Buon giorno a tutti!
Today I'm writing from good old Florence. My district has been spending the p-day here. Once again I've turned into the tour guide seeing as I'm the one that's been here the most times. We pretty much just walk around the duomo, go up to piazza michealangelo, and go to the open market. It's fun and I love Florence each time I come. But I do have to say that it was the funnest way back in February when I was in Prato because there were no tourists!
Comunque....
It's been another great week. It's been really hot and humid so we've been trying not to melt. I hope it cools down soon! I was a little fed up at the end of last week because we had two appointments set up, one with svieta and one with miriam. Friday we went to see svieta and she answered the door and was all dressed up to go somewhere and said she couldn't meet with us. URGH. Saturday morning 5 minutes before our appointment with miriam we got a text from her saying that she couldn't come. Managgia! So, we ended up doing a lot of finding work this weekend! I've been meaning to tell you dad, that we've been trying your street contacting method and choosing a certain characteristic and then talking to those people on the street! We love it and it's a lot less overwhelming. Instead of seeing waves of people and trying to talk to all of them we just focus on the people with strollers or people holding hands and talk to all of them! It's a great way to shake it up! Thanks for the idea! Saturday night however, we were walking down by the mare talking to people, and heard someone say, "Sisters." We stopped and found out that this member couple had just moved here to the military base. They are the Eubanks and will be here for 3 years and don't speak a word of italian! Anyways, we helped them get to church on sunday. They are going through quite the culture shock, especially because they are both as timid as mice times ten. But, just a cool little story of being in the right place at the right time.
We had a good experience on Monday. We passed back by a family who had let us in doing house. We were able to teach them a first lesson and are going to go back on saturday to teach more and then hopefully they can come to church on Sunday. They are pretty poor and there house is small and dirty. She's very open though and I'm so excited to countinue teaching them. Jantina is doing great. We had our weekly meeting with her yesterday. We are getting ready to start preparing her baptism, choosing hymns, prayers, who will talk and preform the baptism. I'm so excited for her, she's waited 3 years for this and she is so excited as well!
That's about it for me. I love being here and doing this work. I got some mail the other day so thanks everyone for writing me...namely....jenn...loved the code blue story..haha... if you know what I mean! hehe. I'll try to write you all soon! Love ya and thanks for your prayers and for being the most awesome people ever!
Un baccione!
Sorella Boynton
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
22 AUG 2007
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ELL AND ROD!!! Crazy to think that another year has come and gone and we've all turned and will be turning another year old this fall!
The Palio in Siena was one of the funnest cultural experiences ever! We were there all day last thursday. We got there and watched a procession of all of the teams. There were drums and flags and horses and they were all dressed up in ancient clothes etc. Then we all squeezed into the piazza. There were tons of people and after waiting for an hour, the race started and every second of the 2 minute race was worth the wait! When I get home in what, 8 months I'll let you see the little video I took with my camera! hehe. There's just so much tradition and history involved it's incredible and I'm sure I don't even know the half of it! Anyways, definitely a cool experience!
Things here in Livorno are going great, as always. I love this city and the people we work with. We continue to see Jantina every week in preparation for her baptism. We really trying to get an in with her husband, who is so against anything religious. We watched the Finding Faith in Christ video with her this morning and that really touched her. She's so sensible to the spirit it's quite incredible and she had us in tears by the end of the lesson! We gave her the video and hopefully she can watch it together with her husband.
Everyone else is doing good. We continue to see Marlene and our other inactives and also in the next couple days we'll see Svieta and Miriam, a few hopefull baptismal candidates!
We had a really good training from our Zone Leaders on Monday. We went to Pisa for our once a transfer "ZDM" and had an amazing training on faith and how we can attain more. Faith has and is and probably always will be something that's a little hard to understand. It's one of those simple but very deep doctrines! But I know that faith is key in the work and just for life in general. They talked about how sacrifice goes along with faith as well. So we'll be searching for that extra faith and hopefully we'll see some awesome outcomes!
Hope everyone is doing well! I love you all!
Sorella Boynton
The Palio in Siena was one of the funnest cultural experiences ever! We were there all day last thursday. We got there and watched a procession of all of the teams. There were drums and flags and horses and they were all dressed up in ancient clothes etc. Then we all squeezed into the piazza. There were tons of people and after waiting for an hour, the race started and every second of the 2 minute race was worth the wait! When I get home in what, 8 months I'll let you see the little video I took with my camera! hehe. There's just so much tradition and history involved it's incredible and I'm sure I don't even know the half of it! Anyways, definitely a cool experience!
