I knew exactly how it was going to play out.

So almost a year and a half ago, I left on a mission. I knew exactly how it was going to play out. I was going to learn the language perfectly over night, I was going to have only companions that were my best friends, and all of my investigators were going to progress towards baptism. Then I was going to come back to a picture perfect life, where nothing had changed, and I would be able to fit seamlessly back into it, and I would have a perfect plan of what I was doing.

I have no idea when and where it all went wrong, but a year and a half later, almost none of that has happened. It has been messy, hard, humbling, and I nearly gave up, a lot of times. I still make dumb Italian errors (the other day in the store I asked the woman for zucchero in cane instead of zucchero di cana. So instead of brown sugar I asked for sugar of dog. I still blame Sorella Winegar, she was distracting me).

I'm not perfect, but I wouldn't change any of it. It was all raw and human, and is making me the person I am supposed to become. I have learned to forgive myself and others because we are all human, and if I screw up as frequently as I do, how could I ever expect someone else not to.

I have learned to respond with sympathy instead of anger, or to not respond at all because I will regret the anger later.

I have learned to laugh, because when you are locked outside of your apartment, without keys, in the rain and you left the two greenies alone with an Italian cell phone, which they broke, because they don't speak Italian, and you don't want to call your district leader because he asked you to please stop doing unplanned scambis without permission and you forgot until the moment where you were standing outside your apartment without the keys the only thing that keeps your from fighting or crying is laughing, and because those moments where everything goes wrong, are actually the most beautiful moments that we experience, and we only get them for so long and then they are over.

Mortality is short, and I could be wrong but I don't think we get those sort of moments in the next life. Those moments are something purely human, that we have to savor (just for the record the lecture that I received was very very short because I think the elders felt like we had already learned our lesson well enough from the locked out rain part), so mainly I'm rambling, and this wasn't as poetic as I had hoped, but I can't really fix it because it's my turn to buy groceries this week, so I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense. If not, I'm sorry.

The last thing I want to add is I'm not coming back to the life I had planned when I left. A lot of things have changed, I can't go back to my old major because I don't speak French anymore, and a lot of people have changed their lives in a way that I don't really fit into them anymore, and frankly I don't want what I wanted before, and it's ok, because finally, I'm starting to believe all the promises Heavenly Father has made to me.

When I was 16 I didn't plan to go to BYU, but He did. When I was 18 I didn't plan to serve a mission, but He did, and I'm so grateful because if I had followed my plan I have no idea where it would have taken me, but I do know that I wouldn't be in Sassari, Italy, sitting next to Sorella Winegar, and I wouldn't change that for anything.

So no, I have no idea what comes next, absolutely none. I have a few tentative ideas, but frankly 6 months from now, I could be anywhere, and it would not suprise me, and I'm ok with that, because in the end my Heavenly Father does, and I know that what he has planned out for me is so much better than what I have planned out for me. So I'm going to stop this rambling and go buy groceries. I love you all, and I can't wait to see you all after having lived every possible moment of my mission to the fullest.

Sorella Spencer

p.s. a little bit of explanation of the photos.

the random pictures of Sorella Winegar, are all of her firsts as a missionary.

the one's of me in a purple shirts with hearts was a really fun p-day we did to a castle that was closed so we went on a hike instead. Everything in Sardegnia is surrounded by water, so the hike was on a beach.

The one of me in a blue shirt is a p-day that I actually hated because we kind of got kidnapped, and I was tired, and I forgot my wallet, and everyone kept insisting on buying me stuff anyway, but I did like the part where we found random sea animals and I got to hold them. I am forever a 6 year old child when it comes to animals.

The one of me in a green shirt is our thanksgiving lunch after ddm. Sorella Winegar convinced me not to brush my hair which is why I look so dumb. She also convinced us to eat our pumpkin pie with just our faces. Anz. Borner turned out to be particularly skilled. The picture of me with the bowl full of whipped cream is my attempt at pink stuff. It was fruit with whipped cream.... every generation the recipe gets a little simpler. (there is no jello or mini marshmallows in Italy.)

p.p.s. we also have a really cool investigator named Fiametta who started making a ton of progress this week. She could use a lot of prayers! Also Alessandro is working towards getting the priesthood!!!!!!!

This last photo is my personal favorite of her! Only 49 days left until I can see her in person!!!

