The one with the doves

Carissima famiglia!

I hope you guys are all doing well and having a fun summer! It's just

getting hotter and more humid every single day here! We're working

hard to find new people that want to learn more about the Savior!! If

you guys know of any women/families in Catania that could have

interest in the gospel, let me know!! ;) We loooove referrals.

This week we got a lot of "bidones" (cancelled/no-show appointments)

but it's okay. It happens! A lot of our people are leaving for the

summer so we're kind of starting from scratch and trying to find the

people who WILL be here for summer.

We met some cool kids from Kentucky this week who are here for the

summer as volunteers to work with refugees! What an amazing

experience! We are going to try to meet up with them again and see if

we can help them with a service project or something. Haha it's always

so fun to run into Americans that are our age haha. The only Americans

I ever see are the 4 elders in my district and my companion haha.

Funny/Awkward story: some people were speaking English last night so

we asked where they are from and they were Americans. They told us

they were doing a prayer walk around Catania. Then they asked if they

could pray for us so we said ya, and then they went on to pray for us

for at LEAST a solid 7 minutes and then told us they picture us as

free white doves flying away into the wind. Hahaha. We appreciated the

extra prayers and it was quite the experience. 🕊🕊

We've been doing HOURS of street contacting and it's honestly super

fun. I went through a phase on the mission where I didn't really enjoy

it because we get rejected so much but I'm glad I like it again. It's

fun here because there are sooo many tourists so we get to talk to

people from all over the world... BUT, that kind of makes it difficult

for us to grow our teaching pool. But we have referred people to meet

with the missionaries in Kansas, Germany, Russia, Washington,

Colorado, Holland, and about every other state/country in the world

haha. We have faith though that the Lord is going to bless us :)

Sorella James was sick the other day so we spent the morning inside

and I got to study for a few extra hours which was really nice! I read

some amazing talks. One of the cool things I did was I went through my

patriarchal blessing and wrote down 3 columns. One of them I titled,

"who I am," the next on was "promises," and the last one was

"warnings." It was so incredible to study it in a different way. The

Lord truly does know us each individually and perfectly. If you don't

know that for sure, get on your knees and ask him! He will confirm to

you that you are His child and how much He loves you.

Tonight we get transfer calls....my last transfer call!! Ahh. Where

has the time gone? I'm excited for these last 6 weeks and to see what

the Lord has in store for us. Vi voglio tanto bene ❤️

Con amore,

Sorella Hess

Via Genova 27

Catania 95127

Italia

Le foto:

1-4: I loooove Catania

5: This is Erika. She's my fav. She turns in her mission papers in a few months and is going to be the cutest missionary ever. We're gonna be best friends at BYU when she gets home😊