesson with her in the park and it was awesome. she talk us about her nervous breakdown that she had. she destoyed her house. she knocked down all the walls. and now her house in in ruins and her son is angry with her. and i was sitting there the whole time picturing us in grubby work clothes reconstructing the house, painting the new rooms, decorating everything, frolicking through fields of daisies with paint chips and fabric swatches, just like the happily ever after on traiding spaces. so i said to beatrice this is perfect! my degree is in interior design! then the montage of happy images came screaching to a hault when she reminded me that houses in italy of made of cement, not wood. wa wa i dont know how to do anything with that. anyhoo.... we'll see what happens. friday we are going to her house to see the damage. can't wait! seriously though hahaha after that we had a lesson with michele. ok this was soooooo funny. the poor kid thought that all the members were like us, so when we were talking he is like 'i have bad news. i can't get baptized. it is absolutely not possible. i have work school and a family. this is not a lifestyle that i can lead.' i almost laughed right there. poor kid. anyway we explained everything and we hope that he is feeling better.

friday was miraculous. antonio had his interview for the baptism and he passed! the district leader said he was amazing and wonderful and antonio the same. after that it was kind of a bust. we went to loseto where the bishop lives and no one was home. (we tried to see less actives) then we tried the cassano family and they were home! they are active, but thats ok they need love too. i just remember being really really thirsty kind of like my throat was hurting. foreshadowing of the next day!!!

when we woke up we both had sore throats but we took airborne so i was positive that nothing was going to happen. that day we went to the church and finished the program for the baptism and we started feeling pretty crummy. we went to the farmacy to get antibiotics (luckily i have had tonsillitis before!). it was quite funny. you walk into the farmacy, ask for amoxicillin and they just give it to you. no perscription, no 'whats wrong'. just like buying french fries at mcdonalds. and it cost about the same as a gelato. crazy europe. then we went home. this then paved the way for the most action packed sunday i have ever lived....

sunday morning we went to church coughing and sniffling and fairly tired but happy the same. there is an eternal investigator, titta, who is literally insane, who comes faithfully every week but can't be baptized because she isn't right in the head and therefore has no need. anyway. we got all the way through relief society no problem. then when we were in sunday school. slla lecates coughed and titta started asking quesitons like whats wrong what are you taking have you seen a doctor etc. she started getting anxious. asking do i need to call the ambulance are you ok?? and we assured her that we were fine, we were taking medicine and that there was nothing to worry about. she is now disturbing the lesson. she startd freaking out saying that we are on the verge of death (as we are sitting there smiling) and that someone had to call 911 right now (118 in italy) or she was going to. pietro (who is the coolest guy ever--big and buff probably 32 y.o. was innactive until about a month ago) was laughing a bit and trying so hard to convince her that we were fine. the teacher who was fllo curci was very kind and told her this was not the place and that we were fine. well that did not go over well. titta (now on her feet) yells 'these girls are dying! it is my resposibilty as a doctor to call an ambulance!!' (she isnt a doctor....) pietro then says 'they have seen a doctor and the doctor prescribed them the antibiotics that they are taking.' titta got this curious look on her face. what doctor? when? where? fllo curci tells her that we saw doctor bellomo. titta thinks for a second. 'he's a dentist!!' and she is furious again. curci explains that we saw the other dr. bellomo and if she would please take her seat we could continue the lesson. she sits down. 'gimme a piece of paper and a pen' she says to me. she then writes us a perscription and says the SECOND we leave church we need to go pick it up. hahaha. we do the lesson for a few seconds when she flips out again on her feet saying that she can feel our infected tonsills pulsing in our throats and that she was going to call 118 because we were in danger of death. so she leaves. and i forget more or less what she was doing until in sacrament meeting she comes in taps us on the shoulder and says 'there is a doctor here. come and let him see you' i wonder what the ward was thinking.... well there really was a doctor. the ambulance wouldnt come but somehow she had called some doctor to come to the church. pietro (our hero) also came out in the hall with us and we let the doctor take a look at us, he told us we has tonsillitis and that the medicine we were taking was fine. titta felt soooo victorious. she was like 'how do you feel?' as though having the doctor look at our throats cured all our illnesses. bascially it was the highlight of the day. after church we had a huge confusion with one of the brothers who invited us to lunch without another woman etc etc. you'd think the MEMBERS would repect the white handbook.... anyway we went to stake president's house instead where his daughter and her boyfriend were all over each other. bleck! i hope i am never like that. we went to stake choir practice and i almost died because i just completely exhausted myself. so we went home early and made soup and read mormon doctrine.

monday we had a lesson with antonio then district meeting. at district meeting one of the italian elders, anziano errante, jokingly said that he didnt like it when the returned missionaries married italians and then took them to america because the church in italy needs members!!! with that comment i started thinking a lot about my future. what he described was pretty much my life plan until that moment.... but its true. the church in italy needs help. and i started thinking about all the good that i could do if i married an italian and raised my family in italy. then i thought about how much i would miss my family but that we will be together forever... no yes no yes no yes no... thank goodness i dont have to decide yet, but it did make me think. after we did some work in the area book and chose some ex investigators that we want to make into currents. then we went to the valentinis to steal some information from them because they know everything about everyone. then we went on a long adventure to find a less active member, maddelena. we went and she wasnt there but her sister was. her sister is ANTIissimo but gave us a glass of water. she wouldnt even let us say a prayer. we came back and as we got off the bus these two african boys got off also. they were looking for an address so we walked them there and as we were heading home, we saw two women sitting at the bus stop and one of them was eleonora (remember the crazy story of the lady on the phone who was in the hospital? it was her) she looked bad. really bad. i barely recognized her. anyway we talked to her for a few minutes when the Spirit told me to call the elders. so i did and they came. she was very happy to see them but she is changed 100% its sooooo weird. i wonder what happened to her.

yesterday was ZONE CONFERENCE!!! it was awesome!!! again i translated and its so fun to be one of the italians. anziano errante is the italian version of bryan myer if you remember him from high school. he is great. president made a bunch of comments about how we need to respect italian culture and not speak english all the time and anziano errante felt very vendicated i think. anyway the number one thing i want to talk away from the conference-- obedient means doing the things that they tell us to do. consecrated means asking 'what more can i do today?' that was beautiful to me.

well this morning we did a trial run baptism. antonio is SUPER excited. he tried on his clothes and he was all smiles. then we read some of the Book of Mormon together. i thought we would read a chapter. after three, he started reading 1 nefi 4 and we had to stop him because we were out of time. i wouldnt be surprised if he is still reading right now. he said he wanted to keep reading. when he said the closing prayer, he prayed thanking Heavenly Father for the Book of Mormon and he said 'i know that nefi is a real prophet'. it was beautiful. i can't wait. his white clothes are in the washer right now. his baptismal certificate is on my desk. this is real.

thank you all for everything. i also want to apologize that i haven't remembered anyone's birthdays. i've been out for coming up on a year so everyone has had a birthday and i remember them in the moment but never while im at the computer. sorry!! i love you. i know when your birthdays are, and when i get home i will give you the presents that i have for you.

all my love

sorella ashman

the healthy need no physician

2011-08-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

alright well last thursday was the day of all days. the culminating event of my mission thus far. it was the 11th of august, one day after my 9 month mark. we had a lesson with antonio. we read 3 nefi 11 together and then talked about Jesus Christs love for us. we then asked him a few of the questions for the baptismal interview and he said the thing that i have been waiting to hear. i asked him what repentance was and he answered correctly and then i asked if he felt like he had repented and he got teared up and said that the life he was living now was much different from the life he was living previously. and then we told him that he was ready and that we wanted to set another baptismal date. he looked like a kid on Christmas eve. we set the date for september 3rd (happy birthday to me!) and then we asked him to say the prayer. we all knealt down and finally antonio said the most heartfelt prayer. he could barely speak. he prayed that he would be ready for his baptism and that he could get through the prayer despite his emotions. the Spirit was so thick, you could have cut it with a knife. it was awesome!! i have waited 9 months for that. it was worth it. he is getting baptized. (how many times have i said that now...) but seriously.

friday was.... yeah. i will just say that it ended on a good note. we had no plans so we created one! we prayed about it and we felt good. after several attempts to find less actives, i was on edge of despair, and i said ok sorella, how many doors can we knock with the time we have left? we did more than 50! and i know that nothing we do is wasted, but pretty much it was no after no after no. oh well. no cold stone for them!! there was one guy that came out of his house and he was talking to us for a few minutes and he said that he had been to church about 40 years ago and i asked him what happened and he said nothing and i told him that we were sent there so that he could have another opportunity to have the joy of the gospel in his life. i told him that if he says no to us again that day it would be like closing the door on the blessings that God wants to give him. he said no. (i'm a very bold missionary, but it's the only chance i have to say things like this so i'm taking advantage of every opportunity.) then we finally stopped doing house and we stopped by the church where the elders were playing soccer and we talked to few members for a minute and then we passed by another less active who was home but wouldn't let us in. we were heading home very much.... well.... saddened. at the street corner we were waiting for the light to turn green and i was so frustrated and i was just thinking, 'why doens't anyone want this?????????!!!!!!!' i raised my hands and Book of Mormon in the air and yelled PENTITEVI E VENITE A CRISTO!!! which means repent ye! and come unto Christ!!!! i didn't think anything of it, but there was a guy in his car with the window down. he was watching us like we were aliens and then i realized that he had heard me yell and i busted out laughing. his light turned green and i waved as he drove away. great day.

saturday was great. we again had no plans but we knew that someone needed us. it was the same feeling we had had friday. so we tried our best to interpret the Spirit and we looked through the member book and both felt really good about going to the house of the relief society president. we took the bus about 20 minutes to get there and as we were looking for her house, we ran into fllo carlucci who lives in the same town. then we stopped by their house, and they were leaving but we did get to talk to them for a few seconds. i think that it was helpful for her. she was super happy to see us. then we went to see the last family that lives in the same town triggiano, the ramunni family. (great last name!!) the ramunnis are INCREDIBLE. the mom is soooo sweet and the dad is amazing. he went to byu so he speaks perfect english and even like an american. fllo ramunni has muscular distrophy and his daughter has autism and even though he has trouble walking, he can't help his wife tend to their children, and he has a lot of trouble transitioning between sitting and standing, he ALWAYS has a nice word and smile. i want to be like fllo ramunni. he is truly my role model. when we left our spiritual thought, he cried and thanked us for coming. he also studied vocal performance at byu and he is a wonderful bass. he asked me to sing for them so i sang one of the italian hymns. that afternoon we had a lesson with andrea our investigator who was so absorbed in the restoration film that i thought he might ask to watch it again. maybe on repeat or like me when i used to watch the wedding planner every night. the lesson went ok... i'll just say that when choosing a member, choose wisely. then we had another lesson with angela who is soooo sweet. the poor woman!! her really old mom and literally crazy boyfriend.... during the lesson, her boyfriend comes in with this toy parrot and takes the battery out of the clock and then with the battery in the parrot he yells at it 'non funziona!' then the parrot yells back, 'non funziona non funziona!' and angela just shakes her head.

sunday was GREAT. antonio gave the prayer in sunday school and it was wonderful. maybe it shouldn't be this way but it is, the members judge the missionaries by how well the investigators do. and he did great. good little kid. and then for lunch we went to an activity for the young single adults. it was miraculous. there were some 80 ysa and it was the most beautiful thing i've ever seen. that evening we went to try to see anna mola again. she wasn't home this time, but we are going to go again on friday. i refuse to give up on her!

monday was a holiday here. it's called feragosto and its just the excuse to close everything and go to the beach. well we had an awesome holiday and all the missionaries in the mission were at home to deep clean the house! it was beautiful. we rearranged everything and it was great. the highlight of the day was when we were moving this little book shelf that was much too heavy. we then realized that it had a chest FULL of BOOKS!!!! there were two huge Bibles and a book about siena!!! i endulged in the picuture book from siena, which is still hands down my favorite city in italy. then we found this cd that has a jazz version of i know Heavenly Father loves me sung by some awesome black girl. it's great.

yesterday was another long day. i was all stressed out for some reason (really not sure why...) but it happens. we had a lesson with antonio in the morning that was less than ideal. fllo curci the ward mission leader came and literally (i am not exaggerating) talked for 45 minutes and then we had to go. we didn't get to say anything. antonio talked a little, but the point of the lesson was to open him right up and help him clean himself out spiritually before his baptism. well, apparently curci did that because around 1 curci popped his head into the meeting we were having with the other missionaries and he said that they had just finished and that they knew everything. poor poor antonio. (our lesson started at 10) i hope hope hope that curci didn't ruin everything. we'll see.... then that afternoon andrea didn't show up to his lesson. we waited for 30 minutes and the member that was with us was like 'do you have enough faith sisters?' and sister lecates was like 'yeah i have faith, but he has agency!' hahaha so he never showed up. so we decided to repass the lukewarm people that we had found doing house friday and this guy, this doctor was so nice and i am not exactly sure what his deal is but he said he would call us. we'll see. then we did some more house! then something wonderful happened. there was a woman out side on her balcony. let's imagine this scene together

woman-what do you want?

me- we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints, and we are here to share our message of Jesus Christ with you.

woman- i don't want to hear your message. im not interested in any message.

me- are you sure? we know this message is of great value and will be helpful to you.

woman- i am not interested in any message!!

me-ok please excuse us. we don't wanted to bother you.

woman- well you are bothering me so go away.

me- ok have a great night. (we start to walk around to the other side to talk to the other people)

woman- where are you going?

me- to take our message to the other people

woman- there is no one else here

me- in this whole palazzo, there is no one else?

woman- no, now go away

me- well i want to make sure. we have permission to do this work ma'am so we are going to do it

woman- you have no permission! this is private property and you need to leave!

me- we have permission but fine.

so we went to gate where there was the little intercom. no one answered. we left handouts in all the mailboxes. as we left i felt a very strong love and at the same time saddness for this unhappy woman. Heavenly Father knows her and loves her. He wants her to be happy and gave her the chance for real happiness, and she yelled at it to go away. we are going back there. Christ said, the healthy need no physician. we are here to heal the spiritually ill and this woman needs help to overcome this illness. i hope and pray that she will have her heart softened so that we can speak with her the next time.

all is well here in bari. i love you all and pray for you. thank you for everything.

