Sorella Sobeck in Rome: Leaving a jet plane??????? WEEK 8‏

CIAO!! This is my last email communication with you while I'm in America...it's incredibly pazzo to think about how in 1 week I'll be in Italia. Possibly with my trainer in mia prima città. My mind is blown just thinking about how I'll be talking to real Italians on the boot country and all the work that we will be doing will be for REAL! SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!! I leave on Tuesday morning, report to the travel office at 8am. I'm so lucky that I don't have to report at 5am like the Russians have to!!! I leave Salt Lake at 12:50pm, then fly to Dallas, then to London, then to ROMA!!!! We arrive in Roma at 2:05pm their time on Wednesday. :) :) :) :) :) :) When we got our travel plans last Friday we were basically all jumping in the air and going crazy. It was a little bit exciting.

This morning I went to the temple for the last time for 16 more months, which was really sad. I wish the temple in Rome could be done while we're there, but alas it is not meant to be. The temple is such a wonderful place, I have really enjoyed going every week for the past 8 weeks and feeling in the right place.

Honestly I will probably miss the MTC...as nervous as I am to teach my teachers and my companions here as investigators, teaching in Italy is going to make me ridiculously scared hahahaa. But SO much better. I can't say enough how I'm excited to finally begin to do the work that we have been preparing for. In Italy. Everything we do is for the future unknown people we will meet. A little theme that we have in our class is "It's all about them." That has really helped me to focus and continue to have motivation, because missionary work has nothing to do with the missionary and everything to do with the people.

The coolest experience I had this week: Last week I talked about our investigator Salvatore and how he was really struggling and didn't feel prepared to be baptized at all. Our next lesson with him we went over the baptismal interview questions to show him that he was ready, but we were a little nervous about asking him the commandment commitment questions because he was so hesitant about tithing before and he was still trying to quit smoking. So he answered everything right, we asked him how the smoking was going and he was only smoking about once a day. And then we asked him if he'd pay tithing after he was baptized and he said yes....YES! He decided that he just needed to have faith, like we told him, and he was grateful to us for our testimonies and the scriptures we left him the previous lesson. It was so awesome. We told him he was ready and he felt better and decided that he could prepare to be baptized on Wednesday. We met with him again on Monday and gave him a spiritual thought about baptism, and then he was going to have his "baptism interview" (in the MTC it doesn't really happen...). Before that, we asked about his smoking again. He said that he was fishing that morning and he was so tempted so he reached in his pocket to get a cigarette but they weren't in his pocket and he couldn't find them. So he then decided to go to the store later to buy a pack "just in case" he was tempted later on. He got to the store and he didn't have any money! It was the coolest story, and he completely recognized that it was God helping him to not have the cigarettes so he would stop smoking. And now he has quit, and he's getting baptized TODAY!!!! It was the most exhilerating feeling afterwards when Sorella Soh and I were talking/thinking and we said "Salvatore is getting baptized. For real." The awesome thing is that we found out the real Salvatore that our teacher taught in Italy is actually baptized also. It was just cool to really see that Heavenly Father does help those who really try and have faith, because being baptized is what He wants for us. It was a great experience for me this past week. :)

My companion, Sorella Soh, wants her blog to be available to all: katiesoh.blogspot.com. It's probably a pretty funny read, I can only imagine the things she says in her emails home. Haha read about our MTC experiences from her point of view and enjoy.

Something else that I learned this week that was cool, from a talk by Dallin H. Oaks called "Repentence and Change". We need to align our way with God's way. We don't want to change people to all be the same, that's not the point of missionary work. We don't want to change people's cultures. But EACH of our cultural differences that don't align with the culture of Christ need to be changed. I really liked that. Everybody being so different is what makes our world-wide church so amazing. No matter where in the world we are though, we need to do the will of God. And be happy about it. :)

Devotional last night was Elder Donald L. Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70. One thing I loved that he talked about is "The harder you work, the more influential you'll be." And also: "WE CAN RISE ABOVE EVERYDAY." No matter the challenges in life, we can rise above it and be better. We should never ask "Can this be easier?" Jesus Christ did everything for us. CE LA FACCIAMO!!!!! (WE CAN DO IT!!!)

Ok I'm out of time. I wish everyone a happy week and that you're doing well. I'm doing great over here. I'm working hard, memorizing some scriptures in Italian (I'm currently almost done with D&C 4!!!), learning more Italian, and getting more and more excited everyday that I'll soon be where my mission is called. Love you all!! Write my DearElders while it's free!!! :)

Love, Sorella Sobeck