I realized that the Lord has blessed me so much that I have only increased my debt

I have no idea how to start this email. I have tried like five different ways, and been unsuccessful every time so I'm giving up on being witty and I'm just going to tell you what happened. We made it to zone conference. I gave an addestramento by myself. I talked about how important it is to treat people individually when inviting people to be baptized. I wrote the conversion story of both of my parents and then had every member of my district write the conversion story of their parents, and then had the missionaries practice inviting that person with their individual needs to be baptized. I'm not sure what kind of affect it had on the other missionaries, but it really, really touched me, to know that what we do has long term affects and that every person has individual needs.

Then we got into a car with a member from Cagliari and drove really, really fast until we got to Sassari. I almost threw up on poor Sorella Tapia. She handled it really well. Then we got to the baptism 2 minutes before it started, took photos, and sat down. Then I gave a talk, then finally Simona was baptized, and it was flawless, and beautiful and it made every horrible agonizing stress of the whole day worth it. On Saturday there was a ward sports activity, which was very stressful for most of the missionaries, but my activity was canceled so I just walked around socializing with Alessandro and his mother. I really enjoyed it. I was super impressed with the branch at the ward activity.

Up until this point they have been kind of indifferent to Alessandro, but on Tuesday we had a lesson for him in a plant shop that one of our members owns (it's where all of the ward hangs out so we were able to have two members there!!) and the spirit was really strong. Afterwards we talked to the two members a lot about Alessandro, and they talked to other members about how great he is (people talk a lot in branches!) and on Saturday everyone in the branch did an amazing job of fellowshipping him. I walked in the kitchen at one point to get a glass of water and there were ten members sitting around him watching him eat a piece of Lasagnia, which was really confusing, but they had asked him to be a judge nella gara gastrinomica (food race literally) which made him feel so special. He recognized our pan so he tried to rig it so that we would win, he told me after, which I thought was great.

The last three or four weeks of my life has been very, very stressful and full of pressure and tiring. Specifically Sundays. This Sunday on the other hand was beautiful and simple and so relaxing. I got to church, and I didn't have to give the lesson, in gospel principles, I was able to just sit and enjoy it. Then I went to Sacrament and found someone sitting with both Alessandro and Simona, which meant that for the first time in months I didn't have to take care of anyone during sacrament. I wasn't pulling a child out from under a chair so that his mom could focus on the speaker (Michaelangelo from Taranto) or explaining to Alessandro the principles of the Sacrament, or showing someone how a hymnal work, I was just sitting and watching and it was beautiful. It was the primary presentation which was hugely irreverent like always, and 3 members were standing up filming it, but I loved every second of it.

I'm a little worried that Alessandro isn't going to pass the baptismal interview this week. He doesn't have a great grasp on the restoration; more specifically he doesn't care about the restoration. He could not care less if this is the only true church on the earth. He gets that it's the best church, and that he feels the spirit the strongest here, and he has made huge changes in his life to prepare for baptism he even believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet, he just doesn't have a super high level of comprehension when it comes to the restoration. I was talking to Anziano Quaresima about it this week (my district leader) and he challenged me to read a few scriptures to decide for myself if Alessandro is ready. I read the scripture in Mosiah, and I just felt so strongly that I had never met anyone in my whole mission that was more prepared to do those things than Alessandro, so we are going to do our very, very best to make him understand this week, and then we are going to trust the Lord, He could really, really use all of your prayers.

Also last night during district finding, which is actually apartment finding which we do every Sunday night, we met a man from Senegal and he was speaking to us in French. Sorella Tapia, Sorella Sartena and I all studied French in the past, and he has lived in Italy long enough to understand Italian so he was speaking to us in French and we were answering in Italian, and I understood EVERYTHING! And about half way through the conversation I was able to start answering in a very basic French so it's still in there! I had just been telling Sorella Tapia that the biggest sacrifice of my mission was the fact that I had lost all of my French, and then the next day the Lord gave me an opportunity to realize that I hadn't really sacrificed anything, my mission has only been a blessing, I have only gained from it. When I first started my mission I thought that I was giving so much to the Lord, and now I realized that the Lord has blessed me so much that I have only increased my debt.

She sent a few pictures this week (Finally!!! I have only been nagging her for months now about this)

Sardegna Zone Conference

Pictures from her Zone Conference a few weeks ago.