all my love

sorella ashman

all the cool kids are doing it

2011-08-10T11:20:00.001-07:00

well... where to begin... last thursday morning we had a lesson with antonio. he asked when he was going to get baptized and we said as soon as he was ready! and he said 'ok sono pronto!' hahaha not quite! i thought. so of course the next lesson we explained that if he can't keep his commitments to read the Book of Mormon, he is not ready to make this huge commitment with the Lord. it was really cute that he wants to get baptized so badly though. i think the thing is that in the MTC they tell you like make sure that your investigators are excited about baptism! its not scary or weird,make them pumped! and so we have been talking about how antonio will be cleansed from his sins and how he will get the Holy Ghost. lets just say he's pumped! even though now that he understands a bit better that it's not a joke, we are thinking that it might be a few more weeks. and then there's the other problem, the elephant in the room that no one wants to address. he lives in the boundaries for the other ward. yeah i don't really want to talk about it.

thursday afternoon something amazing happened!! the phone rang. it was ORAZIO the man from two weeks ago who said that he wasn't interested as he was READING the Book of Moromon and he said 'why am i still listening to you?' i know that the Spirit was working in him. so he called and he say, 'hey. i've been reading this book. i've been having some fun with it.' i said, 'oh really? so when can we meet again?' he said 'this week.' ha! we are seeing him tomorrow. not interested my foot!

friday. let's just talk about what happened last friday. it was amazing. a few weeks ago, we had pulled some names of ex investigators from the area book, one of whom was Anna Mola. she was taking the lessons in 1994. (when miriam was ONE) and then when her friend who was a member moved to america, she stopped coming. she is married to but separated from the nephew of the ward mission leader. so friday we taught a lesson to nicola, our investigator who still doesn't believe that Jesus Christ is even the Son of God, then we got in fllo curci's fiat 600 and went to an art exhibit that was put on my one of the less active members of the ward. this was basically the celestial kingdom. there were three young violinists who were playing,it was outside and LITERALLY on the beach. so we are sitting there listening to the violinists and the waves lapping on the shore, then we got to see this beautiful art and the member artist was SOOO happy that we came. it just made my day. then we got back in the 600 and wento to ANNA MOLA's house. it was about 8:30 and she had no clue we were coming. then there she was. she is amazing! her daughter who WAS 2 when she was taking the lessons is now 19 and lovely. she was super excited to meet us and we had a great little get to know you lesson. she gave us her cell number and we are going to go see her again on friday.

saturday morning we went to cellamare. it is so small it took about 15 minutes to know where everything was. jk jk we went to do some inactive dive bomb sneak attacks as we like to cal them, and we met a woman named lucia canonico who hasn't been to church in 20 years. when she saw us she didn't even know we were missionaries. that's weird cuz members know who we are. anyway after much confusion with the bus,we finally made it back to bari and prepared for another lesson with antonio. this lesson was epic. antonio is a very closed person, but at this lesson, the member, fllo carlucci really reemed on him. 'how is it possible that you haven't prayed or read once???' it's been a month that we have been telling him everytime to read and pray and he still isn't doing it. so at the end of the lesson we all knelt down and we made antonio pray and pray correctly. it was a nice prayer, but the poor guy was wringing his hands through the whole thing! the thought came into my mind, 'hillary, he doesn't know how to be intimate with someone. he has no close friends or relatives and the thought of talking to GOD scares him.' so i asked him, 'antonio, is there someone in your life that you can confide in? someone that you tell everything to?' and he said no. and i said 'well guess what, now you do. you need to talk to Heavenly Father. He loves you. He KNOWS you and He is waiting to hear from you. you have got to open yourself up to Him or He can't come in.' he had tears in his eyes. and i began to begin to understand the layers of this man. he has no one! i of all people have kind of a hard time relating. remember how if we are in different rooms of the house i will say MOM!!! come be with me!!! but then i just think about the first two weeks in siena. foreign country. by myself. 20 years old. didn't speak the language that well and that is antonio with Heavenly Father. he has never really met Him before. he doesn't speak the language of prayer and he feels completely alone. i love antonio.

after that lesson we had a lesson with paolo and andrea. paolo was great, but andrea was the icing on the cake. paolo we met the other day on the street. he said he had a Book of Mormon! so when he showed up to the appointment with andrea it was great. andrea and paolo are two slightly awkward single men in their 40s but man andrea is incredible. he literally asked us 'where do we come from, why are we here and where do we go after we die' then at the end, we asked him to say the prayer. he. prayed. perfectly. at the end he literally said 'in the name of thy son Jesus Christ amen' antonio doesn't even pray like that! after that we went to the house of angela strignano--another success from the area book :) she is so nice and friendly, always wants to make us food. but this was fast sunday and she was a little put out that we wouldn't eat. the lesson was hard to do thanks to her 89 year old mother who has no idea what is going on but talks incessantly. angela is great, but we can only see her once a week. we told her that she could call us if she needed something and we also said that she will feel the Spirit as she reads and prays. she said, oh i already do feel the Spirit! last week when you left, there was this feeling of peace in the house for about a day. cool.

sunday was great. the ward was fasting for missionary experiences so the sacrament meeting was great. antonio slept through it all. that evening we went to the park to see the costanzo family who are a family of eternal investigators.... i don't know what to do about them. we did an FHE with them, their son, the elders, fllo curci and another family of investigators. it was great. then the best thing in the world happened. as we were walking home, we saw a DALMATIAN!!!! IT WAS SO CUTE!!! a little overweight but i can't talk. then we went home and sat on the balcony on the couch that i moved outside hehehe and this car drove by blasting tiziano ferro. i took it as a sign that it was the perfect day.

monday we had a potluck with al the elders in the district! it was great. they didn't love our vegeterian lasagna but what can you do? that night we had a lesson with antonio and we realized that he likes to sing the hymns! haha of course! so we are doing our best to get him the inni on cd.

yesterday was... long. we had zero appointments and the morning we literally walked around bari from 10 am to 1:30 pm. we were tired. but we did find this young man named francesco. another one of those people that say 'i'm not interested' just because all the cool kids are saying it, not because they really mean it.

anyway things are going great!! a few weeks ago, after i prayed i had the impression 'hillary, things are going to worse before they get better.' then they got worse and now they are getting better :) thank you everyone fore the prayers and letters. special thanks to jolena for the pics! i love you all and i know that this is the Lord's work!

all my love

sorella ashman

pool of money

2011-08-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

whew! it's been a long week. we have been battling the same battles that we battle everyday in missionary life- obedience vs. rigidity, kind vs. flirtatious, proactive vs. stressed etc. i have been thinking a lot about the things that i need to imporve as a missionary and just how challenging this city of bari has been for me. my first transfer here is almost over and there are many changes coming. when you aren't training a new missionary it is much easier to get lax with the rules, which i kinda hope that i train again this coming transfer because it keeps you on your toes. it's very tiring though because you have to do EVERYTHING and make every decision. well almost. every once in a while you say, 'sorella, i can't make 20 phone calls today. you get to be senior companion!' and you make her do it. but at the same time i would love to be junior companion again :) things were great back then.... maybe that's why i fell in love with sorella zeller. she spoke italian like a pro and the work was very evenly divided... anyway. this transfer there are big changes coming to bari! we are getting another companionship of sorelle!!! so i personally think that sister lecates and i won't be companions anymore but that we will be still together in the house. we'll see what president decides to do. this is a great thing becuase it means that there are more sisters in the mission now. we get the call on saturday to tell us what happens.... last wednesday we did a lesson with a man named orazio. the lesson was so interesting because he was saying that he wasn't interested AS HE WAS READING THE BOOK OF MORMON and he kept asking us questions and he said 'wow, who knows how much more there is to learn about this, how deep this goes.' and he was like 'why am i still listening to you?' and yet he continued to listen.... he was such an interesting person, and it can't have been an accident that we found him. we were doing house in a zone where we had never been before and i was feeling so good! (this was the same day we got the seven names of that man's children the 18th of july monday) we had passed by this house number 1 because we thought it was a business and we are not allowed to knock businesses. so we did the whole street and as we were leaving i said 'no that is just an excuse to be lazy because this person will probably reject us too' so i rang him and he was super nice, then we did this lesson last week and now who knows! the saddest part about missionary work is agency. because God sets up this awesome miracles, it's like a movie! all the things that just 'work out' and then we as missionaries try and do our part and then! the peopl CHOOSE to not accept the thousand dollar bill that we are handing to them. yeah. sad.

that night we taught nicola who is so wonderful and nice and then we all went to pizza! us and nico and the elders and it was great because anziano pedreira who was with me in sicily was also there and it was just wonderful.

last thursday we taught antonio. he will not be ready for his baptism on saturday, BUT we told him to pray for a new date. and i think he will do it. he hasn't been keeping commitments and its breaking my heart, but we finally figured out why! because i had told him that he would need permission from his wife before he could be baptized (which is the rule) but then we talked to the bishop and he said that since they are legally separated. boh! anyway he seems relieved because he really wants to be baptized. that afternoon, we met an old man who gave us two oranges and i tried to pay him but he wouldn't accept money (we didn't have any anyway) and then like 20 minutes later we saw him again and he gave us five euro! we told him we couldn't accept it and fought for like 5 minutes to give it back but he wouldn't hear of it. i hope God blesses him for trying to do something good. even if it technically is against the rules. we bought a gelato.

friday we taught a lesson to a beautiful young woman named gabriella. she is a very firm catholic, but she is also a student who has a colse friend who is a member. we gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she would read it happily but she also said that she has no intention of changing her religion. i've heard that so many times you'd think that i would accept it. but i can't. i just have to keep trying because if these people would realize what they are missing out on!! it's like we members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are all having a big party catered by Cold Stone and we are swimming in a big pool of spiritual money and we invite people to come and they don't want to!!!! itìs RIDICULOUS! oh well. i will do my part and SOMEDAY SOMEDAY one of the HUNDREDS of people that i talk to will canonball into the pool of spiritual money while eating a gotta have it size ice cream with brownies and whipped cream. someday.

saturday was interesting. about a week earlier we met this man named benvenuto, which means 'WELCOME!' yeah weird. we had tried to see him friday and he just didn't show up, so when i called him and i was like 'yoyoyoyo where you at man?' he was like 'sorry i'm with my son. i'll come tomorrow morning. peace' and i was like 'uh.... ok thanks for the notice!' anyway we reorganized the next morning so that we could see him and then he like didn't show up! so i called him. he said he wouldn't ben able to make it and hung up but then i was like 'no. he wants this.' sometimes we have to force people to realize it, just like when i went on the ferris wheel when i was five and i was sooo scared. but then it was the best thing ever!! so maybe i was a brat, but this work that we have it too important. i called him back and i was like 'look. we reorganized the morning so that we could see you. we know that this message is important for you and we would really love to be able to share it with you.' he was like 'ok' HA! so he came to the church and we did a little lesson. this man is smart. he said he has a million questions that the catholic church insists are 'mysteries of God' and i said we don't believe in those. he asked us how mary could be a virgin and still give birth, how the earth was created, and how can we have agency if we say 'thy will be done' GREAT quesions. i don't know about mary, but the other two we have the answers! anyhoo it was a decent lesson.

sunday was great. we had lunch with the valentini family who made us an all vegeterian smorgasbord. they are great. then we sucked all the information that we could out of them, about less actives mostly. they know everything. then we had a miracle that night. the perini family is a gorgeous family, but they have been inactive for a while. we have passed by their house or called them at least once a week every week that i have been here. we have only ever seen them once though. the wife is avoiding us. the poor husband is suffering because the love of his life has officially rejected the thing that's the most important to him. and it breaks his and my heart because this family is STUNNING. they are both young and attractive and they have one daughter who is truly a spoiled little princess full of energy. well there is an active member who lives behind them, but her palazzo is connected to the courtyard. so we buzzed in to this active member who let us in to the courtyard, and boom. there was the husband and the daughter. if there had been the wife, she would have made some excuse for not letting us come in. the daughter, however said, OH! le sorelle!! then she asked us to do a family home evening. so we said 'OK!' so we FINALLY got into the house of the infamous perini family. they are gorgeous. the wife was less than enthusiastic but you could feel the relief of the husband. things went well except we hadn't prepared anything and so i was really going off the cuff and i was kinda nervous because i love these people so much. anyway, this was just one step in a long and difficult process of getting silvia perini to need the gospel in her life again.

things with antonio are going much better now that he knows that doesn't have to talk to his wife. i don't know if that is a good thing, but he has promised to memorize 1 nefi 3:7. i secretly hope that he gets baptized on my birthday.

anyway i apologize for how nasty my hair looks in the pictures. i decided that i want to grow it out again, like it was in high school, so i evened it out from the asymmetrical and now its just in an awkward not long enough to be shoudler length, not short enough to be cute ugly phase. good thing im a missionary!

just so you know i have received several letters from dad and one from trisha and i am super grateful. to dad i want to say, thank you for being so strong and doing everything for your family. i knew it would be hard this long distance thing but you are so awesome for making this sacrifice. thank you thank you thank you for giving me the perfect life. i can't believe how incredibly blessed i have been. shame on me for ever complaining that this mission is challenging!!!! and in the moments that i think that, i think of the talk of elder holland that says that if we are going to be worthy of what the Father wants to give us, we have to pass through our own personal Gethsemane. the mild little things that i suffer can't even come close so i will try to endure it well. :) i love this gospel and swimming in the pool of spiritual money with my gorgeous family.

all my love

sorella ashman

YAY YAY YAY! and some pics from Bari!