Things here in Livorno are going great, as always. I love this city and the people we work with. We continue to see Jantina every week in preparation for her baptism. We really trying to get an in with her husband, who is so against anything religious. We watched the Finding Faith in Christ video with her this morning and that really touched her. She's so sensible to the spirit it's quite incredible and she had us in tears by the end of the lesson! We gave her the video and hopefully she can watch it together with her husband.
Everyone else is doing good. We continue to see Marlene and our other inactives and also in the next couple days we'll see Svieta and Miriam, a few hopefull baptismal candidates!
We had a really good training from our Zone Leaders on Monday. We went to Pisa for our once a transfer "ZDM" and had an amazing training on faith and how we can attain more. Faith has and is and probably always will be something that's a little hard to understand. It's one of those simple but very deep doctrines! But I know that faith is key in the work and just for life in general. They talked about how sacrifice goes along with faith as well. So we'll be searching for that extra faith and hopefully we'll see some awesome outcomes!
Hope everyone is doing well! I love you all!
Sorella Boynton
Thursday, August 16, 2007
16 Agosto 2007
Mamma mia!
There's so much to write about and just not enough time! I'm writing a day late because yesterday was the 15 of August and here in Italy that's a big holiday where everything is closed....so we as missionaries have to stay in our apartments pretty much all day and clean from ceiling to floor! We cleaned everything!! The Elders painted our apartment last week and so now our apartment is looking real nice and just feels clean and free of clutter! Now today, we get to take our p-day.....and we are so lucky because we get to go to Siena and watch the famous "palio"!!! Probably only Dad knows what that is....but it's just a traditional horse race that takes places 2 times a summer in Siena. So we are heading out to go there in half an hour! I'll tell you all about it next week!
This week has really been a great week...
Thursday we were able to meet with a couple of our inactives. Marlene, who I'm pretty sure I've talked about (an excommunicated member who's getting re-baptized in Dec), is coming along. We are trying to help her realize the importance of keeping the commandments. She's still smoking and we'll have to hop on that one pretty quick! She's really amazing though and just a smart lady. I really enjoy our visits with her because I can be bold with her and she can take it! We are taught as missionaries to be bold. I bet I would be safe to say that that's one thing that many missionaries struggle with. But I've found that that's why it's important to have such a good relationship with your contacts...so they can trust you...and it becomes more of a friend... friend relationship... and not an investigator... missionary relationship. I struggled with this at first with Marlene because we are both pretty stubborn people but who would have known it would be the right match! She's awesome and we'll keep working with her. We also met with Jantina. She still has her baptisimal date for the 18th of September. We are trying to figure out a way to confront her husband and somehow find an in with him so that he will be accepting to learn a little bit more about the church and what we are about.
Friday we did our weekly planning and then got to ride our bikes up the steep hill to service... playing bingo with the old folks. Always a laugh! Good times.
Saturday we passed by a contact that the sisters before me found. She turned out to be really awesome, maybe I told you about her already. Her name is Antonella. She's awesome and speaks english perfectly. We helped her with her english because she's working this week at UNICEF. In turn she offered to help us with our Italian. So I decided that we might as well just teach her about why we are here and what we teach. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and the basics of the restoration. She was focusing more on helping us with our Italian but hopefully she got something out of what we shared. I hope that we can continue to help her and eventually teach her.
I came down with a cold saturday and really wasn't feeling too hot. But we had a member coming from an outlying city to have an appointment with us and she was bringing her friend who's a non-member. So we had planned to watch the restoration video at the church and just kind of introduce him to the church. We met them and went to the church, where we'd watched DVD's before, and I went to put the dvd in but the player wasn't there! I was already feeling pretty crappy with my head all congested, barely being able to think clearly. So while Sis. Call amused them with her piano skills, I went in every room in the church to hunt down the dvd player! I said to Heavenly Father, please help me find this dvd player because I'm not in a state, with my cold, where I can just whip up a good lesson! So then, I searched a little more and found the player up on a cupboard, in it's original box! Wierd! Anyway, I was then able to set it up with all the many cords, and we were able to watch it! This members friend, who's an african man, was touched and we gave him a Book of Mormon. He called us this week and said he started reading it and that its "bellissimo." Truly an answer to a desperate prayer! I'm so grateful for a loving Heavely Father who answers our prayers! I've seen it in these past few weeks more than ever in my mission. The Lord knows that I need help as a trainer so he's truly helping me! After that lesson I was feeling so bad that I made the executive decision (of course guided by the spirit!) to go home at 8 so I could sleep for an hour. Hopefully my comp was okay with that but I really just wouldn't have been able to talk to anyone in a cohesive manner and better to rest and be able to work the next day than wear yourself out and not be able to work the rest.
