Sorella Sobeck in Rome: The power of a dedica‏

Ciao!

As usual, some great stuff and some not so great stuff happened this week. I guess I'll just start out with some sad news in the mission life of Sorella Sobeck...the fact that Giuseppe is not going to be baptized on Saturday, and I don't know when it will happen at this point. He has a work meeting and then he goes to Milan for 2 weeks, so we had to cancel his date and haven't been able to make a new one unfortunately. My testimony of having a baptismal date has gone up though...becuase when he had that goal he was making amazing progress, feeling the spirit really strong, having great experiences, etc. Once the date was out, the next lesson was kind of how they used to be...all over the place. It made me sad but I feel that the timing must be important, probably for his family to come around a little. But we'll see what happens. I really believe that a big reason I was sent to Mistretta was to help Giuseppe progress.

Other than that, some great awesome things happened too! We got an awesome new investigator, Stefano, who we met last Tuesday. We were doing some house and we decided to walk to the end of a street to see if anything was down there. Then we found Stefano working, got his number, and made an appointment to come on Thursday. We wanted to give him a Book of Mormon, and right before we went to see him I felt like we should write him a dedica in his BoM. A dedica is just a dedication to someone, something that Italians LOVE. They love anythign personalized. Sometimes we hesitate to write dedicas though because when we do, sometimes we never see that person again to give them the BoM unfortunately, and then what do you do with it? Anyways, so we wrote a decida to Stefano. When we gave him the BoM he said, "Thanks, I love reading!" And when he saw the dedica, he got really quiet, then he read it and told us "That is beautiful. No one has ever given me a book with a dedica". Man, something so simple made me feel the spirit really strong. We saw him again yesterday - he had read 13 chapters, went on the internet site, found and watched the Joseph Smith movie, and was very content. We taught him the first lesson, concentrating on the pattern of prophets and apostasy and the need for a Restoration of the truth and authority. He already believes Joseph Smith was a prophet and that th Book of Mormon is true. Seriously...this rarely happens. It really increases my testimony that PEOPLE ARE BEING PREPARED. THEY ARE READY. We just have to do the work to find them, and create environments where they can feel the spirit, and INVITE INVITE INVITE. We wanted to leave the Restoration film with him to watch as his commitment, but when he told us he already watched in online I was thinking "What are we going to leave for his impegno??" And I thought about inviting him to church. 20 seconds after I thought that, HE asked US about if we have a mass and what we do. Holy spirit guiding my thoughts. It's pretty cool.

Angela, the Romanian, came to church again on Sunday! Two weeks in a row! She is so great. We have had to focus a lot on the first lesson and the Book of Mormon. She is orthodox, so her thinking pattern is a little different than Catholics. We have to talk her through lots of stuff, but she is already gaining a testimony of prayer. It's probably one of my favorite things to hear investigators pray to Padre celeste (Heavenly Father). I'm a huge fan of Angela, who is making great progress.

We are still in the church, but have an appointment this afternoon to get our car fixed!!! So we've been sleeping at the church for 8 nights, and I'm super ready to go back to Mistretta though. And I'm SUPER excited to have the car working at full capacity again - especially since next week we're driving to Catania again for Zone Conference!

I found out some awesome exciting news lately from Bari. A woman that Sorella Ashman and I found our last week together, Julie who is from Africa and is pregnant, was baptized in July!!! I was so excited to hear about it - she really is so sweet and it makes me have so much more faith to see a result in the process of PLANTING SEEDS!!! Frequently we'll never know the results of our actions, but I'm so grateful to have found out about this baptism and that Bari is still on fire with having lots of baptisms! There are lots of prepared people in Italy :)

Alright, that about wraps up all the big stuff I think thats worth mentioning. We're working hard and seeing some great miracles happen. The transfer is already half over. Time is just passin by. Buona settimana a tutti, e vi voglio tanto bene :)

Oh and I also must write....GO COUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Sorella Sobeck

Aunt Donna - my comp is kind of from different places, but she has lived in Oregon and Washington, and now her family lives in St. George. Sounds like some crazy stuff is going on with the work on your street!

Aunt Kathy - That sounds like an awesome vacation for Glen! Yeah I'm in Sicily now, but we have transfers in a few weeks and who knows what will happen. Maybe I'll be up in Rome haha. Thanks for the email.

Uncle Phil - those Ibex are insane!!! I have no idea where that dam is haha but now I want to go see it!