Sorella Sobeck in Rome: Everyday I'm Shufflin...‏

We were at Daniele's house the other day and his tv was on and the music video for the Shufflin' song came on. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it reminded me of this summer (yeah...you friends know who you are!!! =) )

Ciao ciao tutti!! I'm doing great over here and am grateful to be a missionary!!! I can't believe I've been on my mission for 6 months officially. To sum it up, I feel like I've been here for a long time...yet not long at all. I hope I have grown up a lot through my experiences for these 6 months. I have met a lot of people and I know we have helped people. I look forward to what the next year will bring here.

On Wednesday night we did Scambi with the sorelle from Taranto becuase they came up early for Zone Conference the next day. I was with Sorella Fidler who was in my MTC group, so it was us two 3rd transfer missionaries going out in Bari and talking to people and I learned a lot from the experience. Scambi is interesting because you get to be with another companion and see what you do and don't like. The Anziani do scambi all the time, but the sorelle never really do it. So it was cool for us.

Thursday was Zone Conference and it was a lot different this time because Anziano Teixeira of the 70 came. Usually ZC goes until like 4, but this time it was only until 1 and it was 4 hours packed with intense stuff. Often when a general authority comes they tell the missionaries "we love you, but you're not doing enough." Haha. Yeah, I kinda felt like a terrible missionary, but it was motivation to do better to say the least. One thing that Sorella Ashman and I were lacking on lately is that we weren't talking to very many people throughout the day, using the excuse that we have a lot of work already. Well, that certainly changed this week! YEAH!! We are talking to TONS of people now and it is helping me be less afraid. Amazing how that works. And we have found some really cool people! We talked to a lady at the bus stop named Mariana and she is now a new investigator. She is AWESOME and was born in Macedonia, lived in Albania for a long while, knows like 6 languages, is living the ultimate bachelorette life and within the first 15 minutes of being in her house she was asking us all about the law of chastity. Hahaha we really like her. Anyways, between doing mostra a couple times and talking to lots of people on the street I feel like I'm becoming more confident in sharing my testimony of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon quickly, which is necessary. I've been happy with the way things have been going, and am grateful for Zone Conference that gave us a needed shove in the right direction. It's been cool as we've talking to the other missionaries and they are also making changes and everyone is getting more phone numbers which ultimately leads to more investigators and more people knowing about our message. It goes to show that there is ALWAYS room for improvement, and you just have to act. It's soooo easy to get comfortable and into a routine, but honestly that is not why we are here. A mission is not about being comfortable haha. It's a hard lesson to learn. I'm grateful for motivation from general authorities that makes us work harder!

We've been working with one lady named Anna ever since I've been in Bari, and we ALWAYS teach her in her shoe store. Which has been really cool becuase we've met all her family this way and lots of her friends. But it's difficult to teach in a store so we haven't ever really been able to teach anything super concrete besides prayer and a little bit about the Restoration, and also about temples. Over 4 months. BUt she just moved and is all settled and WE GOT INTO HER HOUSE FINALLY THIS WEEK!!! Halleluiah. Patience patience patience. She is planning on coming to church this Sunday for her first time. WE really really really hope she comes, because its the first time she's ever actually said she'd come. And she seems to really be a woman of her word. I love when people progress!!

Daniele's doing better. :) I just can't say enough how much I love this guy. He's not getting baptized on Saturday sadly, but he did come to Sacrament meeting on Sunday and yesterday he told us that his heart started pounding really fast during the sacrament prayers. We keep trying to help him understand that these experiences he's having are the spirit working in him and that he's receiving "una testimonianza personale" but he isn't wanting to admit that. Bah. He knows its true. :)

We went to the Latin mass again to celebrate the start of Lent. . There were Gregorian chants and LOTS of incense. Yep. I love Italy. And on the way there it started raining and we got soaked. It's fun to run through the rain!

Cool miracle story -- summarized. So there is a street called Via Dei Mille and its not in our zone, yet there have been strong feelings like the missionaries need to find someone there. Sorella Ashman got to Bari in June, and she wanted to go there but found out it wasn't in our zone, but they went anyways and didn't really find anything solid but hpefully planted some seeds. Months later, when I first got here in November, she dreamed about it saying we needed to go on a Saturday morning. So we went, but we weren't able to go Saturday morning. Again we didn't really find anyone. Last week on Friday night she was reading her book of mormon and saw the word "mille" and took it as a sign we needed to go again. So we went on Saturday morning like we were supposed in the first place. And we took Angelo (new convert) with us and he knows like everyone on the street becuase he used to have his shop there, and the first person we talked to on the street we got his number. His name is Simone, he KNOWS Angelo, he said he's atheist, yet he listened to us and agreed to meet with us. We were all kind of it awe. Especially becuause apparently the response of being athiest was exactly what Angelo said when the missionaries first contacted him. Then he got baptized 6 weeks later. Cooooool. Yeah, so we haven't met with Simone yet but we have an appointment later in the week. We hope something great happens as a result, but even if not it was a really cool miracle story.

Transfer calls are on Saturday already. I'm very very confident that I will be staying in Bari for my 4th transfer and that Sorella Ashman will be leaving. But you never know, I did dream last night that I got transfered to Rome and was in a trio companionship. Weird. Vediamo. So next week I'll have news about that.

Alright thats all for this week. Happy Leap Day!!! Have a great week!

Foto::

At the party for Carnevale, Valentina made us little paper masks! She's so awesome!!