My "Come to Jesus" Moment

Now, as the majority of you who read this have known me all of my life, you know I have been raised LDS, my entire life that is all I have known. I have always been at least partially religious and I have always had a testimony of Jesus Christ, my issue was I never really showed it, I didn't act like a member, and I didn't really care. When people asked me what religion I was, I would answer, "well, I was raised Mormon, but....". I never wanted to be labeled as Mormon, and it isn't for the reasons you are probably thinking. It wasn't because I was ashamed of being Mormon, it was because I knew my actions were not going to reflect well onto the church. I didn't want people see me acting like a fool, and assume that was the way people in the church acted, but at the same time, I was too prideful to stop my actions.

While here in Italy, I haven't exactly acted in the most...righteous manner, and again, I didn't care all that much. I went to church for maybe a month when I first got here and then decided it was way too much work. Between the getting up at horrible hours in the morning, walking to the train station, catching a train that might not even show up, then taking a bus to the church building, it was just too much, I was lazy. It wasn't because I didn't believe, it was because I was lazy. I always have been when it comes to church, if it took and ounce of effort, I couldn't be bothered. In October though, with some divine intervention in the form of two missionaries, I have seen the light.

I went months, like, 6 months without going to church and no one from the branch here bothered me, the missionaries left me alone. In my skewed thinking I saw this as, "see they don't need me and I don't need them", oh how wrong I was. I didn't realize how much I needed them until I went back, begrudgingly at first, but now I am genuinely happy to go, no matter how tired I am. My first Sunday there was a bit weird, I had vanished off the face of the planet for 6 months after these wonderful people had been nothing but nice to me. It was also weird because, while my Italian is better than when I was first here, it still isn't the best. It is nice to have other English speakers in the branch now, though. I don't feel as incompetent because they need translation too haha.

The most amazing Missionaries Anziano Bowman, and Anziano Tymczuk

Now, when I said "divine intervention", I really meant it. A couple of days before I got a call from the mishies, I had been talking to my wonderful mommy. We were talking about church stuff and I told her that I was just kind of done right now, that I was going to do my own thing for awhile and see where that took me. No joke, not even two days later, I am trapped in Mantova (because the trains hate me) and I get a call from the missionaries asking if they could come see me that day. Now, they live in Mantova so, I was like, "well, I'm trapped at the station so, I'm all yours". They came right over and I ended up talking to them for about 45 minutes. They knew nothing about me, I don't think they even knew I was American until I picked up the phone and they quickly realized I didn't speak Italian. Then, because I'm pretty sure they saw my tattoo, they asked "how long I had been a member", cue the awkward pause from me, then spitting out "uhmmm all my life" *embarrassed face*. This encounter led them to coming over every Thursday and inviting me to church, which I would always avoid a definitive answer to. I ended up just sucking it up one morning and went, and I have never been more happy to wake up freakishly early. These awesome missionaries also send me a scripture every night, that always seem to being insanely applicable, like, they should start writing horoscopes ;). They used to make me feel so guilty, but over the past few months as I have been changing my actions and endeavouring to be right in the eyes of the Lord, I no longer feel guilty. The scripture topics have changed recently too, and yet, they always seem to be exactly what I need to hear.

Back a few months ago I wrote a post on marriage, which was inspired by the mass amounts of marriages and engagements on my Facebook timeline. I am now removing the foot from my mouth and admitting, I wasn't exactly correct. In this post I said, "Another thing about my views on marriage that are different from what I was taught at church my entire life is this, I don't care what religion he is. If I love him and he loves me why should it matter? I will say that I am jaded when it comes to LDS guys, I have never had a good experience with then and my worst experience was with a 'good LDS boy' who turned out to be the world's biggest tool. I know for some of y'all reading this that this will be controversial but I just can't make myself care. I just want to be happy and what if the guy who will do that for me isn't LDS? I should immediately brush him off because he isn't? That just sounds very illogical to me, I want to be happy and so I will be with the person that makes me the happiest." Those are no longer my thoughts, while I do believe you should marry someone you love, I now know, and feel that I will be happiest with a temple marriage. An eternal marriage to someone I love, a marriage that won't end when I die. Just thinking about the possibility of not being with my loved ones throughout the eternities terrifies me. Not just my future companion, but also my parents and siblings, the thought of it just makes me so sad. Which also makes me want to repent because heaven knows they are better behaved so if I want to be in the same kingdom, I need to whip myself into shape ;).

Anyways, I really just wanted to tell anyone who wants to listen that I am a new Rachel. I want to fix everything in my life and be obedient. I now have goals, the biggest one is to be temple worthy, that will take some work but I am willing and wanting to do that work. The other goals are ones I have already set in motion, like, reading the Book of Mormon for the first time all the way through. The other is praying, I have always had a hard time praying because I felt like I didn't deserve it. I felt like, why would God want to listen to me, someone who has figuratively spat in his face on multiple occasions? Why? I said this in passing to my mom once and she about smacked me through the phone, she then said something along the lines of, "that's when you should pray the most, is when you don't feel worth". I mentioned the story to Anziano Tymczuk once and he basically said the same thing, I just didn't feel that he was about to hit me, like with my mom :P. 

That is really all I wanted to say, I am glad to have gotten that all off my chest. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! A new Rachel will be coming home from Italy in Februray so prepare yourselves ;).