2011-07-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

hey hey hey!

this week my companion and i did not speak any english!! i wrote last week that i would start at my 9 month mark, but we decided to start at our 8 month mark instead. this means that i will not speak english for TEN MONTHS. awesome. its going really well.

ok so last thursday was rough. just one of those days where everything goes poorly but you feel it. most days in the mission things go crazy bad and you laugh and you keep going. but no. this day we were pretty upset. we spent the whole morning in Loseto where we met a really nice lady who subsequently rejected our pants off, then we came home pretty... uh... tired. we had lunch and then we went out to do it all over again then we had a huge miracle. that afternoon we were waiting for the bus to come to take us to do house where we had planned. and we waited. and waited. and waited. it was so hot i literally felt like our health would have been at risk if we walked as far as we wanted to go, though technically it would have been possible. then when i was really losing my patience this...attractive... young man came running up. 'buona sera' i said not thinking anything. 'hi' he said. and then i heard the voice in my mind 'talk to him' so in english i said 'what's your name?' 'marco' he asked if the 22 had passed and then he started asking a bunch of questions about who we were and what we do etc etc.... it was awesome. then the bus came, we all got on together and we explained to him in english a bit of the plan of salvation. he didn't have any words and I LOVE IT when people are speachless because it means they have understood the outrageous things that we claim as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. we say the biggest things of all religions, and we can show that they are true! all it takes is a prayer! so i told this to marco and it was just such a cool contact. now it gets even better. that day we met him was exactly the day before he left to go to montenegro (where he is actually from----right by albania....) he said he will be back on september 7. happy birthday! we are going to give him a Book of Mormon for my birthday. then he is going to get baptized and go on a mission and be the first apostle from montenegro!

friday was even more challenging because we literally had nothing planned and nothing planable except house or street. i'll just leave this day alone cuz it was bad hahaha

saturday was great because the other ward had a baptism! it was the first baptism i've seen in italy. that afternoon we had an appointment with francesco who we met my first day in bari, but he never showed up... however! this guy walked past i said 'yo yo yo sup sup sup' (jk i said 'buon giorno!') and he totally stopped dead in his tracks. he was all confused by this wonderful feeling of warmth that we know as 'THE SPIRIT'. we talked and when we asked if he would be interested to learn more he said....'un attimo. one moment please' again speachless! my favorite! he said yes and the poor kid was so confused because he is soooo catholic but he really got slapped across the face by the Spirit and he liked it! so he gave us his phone number and we are going to see him saturday.

sunday was great. it was sunday! we went to lunch at the puglisi family and they have two AWESOME golden labs but no kids. the food was great and we even called them the day before to tell them we are vegetarians! it was wonderful.

monday was one of those days that nothing went right and yet you still feel great. like most days. actually something really fun happened on monday. i think it was a week ago that we made a contact with some guy named giuseppe who gave us the number of some other guy named giuseppe. well we had set up an appointment with the second giuseppe and he called to tell us that couldn't make it! i thought that was so nice. in fact, he is super nice. i have never seen him in my life, but just from the phone i can tell he is a good guy. i asked him how old he is and he is thirty. we have an appointment tonight. referals are a cool thing. in preach my gospel it says to ask everyone for names of people who could be interested in our message. so while we were doing house on monday i asked an old guy if any of his kids would be interested in our message since he wasn't. he then gave us the name of all SEVEN of his children. he told us to look them up in the phone book. i knew that would happen someday. out of all seven of his kids i am sure that at least one will be receptive. there is a reason why we went to that man's house.

yesterday was yet another day with no lessons (unless you count english course where we explained the entire organization of the Church in english) hahaha poor english course students. after english course, our italian tutor tommaso helped us with our italian. he is the nicest man i have ever met. i really want to teach him the gospel.

we have a lot of new ideas of how to do missionary work here in bari because so far, we haven't seen much success except antonio who even he is cooling down a bit, but no worries, i know he will be fine. he is the HUMBLEST man i have ever met. two quotes are in my mind now 'if you do what you've repeatedly done, you'll get what you've repeatedly gotten' and elder texiera at the last zone conference said 'we are not here to maintain the status quo' things are changing here in bari. we are really going to start some new things. we are going to have a talent show and we are really working more with the members. bari needed a facelift. or rather needs. four transfers ago, the sisters here got blown in (which means that they both came new at the same time) which means basically we have started from nothing 6 months ago. and this takes a lot of work and time. but i know if the Lord sees fit to let me stay here long enough, i will see a lot of improvements in the beautiful city of bari. i love it here. it really stretches me and makes me rely on the Lord. i know there are baptisms to be had here and by george, they are going to be had!! i love you all, keep being awesome.

all my love

sorella ashman

BARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARIBARI!!

2011-07-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

I LOVE THIS PLACE. i didnt realize how much i missed living in a first world country for 7 months.... i think the ferry to sicily is actually a time machine that takes you back in time at least 200 years. which makes it a really charming and quaint place to live for 7 months :) but BARI. bari is off the charts!!!! its a big city right on the beach and almost everyone has all their teeth. its amazing. (i dont know if i told you all the story about the less active in catania that said the dentist had pulled out two of his teeth at the last visit and that he was going in again to get another removed. i just thought, 'pulling all your teeth out of your head is not the answer!!!' but i digress...) i love it. i love it. i LOVE it! i have always been more of a city girl, even though i found out that i love hiking and camping when i lost 150 pounds, i still feel most at home in the city. i love hearing the mopeds squeal past the window at 2 am. ragusa was alseep by 9, earlier than the missionaries. i love bari. and there is a university here, the ward is huge, the members are SUPER on top of things and friendly, the weather is great, the city is totally flat, the streets are normal sized, the air smells like oregon in the morning, our church building used to be a night club, there are two elders in the ward with us who are AWESOME, there are a bunch of young single adults so they have tons of activities, and we have already seen a bunch of miracles. wow. i didn't think things got any better. now let's just be realisitc here. the food (so far) is not as good as ragusa. but ragusa has the best food of anywhere i have ever been in my life.... and we do not have nearly as many investigators, but that is changing quickly. but as far as a place to live, i could live in bari for the rest of my life. i love it here.

so last wednesday we went to catania with the two heaviest suitcases i have ever carried in my life. i have been witness of many transfers now, and no one has ever had a suitcase to top mine. i might be sending some stuff home... we stayed in catania excited to hear where everyone was going, and then the next morning i got on a bus to bari with elder bradshaw and he and i were companions for 10 hours. he has only been out one transfer so i told him about all the miracles i have seen in the field like mose and aurelia and he just listened and said 'WOAH THAT IS SO AWESOME SISTER!!' and i taught him a little bit of italian and it was just pretty much an enjoyable but LONG trip on the bus. when we got to bari (over an hour late) we saw this gorgeous group of missionaries. and i met sorella lecates again! i met her in the MTC but i left before she did. she is wonderful. she is from highland, ut and she has strawberry blond hair and we all know how i feel about redheads. (remember when i dyed my hair red for 5 years?) the next day we went to adelfia which is a little suburb of ragusa and we did some house and met a man named giovanni. he first started talking to us in german and then we told him we were american and he spoke english! (not that great but yeah) so anyway we got his phone number and set up an appointment for the next day because he was going to be in bari and so we called fratello valentini to come to lesson with us. at first he said no and then he called us back like two minutes later and said, ok i'll come. and so we taught the lesson. and it went great. :) then on sunday (fast sunday!) fllo valentini bore his testimony about how grateful he was to have come to the lesson with us etc.

(remember all the great stuff i said about bari? well i take it all back. i just used the 'bathroom' here at the internet point.)

then that night i had set up a meeting with rita, the member from ragusa who is apparently here in bari somewhere but hasnt been coming to church. so we rode the bus (ps it was POURING rain) to the station for some reason, because i felt like we should even though rita had already told me that she wouldn't be able to make it. i don't know i just kept thinking maybe her plans had changed but i just wanted to go to the station. so we were standing there and basically as soon as we got there we had to turn back around and go home but as we were waiting in the downpour there was a normal looking guy standing next to us and he was kinda looking at us curiously so i asked him how he was and introduced myself and then we started talking. he asked us if we needed a ride and i declined. i don't remember much about what i said, but i do remember telling him that my prayers are always answered when i ask for something with faith and he said, 'really?' and i said yes! he said he doesn't like the catholic priests etc etc and since the bus was late, i kept talking to him. we talked about the priesthood, and how a 12 year old boy can have it and how he could too! he asked if there was a place where we meet, and so i invited him to church the next morning. he said he would come. and the bus pulled up. i thought about getting his phone number but something inside me said that if he really wants to come, he will be there. before sunday school, i had literally not even thought about antonio and one of the ward members came up and said that we had a contact in church. and there was antonio, smiling from ear to ear in a suit and tie. he had already been to quorum and apparently he had some common relatives with one of the members. sunday school went well and then sacrament was great. it was fast sunday so it was extra cool. i asked him how he liked church and he said he felt at home and that he was super happy to be there. the next day i called him and again he said that he loved church that it was 'meraviglioso' and we set up an appt for friday. he is a professor and has been grading his students exams all week long and so he has been tired, but he was very happy to set up the appointment and he hinted at coming to church again.

this kind of thing doesnt happen. i still am not quite sure that this is real. like did we really find a super elect? or is something going to go terribly wrong? when we see him friday we are going to invite him to be baptized. and we will see how it goes but i mean the fact that we went to the station for no reason, that he was there too and then he came to church in a suit and tie?? i dunno seems suspiciously perfect. technically he lives in the boundaries of the other ward, but i couldn't care less where he lives or where he goes to church as long as he goes. i am so grateful that i got to be part of this!! i LOVE bari!

other than that, a lot of the work here is in need of a facelift. we are pretty much starting fresh, but i seriously talk to EVERYONE which scares the pants off of slla lecates but its good for her. mwahaha last night i had a funny moment. i was laying in my bed and the thought came to my mind when linz mim and i were playing mash and i said 'my. life. is. PERFEEECT!!!' and last night i was laying in bed on the dino bespread with the fresh air drifting in the window and i was thinking 'my. life. is PERFEEEECT!!!!' and i am sooo grateful. i'm almost at 8 months in the mission and i now have decided that when i get to the 9 month mark, i am no longer speaking english. so in a month my letters are going to be exciting since it will be the only time i speak english.

keep on praying and write me!

via luigi einaudi 25

70125 Bari BR Italia

this work is true. guess what? i found the answer to happiness. its in mosiah 2:41. ora vorrei che voi considerate lo stato benedetto e felice di colui che obbedisce ai commandamenti di Dio. i don't know what it says in english, but it says that the key to happiness is OBEDIENCE. it's true, i just wish that i had learned that a long time ago. i love you all. thank you for your support and help. special thank you to vanessa and ryan!

all my love

sorella ashman

last week in Ragusa:-(

2011-06-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

alright it has come... my last week in ragusa... and i accomplished one of my goals. what would that be? baptism? ( I WISH!!!!) completed the book of mormon? (not quite!) i got new italian glasses!!!! (come on this is me that we are talking about... i thought it was funny in vanessa's letter she said she is trying to dress more like me. i'm just obsessed with fashion i guess....one of my other goals is to get a pair of boots.....) but i had to get a pair to replace the ones that i lost a few months ago and i finally did it and they are beautiful.

but for real speaking of goals this was a STELLAR week. we taught the most lessons i have ever taught in one week in my whole mission. it was awesome! but the thing is it's not like we worked any harder than usual. just some weeks we are supposed to learn some stuff and other weeks are supposed to teach some stuff. hahah.

last week we had the zone conference with elder texiera from portugal who is an area authority 70 here in europe. elder T was incredible!!!! also NEWS FOR VINCE!!! someone tell him please!!! portugal is the fastest baptizing country in europe now! i'm sure that's because vince went there. he really hammered in TALK TO EVERYYYYYONEEEEE. very spiritual and delightful. i translated the whole thing from english to italian for the non english speaking elders. it was awesome. i LOVE translating from english to italian. sadly that market is MUCH smaller than vice versa.... oh well! at the conference his wife challenged us ALL to read the book of mormon in 60 days. i was over half way, but i am happy to restart and i am still right on track. so cool the strength that comes from doing something together at a mission.

saturday we had an awesome lesson with our investigators mary and emmanuel. at the end of the lesson we all knelt on the floor in a circle and our member, their friend, justice, said 'let us all hold hands' then he said the most poweful prayer i have ever heard! (this is the same justice that says DADDY-- open our brains and put your knowledge in!) this prayer he said, "daddy-- we are not beggars-- give to us so that we can give to others" email can't do it justice but i promise next phone call, i will do a smash bang impression.

ok i am so close to out of time. i love you all and i am sorry this letter is lame. we have a ton of stuff to do today because tomorrow we have a huge ward activity. we turned the church into a movie theater. we are going to watch the testaments, and we have invited all of our investigators.

i love you all. remind me to tell you about giorgio, aurora, radiza, fiorenza, and orazio.
the Church is true and i rejoice in the priviledge to serve.
all my love,
sorella ashman

CHOCOLATE!

2011-06-15T08:55:00.001-07:00

well today has already been fantastic. this morning we cleaned the house-- and i mean good like i pulled the washer away from the wall and mopped behind it. yeah we are talking deep. then the elders from gela came to pick us up to go to modica, which is my favorite city in sicily. parents if you remember the chocolate that i sent you in january, that was from modica. since i am going to be leaving ragusa and probably sicily in two weeks, i told the elders that we needed to go there before we left! we went and we ate tons of delicious chocolate and it was heavenly.
man when we think the miracles can't get any better.... last wednesday night we had just a bit of time when aurelia cancelled an appoitment. we decided to do house in via rimmaudo where we have some members. we did maybe 5 houses when we rang one and a super nice lady opened the door and we asked if we could come in. "oh yes come in come in!" she had no idea who we were. her daughter was home too. so we went in and sat down and explained what we did and what we could offer them and they were all excited about it! we asked the mom if she had work right now and she said no. (the economic crisis here is REALLLLLY bad ps.....) but she said "everyone is having a hard time with everything, so i can't complain." WOW! that was the first time i heard anyone say that answer! she was so great! and the daughter was eating it up.... so we got their phone number BUT the phone number doesn't work!! so we have to go by their house. we will go today.
saturday night, we were walking down the street and there was a really pretty woman walking with two heavy looking shopping bags. we stopped and asked her if we could help and of course she said no but she asked us who we were and what we do etc etc and she gently set the bags down and started listening to us very intently. after a few minutes on the corner, we grabbed the bags and walked her home. she let us in where we got to know her a bit. her name is radiza, she is from romania and she has a 16 year old son. i really felt like she needed to hear something from the Book of Mormon, so we read 3 Nefi 11 together. I HAVE NEVER FELT A SPIRIT LIKE THAT BEFORE. holy cow, talk about being lead by the Spirit. i had no clue what we were going to teach her, but reading this chapter just filled her house with a sweetness like i can't explain. she told us we could come back the next day. so we did! again. there is something soooo special about radiza!! we have another appointment tonight.
every morning we do a practice approach. sister lewis or i pick someone on the street like "today i am a mom holding a baby" and then we talk to them as if it were real. well one time, we practiced with a character named 'daniela' and THAT DAY we had the EXACT approach that we made up that morning IN REAL LIFE. it was CRAZY. and cool. yesterday, we were walking down the street and there was a young man on the steps of a bank smoking. slla lewis had created this character a few weeks ago-- i could see it in my mind and i had to talk to him but i didnt want to cuz he was really cute and it scares me to talk to cute boys because it can be........ well...... distracting. i'll leave it at that..... but i went over to talk to him. he was super nice! his name was stefano and he had a million questions. it was just like the approach that we made up. it was soooo weird. anyway, so we gave him a Joseph Smith pamphlet and got his number and we called him that day and he said he couldn't see us that day, but that he had read some of the pamphlet and it was very interesting and he was interesting in learning more. soooo cool!!!
man the mission rocks.... thank you to everyone for everything. next week will be my last letter from ragusa.... so weird. i've been on my mission for over 7 months and have only been in one city.... i love it here but i am ready to see some other stuff :)
i love the Church. and the Book of Mormon. man when i read it, i can't put it down!!!! and i don't like to read either....
i hope dad is doing well. i'm soo excited for his next letter! but no one send anything else to via buonarroti. i will be leaving here in 2 weeks, and i usually get letters in 10 days, so dont send anything else here just to be safe.
i love you all
until next week, bacioni dalla siclia
sorella ashman

