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