Sorella Gisseman: Week 68 -- The Bible Says there was Snow when Christ was Born?

Hi cuties! Did you watch the Face-to-Face with Elder Gong? If not you should because it's really cool! You don't have to, but it's good. We watched that for the second hour of church yesterday and it was so cool. Also, like, how incredible the youth of the church are! I was not that brava!

We're in the streets today just preparing ourselves for saldi next week. We're not buying things; we're just looking at things. I think I want to get a good pair of boots. You know my black boots that I brought on my mission? I thought I was going to keep them and bring them home, and honestly I still probably will, but they're pretty wrecked. The soles are peeling off and in some parts there aren't the soles anymore. And I still have to finish winter! So we'll see. But I want to buy a nice pair of leather booties and they're not that expensive. A nice pair -- a really nice pair -- is like 60 euro. That's good! And that's not even on sale yet. So I don't even know what saldi prices will look like. I also want to buy a long black coat, either of fake fur or the thick sherpa plush material. So we went to a store to look at that, too. Saldi starts next week! Right now we're passing the Gucci store and they have literally a 3D Mickey Mouse head basketball clutch bag....interesting. Saldi will probably be our P-Days for the next few weeks. Today we just have a half P-Day because we'll have deep cleaning day this week.

The rest of the week after Christmas went pretty well. I don't think anything really notable happened. We're just doing some finding. I've been really tired. I think Christmas still has me and I'm literally still full from Christmas meals! Right now there's an Italian singing an American Christmas song in the background....

Questions!

1. How did you spend the rest of Christmas Day and this week?

You literally talked to me at the end of Christmas Day so after I talked to you we went home. The rest of the week we did some good finding, on the 26th we got to watch the Christmas Devotional, we also cleaned the church to get ready for the combined Sacrament Meeting with both wards.

2. Tell me about something that made you smile/laugh this week.

I have no idea! I'm sure I did.... Oh -- the Christmas song that says "say hello to everyone you meet" -- so the other day we went to this bus stop, just taking the bus, and we walked up and my companion said "Buon giorno!" to this woman, and she just looked at her, like, "what?"???" and she had a kid with her who was wearing a Spiderman hat, and my companion said "I like your hat!" and then the woman was like, "what? do we know each other?" but in kind of a rude way, and my companion was like, "No". And the woman kept saying, "who are you? who are you?" and my companion introduced herself and the woman kept saying "who are you?" and then she said "you can't just walk up to someone and say hi!" and she went off on us. There was an older man sitting at the bus stop and I turned to him and said, "so that's not a thing that you guys do here? You don't just say hi to people?" And he said, "No, that's a completely normal thing to do. That's the polite thing to do!" And I was like, "Ok, it's the same for us at home." And the lady kept going off on us -- "who are you???" and she kept saying, "if you want to present yourself, present yourself. But don't just come up to me and say hi!" And we were like, what???? And my companion kept saying, "ok, this is my name! This is my name!" It was just funny.

3. What was your favorite Christmas gift?

I loved it all! I loved the testimonies. I really did love that and I really appreciate everyone taking a minute or two to send me a voice recording and bear their testimony, because that's really something that for me really helps me in this work. Sometimes you think and you're like, "are these people even in a place to accept the gospel?" or "is this really going to benefit them?", and stuff like that, which obviously the answers are yes, but..... It's just helpful to hear from all my friends how the gospel blesses their lives.

4. What did you get in your white elephant Christmas gift exchange?

We did white elephant and we also did secret Santa. In my white elephant gift exchange I got a Santa (Babo Natale) cookie jar, and in our secret Santa I got a diffuser and a childhood picture of my zone leader. A treasure....priceless..... LOL

5. How was church today? What stood out to you?

It was really good. We wanted the Face-to-Face with Elder Gong and it was so powerful. It opened with different groups of youth singing "Hope of Israel" from all over the world and I literally started crying. It was SO powerful. With this new youth program, the youth are literally incredible.

6. Do you know how much I love you? How much the Savior loves you? How much Heavenly Father loves you?

Yes, yes, yes.

7. What did you do for P-Day this week?

We have short P-Day today so we just kind of went around looking at things we might want to buy during saldi.