Sigh....now...I'm pretty much over the cold. Sunday was full of church, correlation meeting, and then doing chalk down by the mare (sea). Monday and Tuesday were normal days. We had a good appointment with Svieta from russia. She's so busy with her work etc, but she promised she would read from the book of mormon this week. Yay! Well, I think that's probably one of the most detailed emails I've ever written! I better be going now...gotta catch the train to the horse race!
I love you all and know that I know this church is true! Keep on reading and praying and having your personal spiritual experiences because that is what keeps us going!
Love,
Sorella B.
There's so much to write about and just not enough time! I'm writing a day late because yesterday was the 15 of August and here in Italy that's a big holiday where everything is closed....so we as missionaries have to stay in our apartments pretty much all day and clean from ceiling to floor! We cleaned everything!! The Elders painted our apartment last week and so now our apartment is looking real nice and just feels clean and free of clutter! Now today, we get to take our p-day.....and we are so lucky because we get to go to Siena and watch the famous "palio"!!! Probably only Dad knows what that is....but it's just a traditional horse race that takes places 2 times a summer in Siena. So we are heading out to go there in half an hour! I'll tell you all about it next week!
This week has really been a great week...
Thursday we were able to meet with a couple of our inactives. Marlene, who I'm pretty sure I've talked about (an excommunicated member who's getting re-baptized in Dec), is coming along. We are trying to help her realize the importance of keeping the commandments. She's still smoking and we'll have to hop on that one pretty quick! She's really amazing though and just a smart lady. I really enjoy our visits with her because I can be bold with her and she can take it! We are taught as missionaries to be bold. I bet I would be safe to say that that's one thing that many missionaries struggle with. But I've found that that's why it's important to have such a good relationship with your contacts...so they can trust you...and it becomes more of a friend... friend relationship... and not an investigator... missionary relationship. I struggled with this at first with Marlene because we are both pretty stubborn people but who would have known it would be the right match! She's awesome and we'll keep working with her. We also met with Jantina. She still has her baptisimal date for the 18th of September. We are trying to figure out a way to confront her husband and somehow find an in with him so that he will be accepting to learn a little bit more about the church and what we are about.
Friday we did our weekly planning and then got to ride our bikes up the steep hill to service... playing bingo with the old folks. Always a laugh! Good times.
Saturday we passed by a contact that the sisters before me found. She turned out to be really awesome, maybe I told you about her already. Her name is Antonella. She's awesome and speaks english perfectly. We helped her with her english because she's working this week at UNICEF. In turn she offered to help us with our Italian. So I decided that we might as well just teach her about why we are here and what we teach. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and the basics of the restoration. She was focusing more on helping us with our Italian but hopefully she got something out of what we shared. I hope that we can continue to help her and eventually teach her.
I came down with a cold saturday and really wasn't feeling too hot. But we had a member coming from an outlying city to have an appointment with us and she was bringing her friend who's a non-member. So we had planned to watch the restoration video at the church and just kind of introduce him to the church. We met them and went to the church, where we'd watched DVD's before, and I went to put the dvd in but the player wasn't there! I was already feeling pretty crappy with my head all congested, barely being able to think clearly. So while Sis. Call amused them with her piano skills, I went in every room in the church to hunt down the dvd player! I said to Heavenly Father, please help me find this dvd player because I'm not in a state, with my cold, where I can just whip up a good lesson! So then, I searched a little more and found the player up on a cupboard, in it's original box! Wierd! Anyway, I was then able to set it up with all the many cords, and we were able to watch it! This members friend, who's an african man, was touched and we gave him a Book of Mormon. He called us this week and said he started reading it and that its "bellissimo." Truly an answer to a desperate prayer! I'm so grateful for a loving Heavely Father who answers our prayers! I've seen it in these past few weeks more than ever in my mission. The Lord knows that I need help as a trainer so he's truly helping me! After that lesson I was feeling so bad that I made the executive decision (of course guided by the spirit!) to go home at 8 so I could sleep for an hour. Hopefully my comp was okay with that but I really just wouldn't have been able to talk to anyone in a cohesive manner and better to rest and be able to work the next day than wear yourself out and not be able to work the rest.
