church in siena

We attended our first Sunday in our new branch in Siena today--what a wonderful experience. They have two sets of missionaries that are assigned for the area and they all speak english. What a great moment it was to hear english when we first arrived! Church was conducted by the Branch President named Anziano (Elder) Welch who is the most senior missionary for the area I believe. We all sang the hymns in italian which is sometimes a struggle with pronunciation of words but overall the same spirit comes with singing despite the language barrier. It was fast Sunday today and so obviously that means an open testimony meeting. Anziano Welch started out with his; that was really touching even though he spoke in italian the whole time. After him another elder got up and said his first in italian and then in english for us which was nice to be able to understand him. Following him there was a local italian man that got up and bore his testimony in both italian and broken english which was so nice--sometimes hard to understand but still such a strong spirit with it that it didn't really matter. A mom in the branch shared hers about trying to be a better member and stay true to her testimony of the gospel despite her desires to sometimes just do the things she wants to do not what she knows she should be doing. She talked about how welcoming the youth in the area were to her daughter and how much that meant to her. She obviously has such a strong desire to follow the truths of the gospel and I know that she will continue to make the right decisions. I feel like our presence in the ward will help her to be able to have such a large group of girls that all have such strong testimonies and for her to see that there are people our age in the church that live the standards. A couple of the girls from our group even got up and bore their testimonies today which was so special. Even though the might not have been able to understand fully the spirit that was there today was undeniable. It is such a testimony builder for me to be able to see that no matter where you are in the world the church is the same--the gospel is true and wonderful. It blesses so many lives. I know that this is the true gospel and I am so grateful for how it has blessed my life. The spirit I felt today at church was wonderful. On Friday there is a relief society activity that should be fun--I think it is a service project and I am pretty sure most of us will be going. I hope that I can be a good example to the members in the branch and help strengthen their testimonies. Oh and they also have a genealogy center there at the chapel that they really need help inputting over 600,000 names from paper into the database so I will probably have a couple opportunities to serve in that way which I am looking forward to.