7 Month mark....

2011-06-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

today is the 8th of june, the 10th of june is my 7 month in the mission (not it italy mind you. three weeks in the mtc....) and i am so grateful!! this is crazy how quick its passing. i'm almost halfway... and i still don't do anything right... hahahjkjk
well i will say this, this past week was the hardest week of the mission so far. soooo many people we talked to flat out rejected us. several investigators broke up with us, not a single investigator came to church, half of our lessons got cancelled (maybe more) and rapposelli who was my huge miracle, has completely fallen off a spiritual cliff. seems like vanessa was having sympathy pain for me, but just like she said, these moments pass and when we look back we see what God was trying to make of us. one of my favorite stories is about the silver smith, who pounds the nasty silverish lump, puts it in an incredibly hot furnace, pounds it some more and one man who was watching asks the silversmith when the silver is done, and the smith responds that he knows when it's done because he can see his image in the silver. how cute right?! 'he is like fuller's soap and a refiner's fire'
anyway, in this moment i feel great. we just went to the GLOBAL FOODS store and spent 35 euro on ethnic food. this is my rebellious side that we all knew was there fighting against the endless plates of pasta with red sauce that i have eaten since i've been here...... hahahah we got thai rice and curry paste and pad thai noodles and fake meat made of soy :) i am so excited!
things are going really well. i am learning sooooo much. i wish that i could have known this stuff when i got here... like we are looking for people with desire right? well desire for WHAT? people who want to know the truth can find truth wherever they look. muslims have truth, buddists have truth, cattholics have a lot of truth! but we want people who are looking for the TRUE CHURCH of JESUS CHRIST, like joseph smith. how is it possible that in 7 months i still haven't found one???? that is the question hahaha but i have 11 months left to find a million giuseppe smiths!!!
ok let me tell you about ambus. we were walking down the street and there was a youngish looking african guy and we said hello to him and he asked us where we were from (in italian) and then we asked him and he was from Eritrea! (never heard of it before....) anyway he was so relieved to find someone who spoke english and so we were chatting and i asked him if he was muslim and he said 'no. i am a Christian' and i think i did a little victory dance because we aren't allowed to teach muslims because they could be killed if they convert.... anyhoo we got his digits and we called him the next day and he was so excited to hear from us and he said 'thank you so much for calling!' and we have an appointment tonight and he is so wonderful! i hope that he has a desire to find the Church of Jesus Christ. when i talked to him on the phone he asked me 'what are you and the sister doing now?' i told him we were out looking for people to teach, and he said 'oh that is so great! you are out spreading the word of God.' hahaha he got that right! ambus is wonderful and i can't wait to start teaching him tonight!!
we are trying to start working with the friend of a member, her name is claudia. she is a beautiful young woman from BRAZIL!!! (the member is also brazillian DAD....) but claudia is having a really hard time right now.... she has been in itlay for about 3 years, and she came here for her husband giuseppe. well about a month ago, giuseppe took his own life. now imagine this young woman. she gave up her whole life to come to this ridiculous little town in sicily where half the streets are half as small as they should be and everything dies for 3 hours in the middle of the day, and now she is here alone. she needs the gospel. preach my gospel says every injustice in this life can be set in order through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and i know that it is only through the atonement that she will be able to be completely healed. this poor poor girl.... we had an appointment on monday, but she had to go out of town to deal with some more stuff with her husband's death. let's remember to pray for her...
we were walking down the street. there was this old lady smoking on the corner outside of the tabacheria that was playing this gambling game scratch and win, where you have to watch the TV monitor and if your number comes up you win! so for some reason we started talking to her. she was so interesting. definitely someone with a good share of problems... we told her who we were and we asked her if she was interested in our message. she said she was busy at the moment, but when we explained that we could get her phone number and come by and see her, she lit right up and said 'perfetto!' her name is FIORENZA- first of all that's the most beautiful name ever. i am DEF naming one of my daughters enza in honor of fiorenza. so we went to see fiorenza. she is divorced with three? children and living with someone else. we asked her why she accepted our invitation and she said 'avevo bisogno' which means i had a need. she needed some spiritual food because her sould was hungered. it was so cool to hear that answer. i've never heard that one before, and we ask that question at every first lesson. very cool answer. then we went again, and she said she felt better when we were there. and when we asked her to pray to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. we asked fiorenza, will you pray to know if JS is a prophet? she said 'yes of course. i want all the truths that are available' WOW!!!!!! how awesome!!!! maybe i didn't go 7 months without finding someone.... ;-) anyway i have 3 weeks left in Ragusa from today..... i am excited to see what other miracles are in store!
ok well i think this is long enough.... next week we have a mission conference with Juan Texiera of the 70!! i am sooo excited! his picture is in the Ensign just saying....
alright well more than ever i know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was restored trhough the modern prophet Joseph Smith, and i can't wait to find some more people that want to know that too. i hope that the sister who replaces me has some magic touch for baptizing and that all these people who are right on the edge and be lead all the way into the font... i LOVE being a missionary. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. and i thank my beautiful family and friends for everything!!
bacioni da siclia
sorella ashman

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD!

2011-05-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

what a special day it was to get so many letters, several from ryan, a really good one from mom, and even one from janelle!! how amazing! thank you all sooo much. i really appreciate it. and i am not even mad when you don't write me, so don't feel guilty. that's how much i love you all.
i want to quickly speak to janelle- thank you for being who you are. thank you for your support and prayers and i pray everyday that you will be waiting for me when i get home, but if not we know that God knows what He is doing!!! i love you so much and i am so grateful for the beautiful memories that i have of you. i think my first memory of you we were in tuesday morning and you were buying these shoes with forks, knives, and spoons all over them, and i thought 'i wanna be as stylish as aunt janelle!' and i still retain that. even in the picture of you that my mom sent you can't hide those betsey johnson earrings from me!!! hahaha thank you for being so generous and complimentary. it really is inspiring to be around you and you make everyone feel like a million bucks. thank you!!!
i feel very touched right now. people are so nice to me and i totally don't deserve it. i am glad that you all like my letters so much cuz i do it for you. sometimes i dont like writing the emails, but over the last six months its gotten better and better. so i will keep doing it because, it makes you all happy and because its in the white handbook. :)
this was one of the best weeks of my mission, and that is saying something. the biggest news so far: WE HAVE A BAPTISMAL DATE that i really think is going to happen!!!!!!!! our sweet sweet investigator, loredana, has a lot of saddness in her life. she was the caretaker of the sister of one of our members, and this sister died almost a year ago. loredana was heartbroken because this sister was so important to her. when we had the first lesson with her last friday, she cried and cried. she shared some very personal experiences about this woman and it was just a very touching experience. also the member talked about her sister. the member, sister gurrieri, told us that her sister was the reason that she found the Church. her sister never joined the Church because her husband was contrary or she would have. sister gurrieri told us about a little while after her sister died, she felt her presence in the house, and she heard something fall in her sister's room. the picture of her niece (her sister's daughter) was knocked over revealing behind it a secret copy of the Book of Mormon with little notes from the sister missionaries tucked in pages that sister gurrieri's sister had kept from when she was taking the missionary lessons secretly years before. wow. lorenzo snow profisied that many italians would receive the gospel through dreams and visions and that has certainly been true. italians are very sensitive people and they are open to receiving answers when they really want to know. i love italy so much. anyway so that was amazing to hear. loredana has dreamed about this dead sister too and she is ready to receive all the blessings that come from being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. she is getting baptized on june 24. but listen to this. as we left the house yesterday, we said, hey what date are we going to give lorendana? june 24. ok sounds good. when we proposed the date to her she said 'what? june 24?' and she looked over at sister gurrieri. june 24 is the day that the sister died last year. amazing. AMAZING the way God works... that's how i know that it has to work out. it's just too wonderful. so please pray for loredana that she can quit smoking and that she will be able to come to church every week.
last week we had the most spiritual experience that i have had in my whole mission. for me this meeting was even more powerful than the ones with loredana! PAOLO. this man is incredible. here's what happened. paolo works in a bar near our house and one day we were passing by. he and his coworker were outside and we started to talk to them. paolo told us that he feels too impure to pray to God but that he knows that God answers prayers because his very faithful friend has prayed for him and he has been blessed and now we were sent to him. that was about two weeks ago that we first met him, and since that day we have been trying to actually fix an appointment with him. even though he is at work 24/7 so we haven't had a real lesson with him, we have seen him twice at work while he is closing and we have been able to 'teach' him a bit with no other customers there. last week, we were talking to him about the plan of salvation and how he can know the truth. i think that morning i prayed for someone who is looking for the truth. and paolo said word for word, 'sto cercando per la verita' 'I AM SERCHING FOR THE TRUTH' i bet i looked like a fool as a huge grin spread over my face and i said 'l'ha trovata' 'you found it' i can't explain how i felt. i was in ecstasy. for weeks i had been praying for someone with desire, someone who was looking for the truth, because i have come to the conclusion that that is the answer. THEIR desire. this man WANTS the truth. he has a young son and a beautiful wife and they have been in love since he was 17 and she was 13. and now he needs some answers. he needs to know that there is a God and that he can be cleansed and forgiven and that he can have the fullness of joy. as we left his bar i was walking on clouds. it wasn't even a quasi answer to a prayer. it was a 100% this is what you asked for and this is what you are getting. i just started crying. we ducked into a little alley and prayed with grattitude. i could have kept crying the whole night, but there were people out so i made myself stop. please pray for paolo.
k let's talk really guick about how the Spirit works. 'sorella lewis. close your eyes and point to a spot on the map' we go there and there is no one home, but across the street there are two men working. 'hey, we are missionaries and we are looking for someone who is interested in our message. would you or anyone you know like to hear more?' 'no we aren't from ragusa. go ask at the bar down the street.' we go to the bar 'hello! we are missionaries and we are looking for people who are interested in our message. would you or anyone you know like to hear more?' 'no, thank you though' we walk outside, there is a pretty woman with a beautiful dog. 'ciao! come sta?' 'bene' 'noi siamo missionarie per le Chiesa di Gesù Cristo dei Santi degli Ultimi Giorni' and then we start talking to angela. she was amazing. very bitter about the hand that life dealt her. we talked and i felt the Spirit soooo strongly and i told her that. and she said she felt it too. with tears in her eyes, she thank us, but said that she was too angry with God to accept Him right now. i said, i'm really sorry that's true. but He cares and wants the best for you. and then she was gone. i know that we were supposed to be there at that moment. we made a difference in angela's life and she in ours and God will not forget about her.

saturday we had a really fun experience. saro, one of the english course students, invited us to his house. his house was massive. (it was normal for america....) it was outside the city and frankly reminded me of my house in siena with the garden and the openness, but it was even better. it was sooo pretty i took some pics which i will be sending very soon i promise. they have a wood stove outside their house where they make focaccia ragusana. i think i am going to buy you guys some focaccia and send it in the mail, it is that good. anyway that was just a super fun cultural experience. saro and his wife are a geologist and a biologist respectively. they go on caving excursions and they keep trying to convince me to come but i think i have been clear about what we can and can't do. we even had to subsititute some time from p-day to saturday so that we could go to their house. missionaries just aren't normal people.... but they invited me back when i am 'FREE' and i can stay at their house. hahaha

i have only five weeks left in ragusa. by the time i leave, i will have been here for over 7 months. i huge part of my soul will always be in this tiny city. every street has a different scent and a different memory that you just have to exerience to understand. there will always be the corner where we singing the national anthem of italy at the top of our lungs on independence day, the bus driver who said i want to be happier but i'm not ready to do anything about it yet, the bakery where the man who gives us free cornettos works, and the telephone booth where we met emiliano one night when it was freezing but we had to wait for him because we needed to say hi to him. i can't descibe the affection that feel for ragusa, but i think the best thing to say is it's like my little sister. every once in while we just didnìt get along no matter how hard we tried, but in the end i am overwhelmingly grateful for the things we experienced together. ragusa is, as far as i am concerned, another member of my family, just like siena. i am grateful. that is the best word. it is with extreme gratitude that i thank my Father in Heaven for even allowing me this opportunity to be here, to find the siblings that i wish had been born into my family, but if they were, the story would be much less exciting. this work is true and Jesus is the Christ.
sorella ashman

Transfers!

