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.