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.

Don't tell people it's ok to break the law of chastity in the first conversation!!

Weekly email
Ciao Cari!
This week in Sassari, has been amazing. I know that every week I just tell you over and over again how wonderful Simona and Alessandro are, but they truly are just tender mercies of the Lord. We invited Simona to baptized on November 15th the second time that we met with her, and she accepted sort of. She told us that she was willing to work towards it as a goal, but that she wanted her husband to be present when she was baptized. Unfortunately her husband is in Longansport Indiana, which makes that kind of difficult. So we set the date knowing that it was kind of shaky, but we took every oppertunity possible to bear testimony to her about the importance of baptism and the Holy Ghost. We hadn't exactly confronted the issue, but were praying desperately that everything would go through.

On Saturday one of the elder's investigators Daniela was baptized and Simona was able to attend. She had to leave early so I didn't get the chance to talk to her about it. Then the next day in church I was pulled away by about five different people (I literally was in relief society for 15 minutes and I saw one talk in sacrament) so I barely had the chance to talk to her. Finally after church I sat down and had my first face to face conversation with Simona in five days, and I asked her what she thought about the baptism. Then she said one of the most beautiful things I have heard in my entire life. She said I want my husband to be at my baptism, but I saw, and I felt how important baptism is last night, and I want to be baptized here with the missionaries and the members that I love, so I don't think that I can wait to be baptized. So I asked her, Simona do you think that you still want to be baptized on the 15th, and she said yes. Then I hugged her. So she is going to go through with baptism, and I'm so happy. She is truly being converted. She prays so beautifully, and studies the scriptures so intently, and I can see how much the gospel is truly changing her. I feel so blessed to have met her.

Alessandro also had a beautiful experience at the baptism. We still haven't passed him to the elders. They were super busy with Daniela this week, and we could never make it work. After the baptism he told me that he felt a beautiful feeling that he couldn't understand, and I literally almost screamed that is the Holy Ghost!!!! Instead I calmy and simply explained the role of the Holy Ghost. Also he broke my heart. While Daniela was getting dressed we were all sitting quietly listening to Sorella Winegar playing the piano and he turns to me and says "Sara (He thinks my name is Sara, I have no idea why I think it might have something to do with my accent over the phone when I say Sorella, that or it's a Sardegnian pet name, but he always calls me that) are you going to stay here after January, and I told him no, I have to go back to America, and his face got really serious and he said Oh I thought that you would like it here so much that you would change your mind, which literally almost made me cry. So I told that story to the other missionaries, and now we aren't 100% sure that Sorella Winegar and I should pass him, I will keep you updated.

Also quick funny story. We had a first lesson with an English course student this week, and we were trying to explain prayer. He felt like God already knew what he needed and felt so there wasn't any point, and so I told him that I am very very close with my mother, and when I went to BYU for the first year she wanted me to call her a lot. She knew what I was going to say, she knew that I felt like classes were hard, and work was hard, and that maybe I didn't get along with my roommate but she wanted to hear from me anyway. Not for the information, but because she loved me, and wanted to hear from me while I was far away. Really beautiful analogy right? Yeah except that I am American and I messed up my Italian a little bit during my beautiful heart melting analogy. So as a I was saying Roommate which translates to la mia compagnia di stanza I paused because I couldn't remember if it was compagnia di stanza or compagnia di casa or collega di stanza because how often does the word roommate come up in conversation anyway?!?! So I said la mia Compagnia and paused, so helpful little Fabio helped me out with my Italian by saying il mio compagnio, so of course like and Idiot I said oh grazie il mio campagnio, and moved on with my analogy, but a little voice in my head was going something in that phrase was wrong, and then I realized that il mio compagnio means more or less live in boyfriend. So I told him that I was living with a man without being married, so I had to retract and repair that very very quickly. It was pretty embarrassing. So basic tip of sharing the gospel, when explaining the gospel don't tell people it's ok to break the law of chastity in the first conversation. That's all for me this week.

Love you all a lot

Sorella Spencer

Things are going really really well in Sassari!!!!!

