January 22, 2015

As missionaries from the USA teaching in Italy we must have a ministerial license. It is a long process that takes several steps. We have started our first step, we applied and paid one of the fees. Part of the requirements is to have the permit showing we are licensed upon our person at all times. ( or the receipt as evidence we are in the process) You have 8 days from the time you arrive in Italy to apply. We were in that time frame, but I had somehow miss placed my receipt. There was no worries for the eight days but now that we are pass that probation time, the receipt needed to be found. We had prayed to locate it and felt confident we would. We have looked high and low, in all possible and logical places. My first fees are sizeable 130 EUROs and the paper work that is required comes from the Milano Mission. So no easy task. Yesterday we needed to do some work all over the area and felt the need to have the receipt. Once again I knelt down and asked for help to find the receipt. We started to look through all the documents and the thought occurred to me to check my mission booklet. A tiny book with mission information that I keep in my purse. That would have been the logical place to put it in the being, and I thought I had, but time and time again I had looked and no receipt. I opened the book and there was the receipt. As it turned out we were never stopped and we could have been, but I was comfortable going throughout the area. Fear and faith cannot reside together, it is necessary to have the Holy Ghost in this work. It was a gentle, sweet reminder that the Lord is helping His work along.

We have two brand new missionaries in our area. We met them each day for Dinner at the MTC. It will be a pleasure to work with them both. Brother B went around and picked up all the luggage Wednesday night for the departing missionaries and met them at the train station Thursday morning. As it turned out it was a blessing we did drop off the luggage, the Elders thought the departure was at 6:50 and it was at 6:26. They were still several miles away when we called to see where they were. We run and picked them up.  Side note, we had forgotten our phone and when we took off to get them we realized we had no way to know how they were coming only about when they were when the Sisters called. You can guess we were praying hard. Once again Elder Mika appeared in full view, It was not light yet, and we had 5 minutes to get them there, get tickets and loaded on the train! They all made it, one elder loaded luggage, one bought tickets and one helped the Sisters! We then went back and picked up the new missionaries Thursday evening. Going over the cobblestone with roller suitcases is a rough deal, and with rain and several miles walk. Well you can guess how fun that would be.