Week 14

If you don't take a selfie with gelato at least once a week are you really a missionary in Italy?

Slip-n-Bleed (Forlì - week 8)

Greetings! It's been a great week in the life of Sorella Riley.

I have a fun story (see subject line) and then 2 super duper awesome God-answers-prayers miracle stories.

Rimini had a stake activity for summer/Pioneer day, aka about 15 total members and 12 missionaries. There were a bunch of water games. One was a slip-n-slide (a thin sheet of plastic with a bunch of dish soap and water). Since the ground was flat, most people weren't sliding very far so when it was my turn, I ran far and fast to get plenty of momentum. It was great! Within a minute of getting up, I looked down and saw my whole right leg from the knee down covered in blood. I laughed and showed some of the missionaries. When the leader in charge saw, he made me sit down and rushed to his first aid kit, and tied gauze around it so tight so that the bandage hurt more than the soap in the gash in my knee. They found where the plastic had ripped and removed the rock that was underneath and they continued to slide, despite the visible blood swirls.

I had to sit out the rest of the games, so that was unfortunate. Apparently the leaders had been discussing my need for stitches. Um no. I told Anziano M (our protective, Sicilian Zone Leader) that I am a strong, independent woman. He told me those are the worst kind.

Anyways, when we finally got home, I knew I needed to clean it out but my only options were: nail polish remover, bug spray, or hand sanitizer. I decided on the hand sanitizer, put that in it, then covered the wound with Vaseline and a piece of gauze and went to sleep. The next morning I reapplied hand sanitizer and covered it with bandaids. It will probably take a while to heal bc it bleeds a little every time I bike or move much, but on the bright side I learned a whole new set of vocabulary for explaining what happened to my leg.

Alright, now for the good stuff! D came to church on Sunday! Since we had two investigators who speak different languages, we went on splits for gospel principles. I taught D in Italian and he was super awesome and had great questions. At the end he told the ward mission leader how he had been sitting on a park bench, reading the Bible and thinking about life and wondering what he should do. Within an hour two American girls showed up and offered him a strange blue book. It's just so awesome how everything plays out so well. It's almost as if some divine being has something do with it...

J, our investigator who has a baptismal date but could not get to church because he lives super far away, called us on Monday. We had literally thought of and tried any way we could to help him to church. In our last lesson we said "it's time to exercise faith and pray for a miracle, because Heavenly Father wants you in church and we know He can make that happen even if we can't." When he talked to us on the phone he was so excited. Guess what? The people in charge of the refugee projects/housing told him that tomorrow he would be moved to Cesena. Super random, right? NO! That's only 20 mins away and the bus runs on Sunday! J can come to church and get baptized!!! As soon as he hung up, our hearts exploded with joy and we said a prayer of gratitude. Heavenly Father is pretty darn awesome! He answers prayers and fasting works!!!

Last Wednesday for P-day we went to Rimini, looked at the beach, ate gelato, and did a lot of walking in the sun.

I ate at Burger King and now I know what an Italian feels like after eating at Olive Garden. It was a very sad experience.

We finally bought a new fan! After a week of sleeping with our mattresses together on the floor to share the one fan, we're both glad to be back in beds, even though it was great companionship bonding.

Life is good. Missionary work is happening, we find reasons to laugh constantly, and my Italian is even improving. Prayers work. The church is true.

I love y'all soooo much!

Sorella Riley

P-day

Water...so close...

How we slept for a week. One night we ordered pizza. We have a curfew but the pizza delivery man doesn't....we ate pizza and watched Mormon messages. It was a great comp slumber party!

District meeting: yoga instruction / ...

The PG version of my knee / Sometimes Sorella O sends me talks or inspiring quotes. Sometimes it's something like this.