Water Balloons

Non voglio fare compito!!!
Ciao cari,
We teach an english course for children and there is a little boy in our course who always says that phrase to us. It means 'I don't want to do homework', and I feel like it is pretty fitting for my life right now. I am tired. I want to crawl up in a ball and sleep for like a year, which I tried to do today seeing as it's p-day, but following the basic pattern that is my life right now, no one let me. The assistants called me thirty minutes into my first nap to tell me the assignment for the addestramento that I will be giving by myself in zone conference because I'm the only stl (sister training leader) in Sardegnia, so I'm really looking forward to that. Instead of sending you a summary of what I did this week I'm going to send you a list of problems that I either was responsible for solving this week or will be responsible for solving the following week.

1) Every sister in my zone is training and I'm stl which means that I need to make sure that they feel comfortable training. One sister in particular has had a harder time adapting, and not yesterday and the day before she was having a sort of melt down, so I left her greenie with my greenie, took her home and made a list of things that she felt confident doing as a missionary. Then yesterday we went finding in four and I stopped two people, and had a gospel conversation with them to give an example, and then encouraged them to talk to certain people. ( As a side note Sorella Winegar was a huge help with this because she has no fear). was that the right thing to do, I have no idea, probably not because it's technically against the rules to do things in 4, but I felt like the ox was in the mire.

2) No one wants Simona to get baptized. We set a baptismal date for Simona, she finally decided that she is ready, and now two people have asked us to change the date. So the initial date was for the 15th we invited Simona to be baptized on the 15th and she finally accepted, and then the following week they announced that there was going to be a stake sports activity in the church on the 15th. Our ward mission leader assured us it wouldn't be a problem. He was wrong. Very wrong. So we moved it to the 14th. The following morning the elder's call us and they tell us that the schedule came in for zone conference, and it will be being held.... on the 14th. We called the zone leaders and they asked us to move it. I said no. They told us we probably weren't going to be able to come to zone conference. I said ok, this baptism is more important. They called the assistants, who called president who said we can borrow a car from the mission so we can make it back on time. The irony of this is that my addestramento (the training I have to give in zone conference) is making sure that investigators follow through with their bap dates.

3) A couple weeks ago one of the elder's investigators Daniela was baptized. The following day when she was supposed to be receiving the gift of the holy ghost she had a melt down, and I spent about two hours kneeling in the grass behind the church trying to convince her to receive the holy ghost. She finally went through with it, but then refused to speak to the elders. Yesterday she came to the tail end of church to talk to the branch president about this "mistake that she made" and we talked for about a half hour. Then she talked to the elders and told them they were still her friends but that she knew that she didn't have a testimony. However, she did agree to meet with us in one religious setting. She and Alessandro (our investigator who is getting baptized on the 22) made a really great connection, and she wants to support him in this choice in his life, and she has agreed to come to lessons with us to teach Alessandro So we will see how that goes.

I decided last night that being a missionary is kind of like being in front of a burning building with a box of water balloons in front of you, but they aren't all filled with water. Some of the balloons, are full of useful things like water or flour, things that help put out fires, and some are filled with gunpowder and gasoline, both of which feel kind of like water and flour, and the only thing that you can do is grab a water balloon, hope desperately that it is the one that you want, and launch it, and sometimes you are right, and the fire goes down, and sometimes you are desperately wrong, and the fire doubles in size.

Those are actually my only three problems. They are just kind of exhausting. I did manage to find some solutions to old problems this week.

1) Alessanddro has had a huge problem grasping gospel principles, and this week we decided to teach him one of the lessons directly from the simplified Book of Mormon, and he loved it. He loved it, and he completely understood everything. So we are going to keep teaching him from there. We could use a lot of prayers that he understands and progresses towards his baptism. He is really excited about getting the priesthood and going to the temple, and he is best friends, and I mean best friends with Anziano Quaresima. It's really nice knowing that I can concentrate on Simona during church and that the two of them are probably hood ratting it around somewhere.

I guess the thing I sometimes forget about the water balloons, is I'm not throwing them alone. I'm throwing them with a full army. I have my beautiful companion, who can help me. This morning I couldn't, I mean I absolutely could not physically move my body any more and when it was time for companion study, I said Sorella Winegar it's your second transfer today I want you to plan the lesson (I told her it was a way to help her stretch and grow as a missionary, but in reality I was to tired to do it.) and she said the problem is I've never seen anyone teach a lesson on tithing, and I said most people don't in their first transfer, the first time I ever saw someone teach tithing was when it was me, and I was teaching it, and so she planned it, which was really really nice. I have prayer, which means that I can ask someone which balloons are full of what and ask for help to get them where they need to go. So maybe by myself I'm destined to burn the city of Sassari down, but with the help of others and the Lord we can at least keep the fire contained. I'm going to stop with this analogy now, because you can only be so poetic and moving when talking about hypothetical water balloons. I love you all and appreciate your prayers and support.