2011-05-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

no transfer for me this week!! yet another transfer in RAGUSA!!!! this is my fifth transfer here and i finally feel like i am learning how to be a missionary. and on 29 june i will be transferred to another city and have to start all over.... hahaha i love this mission.
it was SOOO wonderful to talk on the phone huh? we will figure out how to skype for christmas. i got the letter from nick and from dad. wow! 20 of june you have to start there babbo? that's so exciting! it sounds perfect and with the fat stack of cash that they give you we can go to and from italy as we please! hahahah jk jk jk you and mom can go on missionsssss!!
last week we had zone conference and it was WONDERFUL! i got to transalate the training from the mission president and it was really fun. it is WAY easier to translate from english to italian than from italian to english.... the thing that i really took away from the zone conference is DESIRE. that we need people who have a DESIRE to know the truth. we have started saying in some of our street approaches that we are looking for people with a desire to improve their lives, and it gets some good responses!
last saturday was an incredible day. we went to comiso, a little city outside of ragusa, for the entire day! it was really fun. as we were leaving town walking to the bus stop, a man walked past us, and i felt like i has to talk to him. i ran after him then we talked to him about the Book of Mormon and families and he gave us his address and phone number! his name is biagio, and we are meeting with him friday :) he is very special! then we got to comiso to meet with a young muslim boy, mahad. we are always careful about meeting with muslims, because in extreme cases they can be killed if they convert.... anyway the way we found this boy was at the bus stop in comiso a week earlier. we gave him a pass along card, and didnt think anything of it--until he called us three days later. let me just put this into perspective how much of a miracle this is. NO ONE EVER CALLS US. i spend about 30- 40 minutes on the phone everyday organizing everything, but i have NEVER in 6 months had anyone call US without us contacting them first in some way. so we felt the urgency to see this boy. we met him at the bus stop. teaching muslims is particular because they don't believe that they are the children of God. that is that first point of the first lesson!!!! so when we asked him if we could pray with him and he said no, we just kept on teaching him. we asked him why he called us, and his response was so pure and innocent. he doesn's speak a lot of italian (he speaks well enough, probably about how i spoke the first time i came to italy) so when it comes down to it, all you can say is the most basic thing. he said 'voglio sapere la verità' and that was enough for me. we taught him about God literally being our father, Jesus Christ literally being the Son of God and out Older Brother. i have never met a person so humble and calm. he just listens. he soaked it up. we then invited him to pray and to come to stake conference with us in catania the next day. he said he would like to come! it was unreal. i didn't know if he would actually do it. we had to pick him up at 8:30 in the morning and he would stay with us until 4. he agreed. and he came. but let me finish saturday. after mahad, we ate lunch with a less active, and then we took at cat nap at the park.... it was HOT and she made us eat sooooo much food i could hardly believe it. then we went to see mary, our african investigator, and then we went to see mary galesi. she is very likely my favorite investigator (besides emiliano and mose the catholic priest who is moving to america!!! more on that later) we just decided to stop by and she if she was there. here's what happened. the anziani from gela found her doing house one time. i have nooo clue why they were doing house in comiso---wait yes i do. that sentence whould say 'i have nooooo clue how we got so blessed to have elders so great that they responded to the promptings of the Spirit and found this woman' so we went to her house during my second transfer. we are talking at least 2 or 3 months ago. she LOVED everything and felt the Spirit so strongly. and she agreed to everything we told her. when we called the next week to confirm the appointment, she said that her husband was against this idea and that she couldn't meet with us. she is a young mother of two, very pretty, VERY nice. and she was soooo excited to see us!! she kept saying 'hai fatto bene! hai fatto bene!' she WANTS to meet with us. DESIRE!!! and what's more, she told us about her cousin, angela, who works in ragusa, who also WANTED a copy of the Book of Mormon. AMAZING. AMAZING. this woman. i have no more words.
so lets pass to sunday at STAKE CONFERNCE in CATANIA!! it was very fun and it was very fun to have mahad with us. i think he enjoyed himself. he is very quiet, but we are meeting with him again on saturday. we had a fun ride on the bus, except i discovered a VERY BIG PROBLEM. remember rapposelli, the onld drunkard who has come to the knowledge of the truth? well, as always, nothing can ever be perfect. rapposelli has taken to talking to us about things that are a bit too personal and i just told him straight up that talking about that makes me very uncomfortable. it was really unpleasant. and what's worse ok let's just lay this out in the open.... rapposelli has mistaken the Spirit that we bring for something else and he thinks that 'he is in love with someone. but it is impossible and he should just forget about this woman.' so long story short, rapposelli is no longer in love with his 'wife' (who is not actually his wife!!!) and he thinks he is in love with me. now what the heck am i supposed to do? why is life so complicated people???? hhahaha oh well. so anywat we are trying to work with the bishop to have him excommunicated because he was baptized not living the law of chastity NOR the word of wisdom. im not actually sure that he understands what he said when he said he knew the Church was true. a lot of people we meet think the things we say are true, but they don't understand that this is not just some fluffy conversation about a vision and a book. this is LIFE. this gospel is the way we live, think, eat, speak, behave, dress. it's not a religion. it's practice for the Celestial Kingdom. how am i supposed to communicate that? yeah. we'll see....
anyway hahaha sorry that was kind of a rant. but things are going great. i told emiliano that i would REALLY like him to get baptized in the next six weeks.... and i also told Heavenly Father.
so karim, miriam's boyfriend, was supposed to go to ireland for a few months. he is a talibani from afganistan, and as soon as he landed in ireland, they took him to jail syaing his passport was false. he stayed there for four days. poor kid. he is 19 years old!! and he is such a great person. he is sooo smart, so fun, so kind. i never expected to see him again, but they sent him back here. and then i saw him! he said in 2014 he will have italian citizenship and then he can go wherever he wants and i told him he has to come to america and visit us. he said he wuold :) he is one of my favorite people here.
ok just a quick update on mose and then i gotta close. sooo funny. i just saw him here at the internet point!! hahaha anyway so he's good! haha he is figuring out how he can move to america. now according to the white hand book, i can't tell anyone to leave the country where i serve, and my family can't help with it either. but man if we could.... lol that's ok he is a big boy. (is that a fat joke?) and he can figure it out. either way, he is going to come to the general conference in october 2012. family be prepared for a fun month! all my mission buddies are planning on being there, including emiliano too.
ok i need to go. this is a very long letter, but it was a very good week. :) thank you for the support. please pray for rapposelli. he is VERY confused at the moment... i love you all, i love being a missionary, i love these people. i LOVE these people. i love having friends, and i am excited to make more friends in my next city. thank you for sending me on a mission, parents. i love you all.
sorella ashman

I might be leaving Ragusa!

2011-05-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

alright everyone. you all know how much i LOVE ragusa, and if i havent made it clear enough, let me just say it once and for all I LOVE RAGUSA. during my stay of over 5 months so far, i have also worked in mistretta, catania, and siracusa, and i am still just in love with ragusa. the other cities are all wonderful too, and i know that wherever i get sent, IF I GET TRANSFERRED, i wil love it, and i will be in the right place. im literally at 50\50 right now, but if i dont get a letter out next week its cuz the Lord needed me somewhere else. :) i am praying very diligently that i will stay one more (and only one more) but my whole mission has been in ragusa so far. on saturday i will know for sure. also do not send anything else to the house in ragusa until i know for sure! for now letters and stuff can be sent to the misison home and i will get them. :)

miracle of this week: raposelli. he has been dealing with so many issues in this personal life and has been so stressed that the other day, he went to the store and bought three bottles of wine. he put them in his room and then came to his senses!!! he took the wine back and bought 6 bottles of soda instead! this would be like me going to costco and buying three of those DELICIOUS chocolate bundt cakes, then returning them for 6 bunches of bananas. that would be hard....

we have a new invetigator named mary. she is from ghana. we asked her to read the Book of Mormon and she said she needed to ask God if it was ok. AHAHAHAH!! i was like YES! ASK HIM!! its so great. i love telling people to test us....

alright well im so sorry this is short, but we have very little time. im in catania right now for zone conference and i need to get going. i love you all and i know that this work is real and i am sooooo grateful that Heavenly Father didnt let me settle for less. thank you all for your support and it was so great to talk to you all. until next week! (hopefully.....)

sorella ashman

MOTHERS DAY CALL!

2011-05-04T11:28:00.001-07:00

alrighty folks. its true. i have been out 6 months. its unreal. i never want to come home!!!!!! i love it more and more everyday. so for the mothers day call i will be calling probably around 9 am your time (las vegas). i hope that is ok! we get to talk for one hour. :) just like christmas. they said we could skype, but i dont know how to do it. maybe next christmas i will do it. i just dont really want to deal with it when its easy to use the phone and yeah... sorry if that upsets anyone.

this has been a wonderful week!!! some really awesome miracles... lets start with yesterday and emanuele.... man this was AWESOME. ok so friday we went to the immigration office to get me legalized and my documents still weren't ready. sister lewis was just chatting with everyone, male and female, muslim and christian, young and old. which is awesome. her little baby greenie spirit cannot be squashed, even in a throng of hundreds of egyptians and tunisians who frankly scare me, shes just chatting away, trying so hard to speak to people who speak significantly less italian than she does. anyway, she gave a pass along card to an indian guy that literally speaks no italian.... the good thing is that we never know what plans Heavenly Father has so we just talk to everyone and let Him do the rest! anyway so this guy called us and i had NO idea what he was saying. but he kept calling us. he wanted to meet up with us and then we tried to explain that we are missionaries and the whole nine yards. he said he lived in chiaramonte, which is an adorable little town about 30 minutes out of ragusa. he called us all the time and finally we came to the conclusion (after MUCH prayer) that maybe if we went to chiaramonte to explain to him face to face who we are he would get the message and leave us alone. so we decided to go. we took a hindi Book of Mormon and called one of the members in ragusa that has a house there and we went. we got there around 2:30 and we had to meet him at 3. the member there wanted to feed us, so we started eating but there was hardly any time. at three we went to the meeting spot and he wasnt there. at 3:20 we called him and he said 20 minutes but we had to get the bus at 4. we told him to hurry and finally at 3:40 he was there, we gave him the Book of Mormon and we booked it to the bus stop for the 4 oclock bus. at 4:08 i was getting nervous that it wasnt coming, but at 4:10 (after a desperate prayer) there it was!! i was stressing BIG TIME because we had an appointment with emiliano at 5:15, rosana at 6, and english course at 6:30, like there was no wiggle room.... we got on the bus and i asked the driver if the bus wasn't supposed to leave at 4. he said no, that it left at 5 (he said FIVE in english, to which i snappily replied, "grazie. io parlo italiano") then something amazing happened. the bus driver apologized that we had been misinformed. he really was so sorry and i told him there was nothing we could do and it wasn't his fault. then the phone rang and it was rosana. she said she couldnt come to the appointment. ok. then i called emiliano and i told him what was happening and asked if he could come at 5:45. he said yes. the bus driver was so upset that we had to change our plans that he pulled out the schedule and showed us, and he said next time to take this bus and that bus. pretty much he was genuinely concerned. anyway we started talking and long story short, this bus driver emanuele is AMAZING. he knows the Church, he has been before, he has read the Book of Mormon and he said he wants to come to church on Sunday. and he continued to refer to the Church as "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." i asked him if he believed the Church was true and he said yes. he gave me his phone number and we continued to have an incredible conversation for the whole bus trip, about the restoration, the apostles, repentance, everything!!! we all ackowldeged that it wasnt an accident that we came to chiaramonte that day. then to top it off when we got back to ragusa, he literally dropped us off at the door of the church building!! hahahah how blessed am i!!! i can't wait til he gets baptized!

its not what you know, its who you know.... that is sooooo true in sicily.

ok family i love you all. i must close now, but i cant wait to talk to you all on sunday morning!!! especially spencer.

love from sicily

sorella ashman

HAPPY EASTER!

2011-04-21T09:21:00.001-07:00

so last week we were standing at the bus stop, about to get on the bus. it was coming up the street when a very nice looking woman came up to us and asked us if we were the missionaries. naturally we were excited and she told us that she used to meet with the missionaries. the bus was there. i asked her how we could get in contact with her and she gave me her address and she told us to come by between 3 and 5. we went the next day and she was so nice!! her dad was super closed, but she was very receptive. yesterday i called her to fix another appointment and she said 'can you come tomorrow?' we said yes! i called this morning to confirm the address and her husband answered. i introduced who i was and he told me that they were busy this morning and hung up.
now why would i start a letter with this story? i was thinking about why in the world this would happen. it was so perfect! (now i'm not saying that it's over with her by any means. we are going to call her again tomorrow) people on the street ask us everyday why life is so hard and why there are so many people suffering etc etc. so far the best answer i have come up with is 'if life were easy, what would it teach you?' if missionary work did itself, what would i be learning right now? if this were easy, i wouldn't be here! there wouldn't be missionaries! we are here to learn patience and to think on our toes and to trust the Lord. it's His work and He uses us like His puppets. i am grateful to have these tiny hiccups in the plan to always remind me by whose grace i am here and how powerless i am.
let me tell you the best thing ever. monday was soooo full. we taught five lessons and just did sooooo much work. so we were really refreshed for tuesday, energized with the prospect of making the day even better. we started the morning singing walking down the street like in the movie '500 days of summer' yeaeeeeahh you, you make my dreams come truuuuuue!!! picture this scene, two blond americans dancing down the sidewalk singing. we got to a cross walk and literally this man on his vespa stopped and motioned with his hand, smiling and said 'PREGO!' it was so wonderful!!!! i wish someone was making a movie of this..... when we get to the other side, i'm going to ask ryan mclean to set that scene to music. and maybe make me look a little more slim. hahahaha! i'm still sorella modella though, even if i am not losing weight. i have been proposed to 3 times.
let me tell you about domenico and elisabetta. they are two young adults (22 and 21) that we met at the park last week. they are cousins but they could not be any more different. elisabetta is a bit pudgy, tall, just a ray of light. she is always smiling and very nice. physically reminds me of me three years ago. she is very religious and she listens to us with such attention. her mom is a jehovah's witness, and she is a thinker. domenico is the complete opposite. he is slim and short and he has anorexia. he texts the whole time we teach them and he straight up told us that he wasnt going to get baptized. hahahaha. elisabetta is so tender and kind to him. as we walked away after the lesson two days ago, she linked arms with him and just talked to him. what amazing people. elisabetta is so excited to come to church (not this week since its easter) on may 1st. she is going to get baptized! pray for her and domenico.
emiliano is still doing well. monday we sat him down and gave him a come to Jesus talk (literally). we told him he needed to get baptized and then he told us that he is just having a hard time doing it by himself. we asked him to make a bit more effort and we told him that we would help him and keep our eyes peeled for any hotties that want to take this journey with him.
i just had an amazing experience. there was a woman sitting next to me and she said 'bloody heck' under her breath and so we started talking. she was from australia and here finding her roots. there are so many italians who have moved to australia. anyway shes a really amazing person who i am sure that we will be best friends and when i get home we will be friends on facebook.
life is full of great surprises. its better than i could ever imagine. last sunday was palm sunday, where we celebrated the triumphal entry of Christ in jerusalem, beginning the last week of His mortality. we know what happened four, five and seven days later, and it's for this reason that i am here. easter has always been my favorite holdiay. the resurrection has always been my favorite story, and now i am in the country that i love teaching the people that i love about the Savior that i love. tomorrowabout 2000 years ago Jesus Christ atoned for our sins. in this day, this week, i am more grateful than i have ever been before. i see people everyday who are afraid of death, the incertainty of this life, and being separated from their families. how immensely grateful i am for a beautiful family that is sealed together for eternity! thank you family! and i also want to thank my Savior who made all this possible. His voctory over death has given each of us the certanty that we will rise again! i have no fears! only hope for the beautiful future that is before me, in this life, in my mission, and in the eternities with my family.
all my love and happiest easter ever,
sorella ashman

yo yo yo

2011-04-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

so im training. or maybe im being trained. i LOVE sister lewis. she is so on top of things, and she was made to be a missionary. she just gets it. she sings opera. she speaks beautifully and she is super stylish. sorella zeller said when you are a greeny you are so impressed by how mature the senior missionaries are, and when you are the senior companion you're shocked by how great the babies are. it's true....
today we spent the whole day with emiliano. and we got two gelatos..... it's been a great p-day. emiliano came to church this week! it was amazing. he just walks in like he owns the place. its becoming more and more natural for him and i just hope im here to see him get baptized. we are praying for the 29th of april. he has officially been to church enough times and taken all the lessons. we are just waiting for him to be sure.
sorella lewis and i are tearing up ragusa. i thought zeller and i did some good work but it just gets better and better.
our adventist investigator pinuccia is great. her tj uncle not so much but... we had a fun lesson with her the other day :) we taught her about baptism and baptism for the dead! she thought it was outrageous, but isnt it awesome that we can make outrageous claims because they are true? mwahahaha
so raposelli, our favorite toothless less active is no longer less active. it's unreal. he said he is going to continue to come to church every week. i told him that most likely piano piano he will find the love that the people in the ward in ragusa have for him. he said he thought it could happen. i told him i know it can. :) he has been my biggest miracle so far, and the person i feel like i have done the least work for. strange.
thank you dad for your letters! can you tell brother sanders hello from the chines family and the micozzi family? this is crazy that we are serving in the same place!! is there anyway i could get a picture of brother sanders? i'm still doing detective work for these people that he knew.... stay tuned! i am hanging on every word of this battle between unlv and the school in utah.... what's going to happen???? all i know is in october 2012, i will be at conference with my companions from the mission, emiliano, and some of the other elders. we are already talking about it! hahaha
wasnt general conference INCREDIBLE???? i cried like a baby when the prophet talked about the rome temple. wow. how amazing to be here in italy in these days!!!!!! it makes me want to cry again just thinking about how stinking blessed i have been!!!!! and my italian is getting better and better. i am sooooo grateful for the preparations that i have had to be a missionary without even knowing it.... thank you everyone for your support!!! i love you all!!! special shout out to nikki who is getting married in two days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the Church is true and Jesus Christ is our Savior. the Church is the same Church that he organized 2000 years ago, a living, breathing, growing church, lead by Jesus Christ. thank you parents for raising me with these principles. i love you.
sorella ashman

BIG TRANSFER NEWS!