Sigh....now...I'm pretty much over the cold. Sunday was full of church, correlation meeting, and then doing chalk down by the mare (sea). Monday and Tuesday were normal days. We had a good appointment with Svieta from russia. She's so busy with her work etc, but she promised she would read from the book of mormon this week. Yay! Well, I think that's probably one of the most detailed emails I've ever written! I better be going now...gotta catch the train to the horse race!
I love you all and know that I know this church is true! Keep on reading and praying and having your personal spiritual experiences because that is what keeps us going!
Love,
Sorella B.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
8 August 2007
Hey all,
Everythings going great here in Livorno with my new trainee. Her name is Sister Call and she's from Idaho. She's really sweet and it's going to be great working with her for the next couple transfers. Even though I feel like I just got here, I'm quickly reminded by mom that I'm nearly half way through my mission! It's crazy to see my trainee going through the same feelings and battles that I went through as a new missionary...just with the language and getting used to missionary life! It's going to be great!
So last week, we headed down to Rome, my old comp Sorella Bruno and I. I had to say goodbye to her which was hard cause she was such an awesome companion! I headed over to the mission home with the other trainers and we had lunch and then had "golden transfers" where the new missionary's open an envelope that tells them their who their trainer will be and their first city. So that's was fun and then I headed back up to Livorno with Sis. Call. She's a good sport and happy to be on bikes with me here!
Yesterday we had Zone Conference in Firenze. The 3 other sisters that are training were all there, including my old comp, sister lederer, so it was fun to talk to all of them and talk about how training was going. The theme of the conference was Faith. Sister Acerson is great and gave a wonderfull talk and shared some personal experiences of how "the lord will provide" when we have faith and are doing all we can. President Acerson emphasized having fun in the work and really getting to know the Italians and building relationships of trust with them. Dad, I think I've found someone who has almost as much love for Italy and it's people! President Acerson loves these people so much and has so much faith and hope for this mission.
Now we are all excited to get back to doing the work again. Things are pretty much the same here. I find so much joy in just being able to talk to people and bare my testimony of the truthfullness of the gospel.
Thanks, as always, for your wonderful examples and prayers.
Love,
Sorella Boynton
PS... CONGRATS ON YOUR WEDDING THIS WEEKEND JACKIE AND KYLE! I WISH I COULD BE THERE! GODSPEED! : )
Everythings going great here in Livorno with my new trainee. Her name is Sister Call and she's from Idaho. She's really sweet and it's going to be great working with her for the next couple transfers. Even though I feel like I just got here, I'm quickly reminded by mom that I'm nearly half way through my mission! It's crazy to see my trainee going through the same feelings and battles that I went through as a new missionary...just with the language and getting used to missionary life! It's going to be great!
So last week, we headed down to Rome, my old comp Sorella Bruno and I. I had to say goodbye to her which was hard cause she was such an awesome companion! I headed over to the mission home with the other trainers and we had lunch and then had "golden transfers" where the new missionary's open an envelope that tells them their who their trainer will be and their first city. So that's was fun and then I headed back up to Livorno with Sis. Call. She's a good sport and happy to be on bikes with me here!
Yesterday we had Zone Conference in Firenze. The 3 other sisters that are training were all there, including my old comp, sister lederer, so it was fun to talk to all of them and talk about how training was going. The theme of the conference was Faith. Sister Acerson is great and gave a wonderfull talk and shared some personal experiences of how "the lord will provide" when we have faith and are doing all we can. President Acerson emphasized having fun in the work and really getting to know the Italians and building relationships of trust with them. Dad, I think I've found someone who has almost as much love for Italy and it's people! President Acerson loves these people so much and has so much faith and hope for this mission.
Now we are all excited to get back to doing the work again. Things are pretty much the same here. I find so much joy in just being able to talk to people and bare my testimony of the truthfullness of the gospel.
Thanks, as always, for your wonderful examples and prayers.
Love,
Sorella Boynton
PS... CONGRATS ON YOUR WEDDING THIS WEEKEND JACKIE AND KYLE! I WISH I COULD BE THERE! GODSPEED! : )
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
1 AUGUST 2007
WOW! Thanks for everyone who wrote to me! I just spent the last 20 minutes reading all the emails from just about all the siblings and mom and dad of course. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear from you all and especially to hear that you are all well and happy. I wish I could write you all individually this week but since you all wrote there just won't be time! Loved the pics marg! Loved to hear Mates are alive and well Ell! : ) Tom, keep me posted on the Alaska stuff....and that's crazy that it took dave so long to grade your stuff! No rush with the batteries and stuff mom, piano piano! I, too, am behind in the media world steve (go figure)! I didn't even know there was a 5th harry potter movie out and I just realized that the last book was already out! Anyways, I realize everyday how blessed I am to have to best family in the world! Comunque, GRAZIE MILLE!
