Buon giorno! Yes it is Thursday, not my normal pday. But today is an Italian holiday and we decided to switch for that reason among others, so this is a day late. Don't worry Mom, nothing is wrong :)
I seriously cannot believe the amount of things we do it a week. Every time I write an email i feel like it's been an eternity since I've written, yet every pday comes so fast and before you know it you've been in Italy for 5 weeks and you're all "What the heck is going on???" My first transfer is almost over! I'm not gonna lie, that is a relief for me becuase while this transfer has been all sorts of wonderful I will be glad when it's over just so I can say i'll be in my 2nd!! And then before I know it I'll be like Sorella Ashman, who has been freaking out lately that she only has 4 transfers left. We're on such opposite ends of the mission time spectrum, it makes me laugh. I feel like my mission is stretching out for me for forever honestly, but I'm so excited for what the next 15 months will bring!!
Ok I think I'll just kinda go day by day this week (main stuff) just so I can recap what happened too.
Wednesday (pday) we went to Lecce and I loved it. It was so fun to just go on the train wearing pants (weird!!!) and hang out in the city for the day. It has so much charm. I would love to go back there. It's a MUCH smaller city than Bari and so we walked around the entire city like 3 times haha. When we got back from Lecce we had a meeting with Valentina, our 12 year old girl who's new baptismal date is January 8th!!! We are so excited for her! I just love this cute little girl, she is so sweet and loves us and we love her.
Thursday - we got dumped by out 2 investigators who we had JUST gotten. That was special. We had an awesome lesson 0 with Mario and Rosa on Monday morning and set up a follow up appt for Thursday morning and they became new investigators. Thursday we were waiting for them, they were late, and then only mario came and told us they weren't ready and didn't want to meet with us anymore. It was an extremely dissapointing beginning to the day, but it happens unfortunately. And while you want to continue to meet with them anyways, if they have made up their mind that they're not interested then meeting with them is just going to waste time because progress won't be made. They'll be ready someday, with another set of missionaries. Sorella Ashman shared an AWESOME quote with me that morning, because I was really sad after we got dumped. "Success is going from one failure to another with no lack of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchhill. I loved that...it's so true!!! Yay inspiring quotes, I love them. Also on Thursday, we made about 150 rolls for Zone Conference the next day...hahahahahaha. We were in the kitchen rolling these things (and eating delicious dough...my favorite) for our entire lunch time and it was fun! Sorella Ashman and I just tell each other stories and I love it. We then got a phone call from this family who are eternal investigators...they're been investigating for 2 years but they live like 45 minutes away so they never see the missionaries. They called us and told us they were going to be in bari and wanted to see us. So we saw them for awhile and they are really nice! We have been praying to see if we are supposed to meet with them more and get them moving again. I think we are going to go to their house (molto lontano!) on Saturday though, so pray for them! Famiglia Costanzo.
Friday - ZONE CONFERENCE!! I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE my mission president and his wife! President and Sorella Kelly...they are just the cutest and so humble. They both said some great things to the missionaries and I really appreciated their words. President Kelly gave some mission statistics and said that in the past 6 months the mission has gotten a lot younger, meaning a lot of missionaries have finished and gone home and we have a lot who are in the younger transfers. So the missionaries have less experience as a whole group. But the number of baptisms has gone up by 50% in the past 6 months. HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!! It gave me confidence that young missionaries are just as effective as the older ones, and that we are all here to do this work and help these people. The Italy Rome Mission is having a lot of success and the missionaries are working hard to receive blessings from the Lord. It's sooooo cool. The missionaries in my zone are really cool, there were about 35 missionaries maybe? (I might include a picture if I can). There was also a slide show that they had put together from the mission and it was so inspiring! ITALY IS SOOOOO BEAUTIFUL I can't even stand it!! I'm sooo lucky to be here! Part of me wants to only serve in a couple cities during my mission so I can just really learn the area and the people, but another part of me wants to go to lots of cities so I can see all these cool places! I know thats not what a mission is about hahaha. But it's a cool thought. i think most sisters serve in about 3 or 4 cities in their mission...i'll probably be the same. So anyways, Zone Conference was awesome and we ate delcious food and we sang Christmas songs together and I loved it. :) Can't wait for the next one.