2011-04-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

transfer news!!!!! alright so i knew sorella zeller was dying so it was pretty likely that i stayed in ragusa. president called us on saturday to tell me that i would be staying in ragusa for the fourth transfer and i am TRAINING a brand new missionary!!!!!!! i am a baby!!!! i have been in the mission for 3 transfers and i am having a kid!!!!!!! whats also cool is that in my district, there is another set of elders and there is also going to be a greenie there! so me and my district leader are training. its going to be a great transfer!! im excited and not nervous at all like i thought i would be! who knows how she will speak..... i kinda thought this might happen. my italian is getting really good. the gift of tongues is amazing. sometimes i just talk and talk and talk and realize that that conversation was happening in italian. as far as the language goes, i feel prepared for this baby.... hahaha
ok lets get the other highlights in: general conference was incredible.... we watched some with emiliano and he cried like a baby!! it was elder scott's talk about eternal marriage and his wife and stuff. i just keep asking myself "when is he going to be ready???" he knows its true!!!! this morning we hung out for a few hours at the market while sorella zeller spent a fat wad of cash on all the stuff that she hadnt gotten yet in a year and a half. emi is sooooo great. he bought us a bunch of stuff for zellers departure (a whole cake each.....)
rapposelli, the drinker, smoker, inactive for 30 years who says the members in ragusa can 'rot and burn in hell' has come 180 degrees. he told us that he is concinved that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the church of Jesus Christ on the earth. but we found something important and bad the other day. he never quit smoking to get baptized. he has literally been smoking for over 40 years. whoever baptized him just never let him take the sacrament..... man the church 30 years ago isnt what it is now.... thank goodness. so he wants to get rebaptized, but he has to stop smoking and drinking first. its going to take a literal miracle. his body must be absolutely black as tar inside. its literally going to take a miracle, but i know miracles are possible.
ok a few items of business: suzanne the pin on my bank card.... its not working. i can use the card to buy stuff at the store and stuff, but when i go to make a withdrawal, it doesnt work. should i have sorella kelly call you? i dont know what to do. if you need to reset it or what. yeah.
ok i got the letter from dad about the members here from lee sanders! the salvatore capella sr is dead, the other two are inactive. i am doing some detective work now to find out more. stay tuned!!
alright we gotta go to catania now so slla zeller can die. man.... good thing she lives in oregon and we have family there!
love you all!!! the Church is true.
sorella ashman

VALLEY OF THE TEMPLES!!

2011-03-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

man i am super exhausted so i apologize in advance if this letter is incoherent and short like im predicting. this morning we drove half way across sicily with some elders (sicily is really small.... it took like 2 hours) and we went to the valley of the temples, anceint grecian temples on the tops of some hills. it was BEAUTIFUL. they also had a ton of modern sulptures all around that (forgive for saying this!!) i liked even more than the temples.... wooops. they were incredible though. the best part of the day though was when we were coming back from the temples, we stopped at the beach and had a picnic!!!!!!!! i love the beach!!!! even though water is 100% vietato as a missionary (except when you are baptizing).
ok i will recount our adventure from last p-day. we came and used the computer first thing in the morning, and then by 1 oclock we had everything done!! so we said, lets rent bikes for a few hours and have some fun! so we went to the bike shop to see how much it cost and it was super cheap, so we said lets do it! we wanted to go to modica. so we started out smooth sailing, loving life, riding right along with the cars. we got to modica!! then we turned around immediately becuase we were going to be late, but we were set on getting back in time.... things were going fine, then all of the sudden we turned the corner of this gorgeous green hill and the sky was completely BLACK. it started trickling, then raining, then pouring. i couldnt see cuz i had my glasses on, so i put them in my pocket. i was checking to make sure they were there about every 30 seconds, and maybe 10 minutes later, they were gone!! i told slla zeller we needed to stop, call the guy who rented us the bikes and tell him i lost my glasses. we started looking for my glasses but it was really raining hard.... anyway francesco, the bike man, said he was going to come pick us up! he came and we were saved and i couldnt stop laughing about how ridiculous we must have looked and how happy we were to have him pick us up. anyway, he started asking us immediately about what we teach and stuff and it was really cool. a few days later we gave him a book of mormon, but we were a bit scared because we don't think that he is married and its always touchy teaching an unmarried man.... but we are going to go back this week to see him and see if he has read and if he is interested in the message! i was thinking it over and i realized that i had to lose my glasses or we never would have called him, and he never would have picked us up or asked us anything about the church. now the good side is i have an excuse to get a pair of italian glasses and i still have my other frames (i lost the zebra ones. ow! it hurts me to say that....)
alright lets get spiritual here. back in my first transfer, slla foote and i felt like there was a family with two daughters that was ready to hear th gospel. i haven't forgotten that feeling. slla zeller and i a few days ago felt very compelled to do some finding in a certain zone. so we were in that zone and it was almost lunch time. i told slla zeller to go ring the citofono and i had to watch for the bus. as she was ringing i heard someone open the gate, and so i scampered over there. there was a woman inside and she was very nice. we told her who we were and that we had a message to share and that we would like to come back and share it with her. she said ok and we set the appt for a few days later. when we went for the appt, she told us that she had been praying that day for God to send her someone to teach her. we explained the first vision, the book of mormon and a bit about who we are. the only thing that she didnt agree with was that we have sunday as our holy day when the Bible clearly says saturday....(she isn't catholic--she's adventist! finally someone who thinks outside the box!) well that saturday and sabbath being the same word thing only happens in italian so.... yeah. she's got nothing. after we finished the lesson we sang 'i know that my Redemer lives' and the Spirit was so strong!!!! we set another appt and i asked her if she had any other children (beside the one daughter we had met.) i knew what she was going to say and she said she had another daughter!!!! soooo cool. man the mission is fulllllll of miracles and things that i couldnt learn any other way. i think that is the number one thing that i've learned from slla zeller. there are things that we can't learn any other way. she is dying next week and i am going to miss her terribly. man. i depend on her so much. having a companion is so great. i love slla zeller!!!
i love you all as well! thank you for everything. the package is at the post office mom!!! i have to go pick it up because we weren't home when they tried to drop it off. thank you in advance for everything.
all my love from ragusa
sorella ashman

what a week

2011-03-24T08:03:00.001-07:00

alright, i'll say it. im really glad that Heavenly Father knows what He is doing. saturday was such a hard day, but by the time i am writing to my family it's all water under the bridge hahaha and now it doesnt even seem like anything bad happened. basically i'll just sum up by saying that emiliano is not getting baptized on friday. we fasted, we prayed, we felt really good about it, we have been doing a sugar fast for three weeks, everyone in the ward is praying and i know you are too but there are two forces that are more powerful even then prayer- agency and the will of God. and neither of those two things was in line with what we wanted. and isn't that great? i kept telling emiliano that we want trials because trials are what make us grow!! after a trial we can look back and see what God was making of us. the main thing that upset me was that i had felt a spiritual confermation that he was ready and then he decided he wasnt and i was realllllllly sad that what i was so sure about didnt come true. i asked sorella zeller why in the world this would happen.she in her infinite wisdom said, 'we needed to work for this baptism as if it was going to happen, with no doubts about it. if we had been unsure about it, would we have worked as hard as we have been the last few weeks?' aaaaaahhaaaaaa!!! man she is good....
things are still progressing with emiliano. he is still elect, it's just going to take him a little bit longer than two months to change his entire life by himself. i don't think thats asking too much.
aurelia is doing great, but we have to move her baptism back quite a bit because her fiance is still not officially divorced so they can't actually get married. we taught her the law of chastity and she thought it was so funny that these two twenty something year old girls were teaching HER about intimacy. she literally cracked up! i thought it was going to be hard to teach emiliano the law of chastity, but instead the 52 year old was less mature! hahaha
we have been instructed to work more closely with the members, and so we have been! we teach lessons to members and do more service with them. it's been slow seeing results, but i know that "there is no subsititute for a member oriented missionary program" like it says in PMG.
last night we taught our english course, which is always a highlight of the week. it was awesome because first thing, this guy walks in and he asks, "what means santi degli ultimi giorni?" (latter-day saints) and so we explained the restoration very briefly and then we talked about the secret to happiness and it was interesting to see what people thought. i said three things: my relationship with God, having the answers to my questions, and the knowledge that i will be resurrected and live with God and my family for eternity. and then i added gelato.... they know i'm obsessed with gelato (even though i haven't had any for three weeks cuz i made this sacrifice that that emiliano would get baptized!!! hahahah)
alright i love you all. im so grateful to be a missionary. im so grateful for the Holy Ghost and i am so grateful that my parents raised me in a home where It's influence was constant. keep praying for emiliano. keep on working hard, at work, weight watchers, school, whatever. i love you and support you.
sorella ashman

MOM-I GOT THE BANK CARD!!! i knew it had come, it was one of the lame elders who had it forever and had 'forgotten' to give it to me. thank you!!! and i love the cd, especially my solo hahahahah!!!! also, will you tell trisha to give me her address in alaska NOW! and ill have a letter waiting for her. thank you!!!!!!!!!!

I'M CLOSER TO THE MIDDLE THAN THE BEGINNING!

2011-03-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna try to keep this one short cuz i'm already crying hahahaha i've just really been feeling the Spirit so strongly the last few days, but i cry all the time anyway. sunday was INCREDIBLE. last thursday emiliano still wasn't sure if he was going to make it to church. he had to take a step forward and ask his boss to switch the shift, which required some actually effort on his part. up to this point, everything has been totally natural for him, but i told him i was so excited that he had this trial because God was giving him a chance to grow. i wasn't worried at all. the Spirit is amazing. i feel like a fortune teller because i know things that are going to happen before they happen. i think i already said that. oh well. anyway. we started singing the opening hymn. sorella zeller was playing the piano and i was conducting and he still wasn't there. then, as we started the third verse of 'sunshine in my soul' in walks our little sunshine EMILIANO!!! and i think i probably had the most idiotic smile on my face but oh well. it was ward conference and we had the entire stake presidency in our ward! this week is also the 150th anniversary of italy, so we practiced all week to sing the national anthem because we didn't know it, and slla zeller had to play the piano. in sacrament meeting we all stood and sang the italian national anthem and i was so happy!! i am italian at heart. even if i think its insane that everything closes right in the middle of the day for 3 hours.... but our inactive member who hasnt been to church for 30 years came!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was incredible. he sat right next to me, and emiliano on the other side and behind me sat our other less active that we have been working with and i thought 'thank you Heavenly Father for these people that you have entrusted me with. i can't believe that i- hillary ashman, regular blond american girl- have been prepared called and set apart to care for these tender souls in this amazing country.' can you believe that i am here? i can't. and at the end of the next transfer (in 3 weeks) my mission is FIVE MONTHS OVER. i have been talking to Heavenly Father so much. not just praying. just chatting sometimes. emiliano has to come to church this sunday or he can't get baptized. i've been talking to Heavenly Father about it. cuz He knows how it's going to work out. i have no doubt whatsoever, that right at the last moment, emiliano is going to say 'LET'S DO IT!' because i know the future and i know he is going to get baptized. i trust the Spirit.
one more cool experience and then im gonna go. the other day i was studying the map of ragusa and praying to know where to go. i felt really good about a street 'maiorana' and so we decided to go there. well for reasons that happen on the mission, we didnt make it there. two days later, we saw one of the members and she asked if we needed a ride. we of course accepted and we told her where to go and she said, 'oh this is where my son lives!' her son is named davide and he is the boyfriend of another member. so his gf and mom are both members and i felt like there was someone on that street ready!! well he wasn't home at that moment, but now we know, and we were lead there and i am sure that the countless prayers of these women are being answered.
thank you everyone, a special shoutout to dad and toonchic. i love your letters and and so grateful that you spoil me with them. dad thanks for the poem. i remember the first time i heard you recite and i have always remembered that thought 'it might have been'
you never know what impact your example has had on someone else.
i love you all!!
janelle- i will see you next year.
love sorella ashman

zone conference!