This week has been full of miracles and craziness. First, the miracle, then the craziness.
We met with the long-time investigator, Jantina, yesterday. We've been waiting a couple weeks for her to receive this signed permission form from her husband so that she can be baptized. She came to church on Sunday and as usual we sat by her in sacrament meeting. She cried through every hymn and I just knew she was just struggling to hold on. Her situation would be incredibly hard; a bad relationship with her husband and daughters, and she just an incredible women with so much faith. Anyways, the happiest news came yesterday when she came to the church for our appointment and pulled out the permission form which had been signed by her husband! She was absolutely happy and we were all just in disbelief that he had finally given permission for her to be baptized.
She's been waiting for 3 years!!! She wants to be baptized on the 18th of September, the day of her mothers birthday! That's just one of the many miracles that happened this week. Incredible!
Now, the crazy news. It's week 6 of the transfer and that means we had transfer calls on Monday. Like I told you last week (i think), I was pretty sure that I would be staying here in Livorno with Sorella Bruno.
President called us on Monday during our weekly district meeting and told Sorella Bruno that she was getting transferred to the island of Sardegna, to Cagliari, and that he wanted me to be a TRAINER to one of the 4 new sister missionaries! Man, I thought going senior comp was hard and now after just one transfer in the city I have to train!!! Yikes! I'm really pretty nervous and feel a little young to be training but oh well, gotta roll with the punches I guess. This means that tomorrow I'll be heading down to Rome to the mission home to have a little training on how to be a trainer to a new missionary and then come back up to Livorno with a missionary that's fresh from the MTC! Oh man, I know I'm going to be learning a lot these next couple transfers. Sorella Bruno and I really wanted to stay together one more transfer but Heavenly Father knows whats best!
The work here in Livorno is incredible. We have lots of incredible people to work with and I'm excited to work with this new missionary because they come all faithful and energized from the MTC. Miracles will happen! I love being a missionary here, it really is a humbling and incredible work.
Thanks again for your amazing support. Shout out to my friends... hope your all doing well and Jack, man, I can't believe your gettin' hitched in like a week! Love ya man!
Vi voglio tantissimo bene!
Sorella Boynton
This week has been full of miracles and craziness. First, the miracle, then the craziness.
We met with the long-time investigator, Jantina, yesterday. We've been waiting a couple weeks for her to receive this signed permission form from her husband so that she can be baptized. She came to church on Sunday and as usual we sat by her in sacrament meeting. She cried through every hymn and I just knew she was just struggling to hold on. Her situation would be incredibly hard; a bad relationship with her husband and daughters, and she just an incredible women with so much faith. Anyways, the happiest news came yesterday when she came to the church for our appointment and pulled out the permission form which had been signed by her husband! She was absolutely happy and we were all just in disbelief that he had finally given permission for her to be baptized.
She's been waiting for 3 years!!! She wants to be baptized on the 18th of September, the day of her mothers birthday! That's just one of the many miracles that happened this week. Incredible!
Now, the crazy news. It's week 6 of the transfer and that means we had transfer calls on Monday. Like I told you last week (i think), I was pretty sure that I would be staying here in Livorno with Sorella Bruno.
President called us on Monday during our weekly district meeting and told Sorella Bruno that she was getting transferred to the island of Sardegna, to Cagliari, and that he wanted me to be a TRAINER to one of the 4 new sister missionaries! Man, I thought going senior comp was hard and now after just one transfer in the city I have to train!!! Yikes! I'm really pretty nervous and feel a little young to be training but oh well, gotta roll with the punches I guess. This means that tomorrow I'll be heading down to Rome to the mission home to have a little training on how to be a trainer to a new missionary and then come back up to Livorno with a missionary that's fresh from the MTC! Oh man, I know I'm going to be learning a lot these next couple transfers. Sorella Bruno and I really wanted to stay together one more transfer but Heavenly Father knows whats best!
The work here in Livorno is incredible. We have lots of incredible people to work with and I'm excited to work with this new missionary because they come all faithful and energized from the MTC. Miracles will happen! I love being a missionary here, it really is a humbling and incredible work.
Thanks again for your amazing support. Shout out to my friends... hope your all doing well and Jack, man, I can't believe your gettin' hitched in like a week! Love ya man!
Vi voglio tantissimo bene!
Sorella Boynton
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