Things are going really really well in Sassari!!!!! Like amazingly well. We are working really hard with two amazing investigators. Simona is a student from English course the lessons for about two or three weeks now, and she is making so much progress. She literally absorbs everything we say to her. She is so hungry for the gospel, she goes on mormon.org all the time, and then comes to lessons asking about temples, and prophets. She is amzing. We usually use 5 or 6 scripture references with her, and she just devours them. Whenever we finish lessons I'm usually super spiritually drained, and I have to tell her that we can't answer all of her questions at once, or I will literally die. She is so prepared. Sometimes I just want to hand her preach my gospel and let her teach herself, because she doesn't really need us at all.

Then we have Alessandro, who is the exact opposite. He hasn't ever left Sassari, and he didn't finish school so he has a hard time wrapping his head around something new. We started teaching Alessandro and Simona at the same time, and the last lesson that we did with Simona was a very deep study of the atonement. Alessandro on the other hand has been really struggling with the concept of not saying memorized prayers. Before this week we had done two lessons on praying from your heart, and he just could not grasp it. I was starting to feel like there was no way to get through to this man, and that there was no way to help him, so we decided to teach him very very basically about prayer one more time, and as we started the lesson I prayed very intently that he would understand the concept of praying, and I continued to pray silently for the rest of the lesson. About half way through the lesson he said something that made me feel like he had figured it out, so I interrupted the lesson (which by the way was us writing letters to Heavenly Father) and asked him to pray right then, and he did, and he did it perfectly, so we finished the lesson, Sorella Winegar invited him to be baptized on Nov. 22, and he accepted, and I made him pray again just to solidify the concept. It is amazing how differently Simona and Alessandro learn, but how equally prepared they both are, and how much I love both of them. We are passing Alessandro to the Elders, probably tonight actually, but I'm so grateful that the Lord gave me the opportunity to watch him learn something so significant.

This week I learned that Heavenly Father answers prayers, which in theory I know but I always forget. I know that Heavenly Father answers investigators prayers, but somethimes I feel like there isn't is much at stake with missionary prayers, so he doesn't answer ours. I'm just kidding, but sometimes I forget the power of God. I know that he is here, that he created all of these plans for us. I believe in him, sometimes I just don't believe him, and I find myself being suprised when he answers my prayers. This week there were three times where I was in a situation where I knew that I leterally could not resolve it by myself, and I just said a little silent desperate prayer, and somehow someone else did or said something that resolved the problem for me, and I just sat there thinking, wow Heavenly Father cares about even me, at this dinner table, on an island in the middle of the mediteranian sea, surrounded by sheep. Actually I don't see sheep nearly as much as I thought I would.

Also guess who is the new primary music director. Me. Being a missionary equals not always being in control of what we want to do. My companion is the only person in the branch who plays the piano even remotely, so she plays the piano during sacrament, and relief society. I have tried to explain to the branch that we can't spend this much time focusing on the piano, because it really isn't our purpose here as missionaries, and no one listened apparently because this week they dropped off the music for the primary presentation, and when Sorella Winegar went to primary she learned that not only are the teachers not very familiar with the music but that they don't know how to conduct music, so I'm doing it now. I've stopped trying to fight it, and I'm trying to embrace it now. As much as I feel like we are spending more time than we should on this, I keep trying to remember the sister missionaries who I met when I was probably 5 or 6. They were the first people who ever asked me if I wanted to serve a mission. I actually remember this conversation really well. I told them no, that I wanted to get married, and they told me that I could do both, and I said yeah but I don't want to be old when I get married. This was probably just a super insignificant annoying conversation that they don't even remember having, but I remember it, and it made a huge impact on me, and I think about those two sister missionaries a lot. So maybe this insignificant thing that we are doing will make an impact on someone else. I'm still probably going to complain about it in these emails, but I'm open to the idea that maybe there is some good behind it.

I love you all, I hope your lives are going well, I miss you like crazy. I love this country. I'm going to go carve some pumpkins for a birthday party Sorella Winegar and I planned for an English course student (seems like service but mainly I just think Halloween is an awesome holiday and they don't celebrate it here.)

vi voglio bene.
Sorella Spencer

Pictures from Zone Conference!

Click on this sentence to see tons of pictures from her last Zone Conference!

http://romeitalymission.blogspot.com/2014/10/sardegna-zone-conference-october-2014.html

This was easier than trying to post the pictures individually. Enjoy, she looks wonderful! 

I decided to add some of the pictures so they can be in the book!