After ZC we had a lesson with Maria Pia, who has been an investigator for a year and a half and we've been trying to set a baptismal date with her but she just isn't having it. It was a great lesson though. She KNOWS the church is true and has a wonderful testimony, but it's been difficult to find what's been holding her back. More on maria pia later...
Saturday - We had weekly planning (its normally on Friday but ZC was the day before) and that always takes all morning. Afternoon. Ok. I shouldn't have a favorite investigator, but at the moment I do. DANIELE!!!! He is like 65 and old and alone and he's so opinioned and intelligent and has a billion questions. And I never understand most of what he says but I just love him so much! We've had 3 lessons with him now and he absolutely ADORES us. It's sooo cute. He is the cutest grandpa with pictures of his kids and grandkids all over his house. His wife died 2 years ago and he's very lonely. Friday evening we had a great lesson with him about prayer and finding answers through reading teh Book of Mormon and studying. We told him to do an experiment. He loves when we give him compito (homework) and he always does it. We invited him to church and he would've come but he goes to Lecce on Sunday mormings because thats where his wife is buried. He invited us to go with him! We told him that we'd like to go with him someday, but he has to come to church first haha. We could completely go with him on a pday if we brought someone with us, and we both really want to. Daniele has such a big heart and he has been really listening to us lately. A lot of times Italians just ignore you when you try and say something, but if we start saying something he will stop and say "Dimi tutto". Tell me everything. He's so great!! He's going to be my italian grandpa, and I really feel like he's going to progress a lot in teh future. I really hope so, we're getting attatched to him! And we brought him a flower to say congrats for retiring and he loved it hahaha. Ok. After Daniele we had our first meeting with a guy, Giovanni, who we met on the street a few weeks ago. We are going to give him to the Anzioni to teach because he's a 37 year old guy who is honestly pretty attractive hahaha. It will be better for the Anzioni to teach him and relate to him better hahaha. It was a pretty good lesson though.
Sunday - church was good. In sacrament testimony meetings Fratello Valentini said something awesome: "Gesù Cristo non è molto lontano." Jesus Christ is not very far away. What an awesome concept. I've thought about that a lot this week, about our personal relationships with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and how they can be as close to us and we allow them too. When we pray and read the scriptures and are righteous we have a direct line to them. And they can be soooo close to us. I love that about this church.
Other stuff: We have a girl in the ward who got baptized 4 years ago, named Carmen, and she is 22 and really wants to serve a mission. She's talked to the bishop and he always was saying she wasn't ready. No one udnerstood why, including us. She finally talked to the stake president (who is our bishop's brother actually haha) and next thing we knew, on Sunday bishop gave Carmen her mission papers to start!!! WHOOOO HOOOOOO!!!! She's soo excited to serve a mission!! I remember how excited I was when I started my mission papers!!!! Then we had the shortest lunch appointment we've ever had! In the mission white handbook, it says lunch at members should be no longer than an hour. HAHAHAHA: It Italy, that doesn't happen. President Kelly tells us to not go longer than THREE HOURS. Oh my gosh its so different than the white handbook becuase the culture here is so different and lunch is a very big deal to Italians. Anyways, we had lunch and were only there for like 1 1/2 hours and it was awesome. For the rest of lunch we went home and chilled. SOO NICE. Then we went to choir! We're singing a really coool Christmas song and I love it! Yay choir. For those who don't know this about me, singing in choirs is NOT my favorite thing, but it's been fun and it really helps the members.