2011-03-09T07:27:00.000-08:00

yesterday we had zone conference and i am newly commited to the obedience that i vowed to myself (and have done a pretty good job at maintaing if i might say so myself....) at the conference, the first missionary who served in sicily spoke! it was so cool to hear about him starting from NOTHING and having 14 baptisms in 3 months!!

it was an amazing conference and i learned so much. my companion gave her dying testimony and i cried so much thinking about the day i will have to do that too... my mission already seems too short...

last night when we got back from catania, emiliano came past the church and brought me and slla zeller a gift for "festa della donna"! it was women's day yesterday and its tradition to give women memosa flowers. he is sooooo nice!!! he is really really scared about getting baptized though.

well aurelia came to church! she seemed to enjoy it. and she brought her boyfriend! we will see her tonight and get to know her a bit better.

we fasted with emiliano and i was super proud of him! he did it! however i wasnt proud of him for lying to everyone that he was fasting though. its like he's ashamed of what he's doing! mama does NOT like!! but he is changing his life for this, so i try to have patience. as we fasted i felt very sure that emiliano really will be baptized on the 25. i have no idea how its going to happen, especially since HE is the one having doubts and its his choice, but i SURE that it will.

one of the highlights of the week was seeing the change that we can make in someone's life. we have this inactive member fllo rapposelli who has about 3 teeth, smokes and drinks, hasn't been to church for literally YEARS and says that the people from ragusa can burn in hell. seems like a lost cause. but for some reason i just like him. we go and visit him and sing hymns with him. i have gone once a week for the last three months. a few days ago, he told us that he was so grateful that we have really showed him the true love of Christ and he said he was going to come to church for the next two weeks!!!!! honestly it started as a selfish desire to make him come to church, but i proposed to him that we do a special musical number, and he agreed!! we will sing the 20th of march. plus this week is italy's 150th anniversary of independence and so the congregation is singing the national anthem (which is GORGEOUS) and he said he would like to come!!!! unreal... he got choked up as he thanked us and he asked us to never stop visiting him. we are the only happy thing he has in his life right now, and everytime we go, he tells us that he feels the Spirit while we are there. i NEVER expected this. i just kept going because i knew he had nothing and no one and i enjoyed the opportunity to sing. how blessed we have been...

family, everyday i know more that the church is true, but especially when we get a big group of missionaries together. its AMAZING. we have power! it's cool! and we are united in the desire to spread the truth to our brothers and sisters. man i NEVER thought this would happen, but im here in italy with the little black nametag and a book of mormon with tears in my eyes becuase im overwhelmed by the beauty of my life. i wouldnt be here if this wasnt true. it is. a 14 year old boy had a question, and he saw God. and now im in sicily to tell everyone!

mom if you havent sent the package yet, you should put a note for emiliano.

i love you all. thank you for your letters.

until next week

sorella ashman

TRANSFER 3

2011-03-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

so yesterday was a crazy p-day so we didn't have the chance to write, so now we are taking our lunch break today. sorry if anyone cried for not getting my letter....

so this has been a roller coaster week. i think the mission is totally a roller coaster becasue my emotions are always so close to the surface and so many things happen that have a more profound effect than what they usually would. first things first: emiliano! seriously one of my best friends in the world right now. let's talk about the Holy Ghost for a minute. having it, and being in tune, is like being able to tell the future. you just know things. so when emiliano told us a few days ago that he got a new boss, i knew at that moment because of a feeling that i had, that this boss was going to create problems with emiliano's spiritual progression. a couple days later, emiliano told us that the new boss decided that the store was going to be open on sundays. nevertheless, we set a date with him!! MARCH 25 but the only problem is, he has to come to church every week before that or he can't be baptized. but tonight we are going to have FHE with a family in the church and the lesson is going to be about fasting and this suunday we are going to fast that emiliano will be able to be baptized on the 25th. :) i know it will all work out.

i think its only fitting to relive a day with you all. you will love it :) monday started fine. we went to rita, one of the new converts, and she wasn't home, but we had district meeting, where the elders in the closest city come and we all help each other. it was the first time with a new district leader, elder scotchi, and he was AWESOME!! the training was great. we had decided to have a potluck. they brought some yummy rice, and we brought sausage and cauliflower. yum! after we had a nice full afternoon planned. we were going to go to our investigator silvana, then we were going to have a lesson with a new investigator federico, then we were going to have FHE with emiliano at one of the member's houses. so we went to silvana, she wasn't home. we called federico to confirm, he said he couldn't come. then we went to see emiliano at work, and he wasn't there. so we called him and he said he couldn't come. so we'd been walking around in the rain for a few hours by this point, and i was really really sad. we had this awesome day planned i was so cold and just upset. so we said, ok let's do some house! as we were walking to the predetermined palazzo, i was praying 'Heavenly Father, i am so frustrated right now. why did everyone cancel their appointments? please help me understand. i'm just so frustrated by this. please give us some reason for this to have happened.' i had tears in my eyes and i was really feeling low. we approached this palazzo and it was so foggy and cold. the gate was open, and the door into the stairwell was open. (just those two things right there are miracles!!) we walked up to the top floor and knocked on the first door. a woman opened the door. we explained to her the Book of Mormon, and that it gives us the answer to our questions. she said 'no no no i have read all the books, and nothing will give me back my husband.' her husband died 7 years ago.she was very angry and very closed. i started praying in my mind 'Heavenly Father, please us help her.' we kept talking. and she started opening up. after probably 10 minutes in the door, her phone rang. because of that, she told us to come in. we sat on her couch and started to talk with her more about the gospel. we then proposed a program of 4 weeks, in the which if she would read and pray everyday and come to church, by the end of four weeks, she would know the truth of the gospel and have the opportunity to be baptized. SHE ACCEPTED. she agreed to put it to the test, to really see if we had something different to offer. so she agreed and she also accepted to be baptized on March 25. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS??? she wanted nothing to do with us, and now she has a baptismal date....aurelia and emiliano! monday was one of the hardest days ever....but God had to clear out our schedules or we never would have been there right at that moment with aurelia. we went back to aurelia yesterday and she already seemed like a new person.

the gospel is amazing my dear family. thank you for your prayers and support. read the Book of Mormon. it changes lives. it's changing mine more and more everyday. it's changing emiliano's and aurelia's. there are so many more things i could say, just know that this work is true and it's going forth. in the rome mission this year alone, there have already been 18 baptisms!! we are going to add two more people into the true Church of Jesus Christ in about 3 weeks. keep your prayers coming. pray for emiliano, aurelia, mose and the battaglia family. thank you all. i love you.
sorella ashman

ps i bought a present for spencer!! so i need his address

facciamo due giri e poi torniamo a casa!

2011-02-24T15:15:00.000-08:00

oh man so i think the last two days would rank right up in the top two favorites of my life.... monday we had a lesson with emiliano. this guy is spectacular. truly we are going to be friends forever. he came to church on sunday and i think he stayed at least 30 minutes after talking to us. we were planning to teach him the law of chasity on monday and i had no idea how he would take it. we gave him the pamphlet on sunday in church so he could read it before he came. so we asked him if he read it and he said he did and that he agreed 100% and that he wishes everyone would read it and be brave enough to agree. then he goes off about how the way girls dress is so inappropriate and that it's not right that girls think men are pigs when they are dressing immodestly etc etc. he also asked us what we believe about alcohol and stuff, so we found out he doesn't drink alcohol, coffee or smoke!!!!!!!! that is literally a miracle. i told him that he is practically a member already and that he has clearly been prepared.

then emiliano said he wanted to tell us something but wanted to say it well. he thought for a second then said that he was so grateful for us as missionaries. he said he hasn't felt a desire to be baptized yet, but he said "i hope neither of you feel like you haven't succeeded at doing your job because i am not baptized yet. you have done 110% and if i had to choose a religion today, no doubt it would be this one." he was really being inspired in that moment to say that to me. last week on valentines day, my friend sorella olsen had a baptism in a city where they never have baptisms, and during her FIRST TRANSFER. i'm in my third and still haven't seen any. when emiliano said that i felt so happy. he was speaking to me for Heavenly Father because He is happy with me and what i am doing. every invesotgator is so different, we just have to listen to Holy Ghost and we will know that correct corse of action. and the investigator that got baptized on valentine's day has been investigating the church for YEARS. it just happened to be sorella olsen the greeny who was there at the baptism. i am soooo thankful for that experience. truly probably the highlight of my mission so far. tomorrow, we are going to ask him to get baptized on march 25.

emiliano has been talking about going to ibla at night to see the lights of this tiny city that appearantly is gorgeous at night so monday we told him we could go wednesday which is our pday and he said "ok i will call you tomorrow and we will figure it out" i said "YES! no one ever calls us! we always call them!" hahaha so then yesterday we were out doing house and emiliano called! i answered and i said "PRONTISSIMO!" then he was like "im just calling because no one ever calls you" hahahahahahah!!!!!! then he said we can't go on wednesday because he has to work. va bene.

pretty much emiliano is the highlight of my mission. except there is one more hilarious thing that happened yesterday. we were taking the bus up to THE ZONE where we are supposed to be working and we got on and then this old lady with LITERALLY NO TEETH told me to sit next to her. i was no thank you i'm fine but she insisted. so i sat down and she tells me how beautiful i am blah blah blah and then she says "noi facciamo due giri e poi torniamo a casa" which means " we do two loops and then we go home" SHE AND HER HUSBAND WERE TAKING THE BUS AROUND THE CITY FOR ENTERTAINMENT!!!!HAHAHAHAH!!!! it was sooooo funny!!! she was saying that ragusa is getting big!!! haha anyway that was hilarious.

ok the questions that people asked me:

mom: the youth in the ward. there are lots of young men, but only two young women! just happened that way i guess... they are awesome. i want miriam to marry stefano dimartino. stefano is AWESOME. he is a ward missionary and he is very effecient.

the talian friend doesn't really have interest, but because of him we have found a great opportunity for service at the shelter where he lives. :)

for the package, can you get me new makeup? im running low and it is soooo epensive here. a couple mascaras and a blush should be fine THANK YOU! and then you can put whatever you want else. reeses and skittles specifically, but slla zeller and i are really doing well at eating healthy. we even shop at the italian equivalent of trader joes, natura si!

vanessa asked if i cut my hair YES i DID!!! and i love it. its like people after they get baptized. they may have been happy before, but they didn't know how much happier they could be!! and now i know! hahaha but it's true.

ok well we are gonna try to take the train somewhere so i gotta go. let me know how much you want for the house on spring pond ct. right now i'm prepared to offer you 12 euro. think about it....

love you all soooo much!!!

sorella ashman

Amazing Week!!

2011-02-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

alright so last week i was in catania two days for zone conference and p-day and both days were great. we played sand volleyball at this indoor court and i learned that i dont suck at volleyball. we pretty much just passed the day as tourists and it was great. at zone conference the thing that hit me the hardest was this quote from c.s. lewis: i see Christ the way i see the rising sun, not only do i see it, but by it i see everything else.

so i have a few things that have happened that are just too cool to pass by. last sunday we had a prayer with the bishop in which we all knelt down and prayed to know a zone where we could go to find somone who was ready. during the prayer, i felt really good about the zone that we had chosen. bishop didnt feel as good, and decided to extend the task to the ward as a ward fast. but since i felt good about it, we decided to go that night to THE ZONE. we did house for what felt like hours (and actually was) with NOTHING. i was getting tired but i said in my mind, Heavenly Father, i am not leaving until we have a phone number, and since we have to be home soon... yeah.... so we knocked on this door where there was a young man and guess what happened?!?!? literally neither my companion nor i could speak. it was the weirdest thing. well we had to start home and i just thought that it must not have been in His will that night and i was fine, a little disappointed and confused, but He knows what he is doing. so we're going home and we passed this citofono that had a blue light, and it seemed to be glowing SO brightly! i said sorella wait. one more citofono! so i went back to it and parked at the street right there, there was a man in his car eating a pizza. we asked us who we were and what we taught. i leaned down to the window and bore a really strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and i told him that if he would read it, he would find the answers to his questions. the words flew out like i was born here. it was AMAZING. then i told him that reading wasn't enough and that i wanted his phone number so we could talk about it. he said "volentieri" which means 'totally, no problem' basically. it was soooo cool. i won't tell what happened when i called him later cuz it'll ruin the moment haha but i got my phone number!!

yesterday we were in the ZONE again. (we felt good still after the ward fast that that was the right place) we were doing house for the 3rd time this week. we hadn't planned at all to go the the ZONE that day, but i knew we needed to. we rang over 70 bells and one of them seemed to have potential. she was a young girl named alessandra. she said she didnt have time to talk at the moment, but that we could pass another time. the thing i like about her was that she doesnt agree with the catholic church totally.... that makes things easier for us. as we were leaving her house, her dad pulled up and he was very happy looking but we didnt really think anything of it. we kept doing house, and then one of the friends of a member drove past and she offered us a ride. we ended up going to a bar with her and then she brought us back to the ZONE. we missed our bus so we started walking, but i knew for some reason that i wanted to take the bus. so we waited at a bus stop, and got on some random bus. i had no idea what was going on except i just felt like it. we stayed on the bus past our stop cuz i wanted to see where it went. no reason at all. then we started walking from a distance that probably would have been the same as if we had just walked in the first place. as we were walking past the police department, one of the police outside started yelling at us in sicilian. i had no clue what he was saying but i went to talk to him. he said he saw us this morning. it was the dad that pulled up at the house of alessandra!!!! can you imagine??? he was talking to some other guy and then that guy left. it was so well orchestrated it had to have been divine. me wanting to take the bus, the other guy leaving right then, us walkign that way home... anyway he asked us if we had eaten and we said no, so he took us to the cafeteria where the emplyees in the police department work and we were a SIGHT!!! everyone was asking us questions and we gave out our pamphlets like candy. well anyway, this man, saro (rosario) loves us! he was telling everyone that we were "due brave ragazze" that aren't like the testimoni di geova.... and we told him we wanted to pass by his family (they have FIVE kids) and he said sure!!!!! we may have already found the people that are ready..... everyone be sure to thank Heavenly Father for me too. amazing AMAZING experience.

ok just one more little funny story. yesterday some younger man stopped us in the street asked us who we were and stuff and so we explained. he said he was muslim and from AFGANISTAN!! he did not look like it.... anyway so we talked for a bit and he told us our countries were enemies. HE WAS PART OF THE TALIBAN!!!!!!!!!!! but i said we could be friends! he was like yes of course!! HAHAHAHA!!! i have a friend in the taliban!!!!!!!!!! hahahahah it was so cool

ok i am already out of time. i love you all and i'm sorry i didn't have time to answer anyone's questions. i will make my internet time more a priority next week. thank you for everything and please send me a new night guard!!

love you all!! (especially spencer!!!)

sorella ashman

Happy Spencer Day!!

2011-01-31T21:15:00.000-08:00

SPENCER!!!!

