Sorella Rachel Riley: 18 months in northern Italy: Week 27 -- 1/3 of the way through her mission!

sketchy pizza!

Torino 21- commentaries on food and such

On November 3rd, I hit 6 months in the mission and finished reading the Book of Mormon straight through. I LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON! I learned and realized so much this time through. To be honest it was my first time just doing it on my own, not for Young Women's or BYU BOM class. To quote a friend from the MTC, "The more I read the scriptures as a missionary, the more I think that the scriptures were written for missionaries". So accurate. It just makes me so happy. Anyways, the Book of Mormon is great and we can all read it over and over again. Life is awesome!

Another awesome thing that happened on Nov. 3rd...I got to see my MOM!!!! (her trainer = her mission mom) I have been looking forward to this scambio since the day Sorella O left Forlì and said, "you'll come to Torino next transfer so I'll see you soon". So either the stars were aligned or God is real or something, bc that actually happened and I have the best mission mom ever. And Genova is the kind of city that comes to mind when you think Italy.

We went to visit a woman in her 90's and I love her. During our visit she would ask where we were from (this happened like 4 times) and every time, when I said Florida, she'd say something like, "oh how beautiful" and when Sor Orr said Salt Lake, Utah, she'd make a disgusted face and be like, "All the missionaries from there are mean and stuck up". A rush to catch our train led to my baby blanket remaining in Genova while we rode back to Torino. Dang, this mission is making me grow up in ways I had never anticipated!

We taught A and we talked about baptism, The lesson went really well until we hit the "I've already been baptized" wall. So now she's praying for an answer that baptism into Christ's church with the right authority is what she needs to do. She also gave us earrings that she made. And she comes to church even though she works every night and doesn't have much time to sleep and it's raining. A is amazing.

Ok now for the food. I tried some new foods this week.

1. Pizza from a kebab place: not bad but not great. Real Italians would not approve, but it's super cheap and there's at least one kebaberia on every street in Torino.

2. Polenta: a family in our ward discovered that I've never had polenta, so they had us over for Sunday lunch. Polenta was peasant food but now it's a traditional dish of this region. It's like thick grits covered in ragù. We ate it traditional style, all on one big platter in the middle of the table and we all got a fork and ate off that. I loved it! It's really heavy and has no nutritional value, so yeah pretty much like every other Italian food, too.

3. Arancini: a traditional food from Sicilia. Battered and deep fried rice filled with ragù. Also delicious.

4. Last night, we were both craving gelato, but it was cold and rainy so I had the genius idea to buy some from lidl and bring it home so we could eat it all cozy in pajamas. So we did. Along with the gelato we ended up coming home with various cookies and chocolates. We ate almost a whole Kilo of gelato while sitting on my bed, listening to Taylor Swift's Christmas album. That's like 2.2 pounds of gelato you guys! But it was P-day Eve so we have all day today to recover.

5. What I thought was chocolate-covered potato chips were actually just potato chip-shaped chocolate. Still managed to eat them.

6. Focaccia is my favorite Italian food ever.

Ok so yeah it was a good week and how the heck is my 4th transfer already half over?!?!?! Probably because my comp is awesome. Life is good here in Torino. I love all of you guys too!

Sorella Rachel Riley

Italy Milan Mission

Via Antonia Gramsci 13/2

20090 Opera MI Italia