8. What is your favorite scripture/scripture story right now?

I'm reading the war chapters in the Book of Mormon and I'm trying really hard to get a lot out of them. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job so that's good. My favorite scripture that I keep going back to is Alma 31:5, the one that says to try the virtue of the word, that the word of God has the power to help us change, to help these people change. There's a quote in Preach My Gospel that says a gospel study will change behavior faster than a study of behavior will change behavior. And we talk to so many people and a big thing here is that they do not read the scriptures, even if they are religious. So they don't know the scriptures and they don't have this power of the word of God in their lives every day, and they say "you don't need religion to be a good person", and to a certain extent that's true, but we receive so much power through the word of God that helps us to change and helps us to be better. And so that's definitely one of my favorite scriptures right now. Also, when in doubt just study your scriptures!!

OK, funny story. Sorella N was on the bus talking to this woman and the woman asked if we celebrate Christmas and Sorella N said yes, and the woman asked, "on the 25th?" and Sorella N said yes. And then the woman started going off about how Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate it on the 25th but she knows that Christ was born on the 25th because it says in the Bible that there was snow on the ground. And Sorella N asked "where does it say that? I've never heard that and I've studied all of the Bible!" and the woman said "it doesn't come to my mind but there was snow on the ground and we know that he was born on the 24th/25th" and Sorella N asked how. And the woman said "it says the 25th in the Bible!" and Sorella N and I studied Come Follow Me this year and it does not say that!!! But, whatever.....it was funny.

9. How have you been feeling?

Just tired.

10. Tell me about a tender mercy you experienced this week.

I think one tender mercy is that we had a goal to get a certain amount of numbers this week when we were finding and we did weekly planning yesterday and we had gotten one less than our goal, although we had gotten like five Facebook friends which is great. So we said we could give it to ourselves and say we hit or goal, but we decided no, we would go back out today and keep trying. So when we were coming back from our meal appointment last night we were o the bus and we ran into this super, super cool African family. So cool! They were super awesome and super intelligent and they were there and they were such a cutie family. They have three kids and have been here for like 13 years so they spoke Italian and even though they don't live in our area we were able to talk to them and get their number and it was just like God came in clutch, like He was saying "I know you've been trying so here you go" (even if that's kind of like a pride thing for me to say that).

11. How have you served someone this week? How has someone served you?

Does Christmas count? I think Christmas counts. Gifts aren't important but they're cutie and it's a way to show love and serve someone. My companion gave me cutie presents and I loved them. For us serving someone, we cleaned the church. One of the men at church who helps with cleaning the church won't really talk to us about missionary work and he calls all missionaries anziani (whether they're male or not) -- he said, "Anziani, can you clean the chapel and get the chairs set up again?" and we said yes.

12. What have you learned about yourself lately?

Oh no....what haven't I learned about myself???? I learn a lot about things I need to fix constantly and I think I learn deeper why I think in a certain way or I recognize things for how I'm interpreting them and maybe how I'm interpreting them incorrectly. I would say I have a good level of self-awareness.

Here are my closing thoughts: My closing thoughts for the week just really come back to the importance of the family. There were two things that stood out to me in the devotional. One was how incredible the youth are and what potential they have, and the second was how difficult it is to be a parent and how much work you really have to put in with no guaranteed success, either. And after we went to a meal appointment with a family that has four kids I was able to see different patterns in their family based off of their behavior and things that you could tell about them and how their family works and how the gospel could really help them so much. This new youth program and Come Follow Me is something the prophet has given us specifically to strengthen our families because Satan really is attacking the family. In my studies I'm reading about the 2000 stripling warriors, that's what I read today, and it talks about how they knew it because they knew their mothers knew it. And I think it's so important that we as parents, as leaders, as role models, we really have to make sure that our testimonies are firm because our children will see that and those around us. In my patriarchal blessing it talks about how I get to influence youth and how I need to be strong in order for them to see that I'm strong and for them to reflect on my example. I feel like I've definitely been able to do that with you, Mom, that even though we weren't the best at everything, especially in these past few years, I can reflect on your example and where you put your efforts and it's able to strengthen me. So those are my closing thoughts. I'm super grateful for the family and I'm grateful that we have a prophet that acts as a guardian on the watchtower for us and is really giving us things that can protect our families. I love you all so much!!

Ciao, ciao!