HE'S SO CUUUUTE!!!! good job billyjoel. he looked less than happy to be all bundled up like that though. hahahaha i wanted to print that picture, but the printer at this internet cafe isn't working. T_T

i got lots of pictures this week! thank you and keep em coming. that was awesome.

how is vince doing? i havent heard from or about him for a while. i hope megan has scrapbooked something cute lately.

that's so awesome that tanner went through the temple!! when is he gonna come into the field? i thought he went to the MTC in january, but january is almost over.

suzy- thanks for all your work with my debit card. i appreciate it more than i can say. i know you are really busy and that its a nightmare to deal with that stuff so just know i am i sincerely grateful.

so lets get to the highlights of this week! uyi and gloria broke up with us. they had a baptismal date, and they had received the witness that there is a living prophet today. but they said that there was this man that was giving them a ride to an anglican church every sunday, and they didn't feel that it was right to jump from church to church. amazing the lies that satan will paint in our minds. he knew that uyi and gloria would be great members of the Church and that they would brng more people to the church. it was really sad, but it doesn't mean it's the end, and i have come to the knowledge that when someone breaks up with you, that's just the Lord's way of paving the way for someone else. and i think we found him!!!! so we teach an english course, and when the students enroll in the course they fill out a questionaire and there is a spot for people to mark if they want to have more information about the Church. well we finally sat down and called these people and we met with one of them monday night. his name is emiliano. he's very young between 20 and 25 i would say. he says he believes in Christ and the doctrine of the catholic church, but doesn't agree with the organization. he has been reading our website and he says he agrees more with our teachings than the catholic church. he says he has never been one to follow the crowd and if he doesn't agree with something he isn't going to do it. obviously he has been prepared. he is exactly what we need! he has the courage to do what he believes is right. and he is SUPER nice. we also had a member at the lesson and she worked it. we proposed the program to him of meeting with us 2-3 times a week for 3-4 weeks and explained that after that time he will have the opportunity to decide if he wants to be baptized. HE WAS ALL FOR IT!!! and we are meeting with him tomorrow!! i am so excited. he's so great, and i have really high hopes for him. i am so grateful for him and that the Lord trusts me and sister zeller to teach this choice young man. it's really incredible (and a bit intimidating!) when you think about it.

last week for p-day we went to modica, home of the oldest chocolateria in italy! the chocolate in modica is different than any i have ever tasted. it's very pure, totally unrefined, and a bit grainy. i'm sending some to spring court pond, so count yourself lucky if you live there. having sorella jenkins and her family here was awesome. they rented a car and it was so fun to get lost drivng around. i still like public transportation the best though. modica is STUNNING. there are some pictures on the way to you there too.

we have been meeting a lot of new people and weeding out a lot of the old ones. we had a come to Jesus with one of our invesitgators where i literally told her that she will not drink coffee anymore if she wants to get baptized. we tried to meet with her yesterday, but she was sick. so we'll see what happens....

saturday (22-1-11 THE DAY AFTER SPENCER WAS BORN!) was unique. we went to stop by a less active member's house. this guy is amazing. he has a palpable testimony of the truth of the Gospel EXCEPT that he lacks the essential faith to put in into action. he was baptized about 7 years ago, and 5 years ago, his 23 year old son was killed in a car accident. he instantly stopped going to church after being one of the strongest members. he baptized 3 other people!! well to make a long story short, we were there for a long time. it was a very emotional conversation. i was crying visibly, as i have been known to do, by the time we left. roberto says that he knows that he had witnesses that the Church is true, but he was saying, "WHERE IS MY SON? WHERE IS MY SON?" with tears in his eyes. it was too much for me to see this grown man who loved his son so much crying for his loss. we are praying fervently that he will rediscover his faith and learn to accept that God had a plan for his son. maybe God could send him a dream. italians LOOOOOVE dreams and are very supersticious. we are workin with him, and he loves when we visit. pray for him. the Church needs roberto cammisa.

sunday was really awesome. we went to MASS!!!!! actually it was this prayer group where they were all singing and praying aloud. we met this woman, florinda, a few weeks ago who invited us to this revival. florinda is amazing. she has a light about her. i have no clue what will happen because she believes in this prayer group as much as simba believed he killed his father, but she is a unique person, a real Christian.

this morning we went running and it was AWESOME. i have been so blessed with companions that enjoy running. when i have a companion that doesn't run, they are gonna start....

thank you for your letters, pictures and prayers. i proudly carry my family christmas card 24/7 and show it off all the time. you HAVE to send me a picture of scwilliam (thank you vanessa) ASAP so i can add it to the collection. i love you all. i know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord's kindgdom newly restored on the earth. help the missionaries in your city. they need the members. go to the temple everyone.

all my love,

sorella ashman

ps of course dr. almond can have my letters too!

CIAO TUTTI!!!!

2011-01-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

so DO I HAVE A NEW NEPHEW OR WHAT????? i was expecting a million emails this week, but i hope that everyone was taking care of jolena and lucaspencer instead of writing me (good job vanessa and grammy babs!)

this was a good week. it was really fun to go to catania for a day to wait for sorella zeller to come from rome. i got to pretty much do splits with the sisters in catania. sorella zeller is great, and of course she is, she's from OREGON!!! hellllooooo. she only has two transfers left, so i will probably kill her. (that means i'll be her last companion) she is a little less bubbly than sorella foote, but thats not saying anything its funny: sorella foote and i have very similar comportments, friendly, open, talk to anyone, but had nothing in common in our interests. she wants to marry a cowboy and i want to be an interior designer in Milan, she only likes acoustic music, and i only like the Killers. sorella zeller and i have tons in common. she likes alternative rock, and we are both obsessed with pears, and we both prefer sparkling water to still, but the way we interact with people is nothing alike. she has a quiet dignity that i should learn. she reflects before she speaks, and i never shut up. it's going to be a great transfer :)

ps SISTER FOOTE SENIOR if you are reading this, please know, your daughter is an elect lady. she works so hard and never says a negative word. i really grew to rely on her support. anytime i felt like i wasnt doing my best, she would lift me right back up. she was the perfect mom and i will be eternally grateful to her, and to you, for raising her so well.

we had a huge miracle this week. i was sitting in sacrament meeting and my pocket started buzzing. it was one of our investigators who is the QUEEN of standing us up, and she said she was ready to come to church!!!!!!!!! i grabbed one of the sisters PRONTO and we went and got her. she came for like 10 minutes of the meeting, but it was seriously a miracle. we went to talk to her on monday morning and explain the meetings of church and then we asked her to prepare herself saturday night to come to church on sunday. she said she would!

we have been doing a lot of street contacting as many of our investigators have begun to cool down... we have found some AWESOME people and i have learned that even when you have investigators on fire, it is essential for you to continue to talk to everyone!!! the work seems to go in cycles, where you are teaching so many people, you feel like you dont have time to find, then they either get baptized or tell you never to come back and what do you do??? if i were a better missionary i would never let that happen because i would be teaching and finding at the same time! our zone leaders challenged us to have "small miracles". this is what they are calling it when you go to an appointment and the person you are supposed to teach stands you up. you know you are in that place at that moment for a reason, so you have to talk to the next person you see. we tried that a few days ago and it was AWESOME. we talked to this man, mario. he asked if we wanted to come in, but we couldnt cuz he was the only man in the house, so he told us to come back some time when she was there. we are going back on friday :)

something fun that happened this week was we threw away all of uyi and gloria's alcohol from their fridge hahaha it was awesome to see them making that commitment to the Lord. they are really great examples of not questioning the will of the Lord. if that's what the counsel is, that is what they are going to do. i wonder what things we have in our "fridges" that we could throw away?

well as today is p-day, we are going to go to a cute little city near by called modica. itìs famous for its CHOCOLATE, so.... yeah. :) an ex-sorella is coming into town with her parents and she is going with us.

MOM and MIRIAM i bought a pair of aladdin pants!!!! i seriously just said to my companion: i like the pants that have elasitc at the ankles. and then we walked past this store, and i saw these pants on the mannnequin and then i tried them on and my ghost had to dial 911 cuz i died they were so cute!! so i bought them and gave our card with our number and a picture of Christ to the man who hooked me up.

next week we are going to zone conference in catania :) i LOVE catania. i LOVE being a missionary!! i have the opportunity to walk up to whomever i feel like and tell them that Jesus Christ's Church is restored!!! i love what gramma b wrote in her email this week: Understanding the Atonement would keep me going and growing in this life. so true. let's all take some time this week to think about the atonement.

also if anyone wants to send me a way they are blessed by keeping commandments (specirfic ones like law of chastity, word of wisdom or tithing) that would be greatly appreciated!!

i love you all and pray for you by name. (read elder bednar's talk, "pray always"!!!!)

thank you soooo much for your support and prayers, and keep it coming!!

sorella spazzacamino

month a versary!!!

2010-12-31T16:02:00.000-08:00

ciao tutti carissimi miei!!!
i got an AWESOME letter from suzanne with tons of great questions that i havent responded to yet, so lets do it!
1. how are you?- FANTASTIC. i live in italy.
2. are you walking, driving, or riding a bike?- we walk EVERYWHERE. we are currently visiting and inactive family that literally lives at the edge of the city. but the city is small. it takes about 45 minutes to walk all the way.
3. have you had to use any money?- yes a little bit. getting settled always costs money but now we are settled so i should be ok unless i want to do some shopping for myself, and until i decide on some glasses frames....
4. are your shoes holding up?- yes! i brought like 10 pair and i switch out all the time so they are getting pretty evenly worn so far. i wear my boots that i got at DI for $7 more than anything else since its cold here.
5. do you get calls or visits from the mission home?- not really. we are the furthest city from the mission home (except malta, but that is a different country...)
6. what is christmas like in ragusa?- its not as big of a deal as i thought it would be. i actually loved it because people are just not ashamed whatsoever to celebrate the birth of christ. but few houses were decorated, people werent stressed out about gifts and making the family christmas card with everyones biography.... it was all about the food. as it should be.
7. have you had anytime to see the history?- no not really. one day we went on an impromtu tour of a town called vittoria with a member, but we thought it was going to be a lesson.... miscommunication but it was cool to see some of the parts outside ragusa. the main church here is INCREDIBLE. the design in sicily is very muslim inspired, since we are so close to africa, so the cathedrals have onion domes, and they are made of a uniform sandstone, not like by baby, the gaudy striped cathedral of siena.
8. is it big population wise? is it crowded?- YES and i think that every person in the city feels it necessary to own a car. the streets are PACKED all the time with cars. there arent usually a ton of people out (since italians are so whimpy and refuse to leave the house when its cold), except on via roma. its the swanky downtown district that spans all of about a kilometer. but people are out in giro on via roma every night, especially sunday. there are lots of old men out often. they are always in groups of 3-5 dressed to the nines: hats, vests, canes, clean shaven, shoes polished. and they are all about 5 feet tall. usually they watch me and sister foote probably thinking they woke up in the twilight zone. who knows if they have ever left ragusa in their lives! and usually slla foote and i say 'BUONGIORNO!' and they smile. sicilians are very respectful of our choice to serve missions.
9. how goes street proselyting?- i LOVE doing street. yesterday we stopped a man named salvatore (like probably 50% of other males in sicily) we talked to him about a profet, and he gave us the same response and most italians. i believe in God, and anyone else who does too is saved. doesnt matter what church they go to. it was fun talking to him because he was saying that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. so we told him that it why we have a profet, because there was a profet 3000 years ago, and there is one today. he was also talking about how he doesnt need to be baptized by water. he can be reborn spiritally. when he said that, i just said, 'interessante. jesus was baptised, and if God is always the same, shouldnt we have the same baptism?' then i told him that WE have the same baptism, we have twelve apostles, we have the same authority that Jesus Christ did. you know that you were relying on the Spirit when you can silence a sicilian.....good moment.
10. our man with a baptismal date- if you will read back to the email two weeks ago, about my week, he was the one who didnt want to study with us anymore. well we kept praying for him and visiting him. on saturday, we saw him and he said he wanted to study with us again! so we saw him on monday but he wasnt not being very nice. he was actually quite rude to slla foote. in this moment, i dont feel like hes really into this. i dont think he is making the best choices. i dont really know him at all, but its hard for slla foote who has been teaching him from the beginning.
11. have you had anymore contacts?- oh yes! tons. we talk to people all day everyday (excpet when we have to sit on our fat butts in the smelly internet cafe....) we have an indian friend that we found while we were knocking doors. he came to the ward christmas party. we are teaching a new african family, gloria (the wife) uyi (the husband) and joseph (the son who is less than 2). we taught them the first lesson, and uyi said 'i already know what you are telling me is true.' hahaha africans make this work seem easy.... but i really want to be teaching italians. everyone needs the gospel of course, but the africans are usually here in a period of transition, and we need to build up this city!!
12. what is church like?- church is hilarious. relief society is awesome because the sisters will often get into.... 'dicussions' about the doctrine. (they are all italian women, what can you do...) sunday school is great, and often slla foote and i end up in the english class, which is the class for all the africans (they are the only non-italians in the ward besides us). this is where we hear things like 'we have our white sisters here, so we need to listen to their words' and 'daddy, open our brains and put your knowledge in.' sacrament meeting is great. its so nice to have a ward and not a branch. usually slla foote and i translate/ babysit in the back. one of our new converts has a very active two year old. he is SOOOOO cute but loves to run up to the pulpit during the middle of a talk. but church is always great. everyone is so short though, i can just imagine what church looks like to everyone else: a sea of tiny little sicilians, a few africans, and then sorella modella, almost 2 meters tall!! (one of the members in a nearby city nicknamed me sorella modella ahahhahaahah)

so thats it! thanks for the letter. thanks for all the letters everyone! you are great! i love you and i am so glad i got to talk to you all on christmas.

my vote for the baby is Luca. its italian. and its the perfect mix of luke and lucas. Luca William Ashman. its perfect.

the gospel is true. otherwise i wouldnt be in this smelly internet bar wearing a frumpy flannel skirt on the 28 of december 2010. i would probably drive down to the strip, watch the bellagio fountains and go to the prada store to drool over everything. but i wouldnt change switch the two scenarios if i had the chance. i have 16 months left to change the world and Heavenly Father himself asked me to do this work. sometimes i dont think of it that way, but when i do, i really feel humbled. He asked me to do this work, because He can't do it Himself. i know this work is ordained of God and that we have a profet today. we need a profet more than ever, and because God loves us, He gave us Thomas S. Monson, a righteous man with no desire for accliam or laud. invite your friends to partake of the fruit, family! help the missionaries in your city. we need the not full time missionaries to help us. love you all!!
sorella ashman