Week 39 in Italy

So we're trying out a new internet point today because it costs a lot less. But the keyboard is miserable and I have to type at the speed of a 5 year old. So this won't be very long. 

Anyway. Great week! Busy. But great. Milano was basically flooding all week so it made transportation hard all week. The metro was shut down in a few areas. 

We had a great Family Home Evening with Karina and her family. We celebrated her sons birthday and then had a great little lesson about prayer. She is still on track for her baptismal date of the 27th of December. 

We worked really hard this week on a massive project where we went through the area book of previous investigators and organized every single one of them by where they live ( using metro stops). We felt like taking the time to go through all of them, figure out where they live, and then organize them would really help us to waste less time during the week. If someone cancels on us, we will already have a list of 5 or 6 people that we can pass by that live at or close to the same stop. 

Another great thing that we do is teach Italian! I've only ever taught English before, but here we teach an Italian class to those who don't know how to speak it. It's so fun!!! I'd love to teach Italian when I get home. It's super great. 

Anyway. That's about it! Today we plan to do some shopping and just explore Milano. 

The gospel is true! God lives. Christ is our Savior. 

I love you all. 

Love, 

sorella Tokarski

Week 38 in Italy

It was a good week that even consisted of a long anticipated field trip to TORINOOOOOOOO to pick up my permesso di soggiorno (residency permit). Finally I'm legal! 

We set a baptismal date this week with a woman named Karina! We are so excited for her. She is great. She has real intent and came to church and loved it this past sunday. 

We have a lot of things happening here in Cimiano. We did the math and we had about 50% of our lessons planned cancel on us in this past week. We are working on having more solid backups, but it's hard in a big city because of travel time lost. I know numbers aren't everything, but they are important, and I would like to be able to get the numbers here in this city up. We are praying to know what we can do to better the quality of our backups and ensure that we have less cancellations.

We also had a great scambio this week! Sorella Smart is a good missionary. She is calm but powerful and she teaches with the spirit. It was wonderful. 

I am super tired and I'm pretty sure that I've aged at least a year for every month that I've served. But it's great. I wouldn't have it any other way. 

In recent news, an Elder in my district is like obsessed with the Paleo diet. So I caved and decided to try it! Wish me luck! (Meal appointments with members and investigators don't count. It is literally impossible to not eat carbs in Italy.) 

We have been talking a lot about consecration lately. I have such a strong desire to just be a good and consecrated missionary. We are asked to leave behind all personal affairs. It's not easy. And I can't even honestly say that I've been able to do that. But I am putting forth some extra effort and making a few extra sacrifices to show God that He is the most important thing in my life. And my desire to follow Jesus Christ is stronger than my desire to do anything else. It's not easy. But I don't want to stand in front of my Savior someday and have Him ask me why I wasn't just a little bit more focused or just a little bit more dedicated. 

I know that in each of our lives, we will have to make sacrifices to be disciples of Jesus Christ. The path to discipleship is simple. But it isn't necessarily easy. I do know though that the happiness that Christ promises us if we follow Him is much greater than anything else we can imagine. I owe everything to Him. He saved my life and has given me the possibility of eternity with those I love. There is nothing that I wouldn't do for Him to show Him my gratitude and love. 

I invite you to read the book of Matthew and think about what it means to be a disciple of Christ and what it means to really follow Him. 

I love you all. Thank you for your support! 

Love, 

Sorella Tokarski 

Week 37 in Italy

Oh my heck. I LOVE this city. It's huge and sketchy and there is like an eternity's worth of work to do here. The metro freaks me out but it is SO fun to do metro finding. I was talking to a man on the metro the other day (METRO FINDING IS THE BEST THING EVER), and it turns out that his wife is a REALLY inactive member and his children are active members. His wife isn't on the ward list, but he gave us his address and said we could come by any time! He said that he has been so close to being baptized several times and has just never done it. We will work hard to make sure that something changes this time. 

Anyway. I don't have a whole lot to share from this week other than that I just love being here. I'm so tired. But it's so great. There are two companionship's of Elders and then my companion and I in our ward. It's huge. We have 600 in our ward, 500 of which are less active. We have a lot of work to do. 

We use the metro. it's huge and kind of confusing, but I'll get the hang of it after a couple of weeks. 

We hope. 

For p-day today we went and ate somewhere called Luini's. They make something called panzerotti. it. is. heavenly. it's famous among the missionari

es of the Italy milan mission. So we had to do. SOOOOO yummy. Also. We saw the duomo and yeah. We're absolutely napping later. We'll have a more interesting p-day next week.

We showed a video this week to a few different people. This video is so powerful and I absolutely love using it in lessons. This is the link: https://www.lds.org/youth/video/because-of-him?lang=eng

I know that everything that we have; life, love, hope, is all because of Jesus Christ. I know that without him, there is no hope. I am so grateful for him and for what he has done for me. I know that I am nothing without him. 

I love being a missionary!!!! It's the greatest thing ever. 

Have a great week! 

Love, 

Sorella Tokarski