Monday - We had consilgio di distretto (district conference) which was fun, and we talked about being missionary VIP hahaha how cute. It's all in Italian for us...theres only 4 of us in my district and our elders don't speak english. Anz. Pedreira is from Uraguay and Anz. Kafel from Genova in northern Italy. I'm understanding more in these meetings which is nice haha. In the afternoon we got 2 bidoni (standups) in a row...mamma mia. That was fun. That hasn't happened a lot to me yet. So it was just one of those times when all your stuff gets cancelled and you know something better is in store for you and you have to go find it. So we had Angelo and Marinella with us (the 2 awesome people who got baptized a month ago on my first Sunday) and we decided to go see Maria Pia becuase nothing else was working out. We had had plans and several backup plans that evening and they ALL fell through. So we went to Maria Pia's. And we had a wonderful lesson where we all bore our testimonies. And we discovered that she had never prayed to feel that the Book of Mormon is true. It was like a lightbulb. We told her to pray and ask. She said she would the next morning. We told her she would receive an answer. It was powerful. Again...more on Maria Pia later.
Tuesday - good lesson with Michele (the ex-mob boss haha) about the power of the Atonement and baptism. We are trying to set his date for December 31st. It would be very symbolic for him considering his history, to just start over with a new year. He has repeatedly told us that he is getting baptized, but having a set date makes him very nervous and anxious (I said he has anxiety problems...) I keep thinking, well, you gotta have a date before you can get baptized dude. Anyways, we are praying for him that he will have courage and confidence!!! He's ready to be baptized, we really belive that. And he made a new best friend with Antonio, who got baptized in September. It was really weird becuase Antonio's car had been burned the week before (most likely by the Mafia...awesome) and Michele was asking him all about what happened and basically cursing the Mafia and it was so funny because I wonder how many cars Michele has burned himself!!!! We then contacted a referrel and gave them a Book of Mormon and teh husband had it open and was reading it even before we left his shop! COOL! They have a 5 year old daughter and she's probably the biggest brat I've ever met hahahaha. Good other stuff happened that day, but the best was after English course that night we called Maria Pia to see if she had prayed that morning and she said that she's thinking of getting baptized on January 8th. WHAAAAAAAT??? I will also mention that we were fasting for Maria Pia on this particular day also...fasting works!!!!!!!!!! Everyone pray for Maria Pia to get baptized and finally become a member because she basically already is one. Mamma mia! We were floored when she said that...talk about a miracle. And then we stopped by Daniele's really fast and he was so excited to see us and he said that he's been thinking about us and our messages a lot lately. He's going to Milan again this week so we can't have a lesson with him until next week, but he's just the greatest!! He showed us how he put the flower we gave him in the really nice vase and everything. AHHHH I can't even stand it!!! :) Daniele is going places in the church...I can feel it.
Wednesday - Remo Lassandro. His wife is a member but he's not. We had a lesson with him and we are going to start working with him consistently and we're excited. He smokes soooooooooo much. Geez...Italians and their smoking. We're all going to have lunch cancer because of secondhand smoke. We got another bidone, but then we got another awesome referrel and we're excited to meet with this guy (Vito)! We gave him a Book of Mormon and because Italians LOVE gifts, he was so happy. He's great friends with Angelo and thats where we met him and got his phone number and gave him the book. I love Italians hahaha. Then we always get pizza on pday eve, so we got pizza last night. :) Italy is the best.
Ok. Wow, I just wrote a book and if you read that all, props to you. This is what Sorella Ashman does every week in her emails, writes everything we did. I did not write everything we did, just the big stuff. Life of a missionary...GO GO GO GO GO alllllllll day long!!! It's great and exhausting and fulfilling when you come home at the end of the day.
Pictures!!!
Fattest dog ever. His name is ROLLS. I named him.
making our bazillion rolls!!!
view from the house we went to for lunch of Sunday. Bari is right on the sea!!!
Zone Conference!!!
Bari is so much fun at christmas because theres a gazillion Christmas decorations!! San Nicola is the big saint of Bari, who just happens to be Santa Claus :) Have a great week!
Love, Sorella Sobeck
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