Valuable life lessons

Cari Amici,
Well I'm in Sassari. This is probably my last city, and I have been reflecting back on my mission, and the time right before my mission and everything in my life in general that led me up to this decision. When I was 17 I was accepted into BYU provo, and I had to kind of assess my life to decide what direction I was going in, and what I really wanted, and at that point in my life I decided to make the Savior and his gospel the center of my life. That was a huge defining moment in my life. It changed my whole life. It's the reason I went to BYU, met some of my best friends, decided to go on a mission, learned a second language, and met even more amazing people who are literally my world.

It's been three years since that happened and I have felt pretty content with where I am, but I'm having kind of a similar experience right now. It's true I am an ok person. I am serving a mission, I follow the rules, I read the scriptures every day, I try to be kind to others, but I kind of feel the way that I did when I was 17, like it's time to step up and decide where my life is going. If I stay the way that I am, I will have a good life. I will magnify callings, I will probably get married in the temple (it's never a good idea to be to sure about that one), and I will probably be happy enough, but I feel like it's time to step up again. I'm trying my hardest to take everything that I have learned ever (more specifically in my mission, but in general) and really make myself happier through it.

I have always been very concerned with making things appear perfect, even if they aren't even close to ok. I tend to avoid contention at all cost which has turned out to be a huge weakness in my mission, because part of that entails that I avoid contention at all cost. If I don't like something that my companion, or my district leader says or does, I usually choose to just smile through it, even if I am inwardly furious. In my real life this worked ok, because if someone bothered me, I could just not talk to them and then call my mom and tell her what a jerk they were being, but it doesn't work as well in my mission, mostly because president says I can't call my mom. :( But also it has been really destructive to my relationships. It has made me resent people, even if they feel like we are really good friends. It has made me doubt the sincerity of people's kindness, because if I spend so much time in my head silently resenting everything everyone else does, what is going on in their heads? It has made people feel comfortable saying hateful, unkind things to me, because they know that I won't ever stand up for myself. This has been a huge stumbling block in my mission, specifically in my last area.

When I came to Sassari two things happened a) I decided that even if I had to be an absolute jerk, I was never going to let people treat me that way again, and b) I started training, which put me in a position where no matter how badly I didn't want to correct my companion, I had to because if you do certain things in Italy that are perfectly legal in America, we could get a hundred dollar fine. For example, the verb for leaving and giving birth are similar, and telling my companion that she just asked that member if she was going to give birth after sacrament. So I had to become ok with correcting people, and a lot of my resentment went away, I started feeling more on control of my life. I started getting better at taking criticism, and I started trusting that maybe people do care about me and want to be my friend. So my biggest lesson of being a missionary is communicate, and then forgive I guess. So even though it's hard I'm going to try to incorporate these things, and live my life at a higher level, so that I can be an even greater instrument in the hands of the Lord.

Random change of topics, I love training, I love seeing a person grow, I love seeing the type of influence that I can have on another person. We have been working on the first lesson, and we were able to teach it together (to an actual investigator!!!!) for the first time yesterday, and I loved hearing her say things that she had heard me say, and knowing that the type of missionary I am now will affect the type of mission that she will have for the next year and a half. It also makes me a better missionary. I want to be a good example, so I do everything to the best of my ability. I am more obedient than I have ever been, and I am better at talking to people on the streets, which has led to some amazing conversations.

Another random tangent, we have no work, well that's not fair, we have one investigator. His name is Alessandro His first language in Sardo, and he didn't finish school so his Italian is shaky at best. Sometimes he tries to teach me Sardo, because it would be much easier for everyone if I spoke that language, which just makes my life very complicated, because sardo is not a dialect. I can usually figure out dialects, but Sardo is a completely different language, it's not even close to Italian. But all in all Alessandro is pretty cool. He believes that all churches are true, he just is looking for the one that fits him best. He is looking for a church that isn't full of hypocrites, and he is pretty sure that our church is the one that he wants to unite himself with, because he likes the people and how much natural light there is in our church (direct quote, catholic churches are very closed so you can't see very well in them, which I guess could be annoying...) but he is having a very very hard time grasping our doctrine. He is pretty sure that Joseph Smith is a catholic saint, and we wrote him an outline for how to say a prayer and he read it verbatim out loud three times (which in all fairness is how it works in the catholic church) so it is going to be a very gradual process with him. We are considering passing him to the elders but we just kind of want to watch and see how things go for a while first.

I don't know a graceful way to finish this email, I guess I will just tell you guys all of the wonderful things in my life. I am serving with some of the most amazing people in the world. I love my companion, I love Sorella Clyde, and Sorella Sartena (the other two sisters in our district) and our elders are amazing. One of the elders has seen how much we have been struggling with work these last few weeks, and has been making sure to talk to woman on the street so that he can give us referrals (his name is Anziano Padilla) , and our district leader is amazing he's from North Italy and is doing a great job of making my companion feel important and loved. Also when he speaks english (his english is amazing) he sometimes directly translates italian into english so sometimes he starts off mass texts to the district with dear beautiful missionaries. (way normal in Italian, kind of startling in English), and everyone is so obedient and hard working, so there is no contention there, because we are all on the same page.

Also I have been reading Jesus the Christ along with the Bible recently (when you don't have investigators you get more freedom in what you study) and I have decided that even from a completely unchristian unbiased view the bible is a beautiful work of literature. Because Christ had to be more candid while talking to the Jews, a lot of doctrinal truths are buried in parables, and passing comments that he made to the apostles. By reading it along with Jesus the Christ I have been able to see just how much foreshadowing, and allusions there are in every few pages, and not just regarding the atonement. Even Lazarus being raised from the dead is foreshadowed. So even if you have zero belief in God, the bible is a beautiful literary work. I love you all miss you like crazy. I love this country, I love these people, I love the language, I love the food. I ate a pig brain the other day, that I did not love. Also I was on the radio. They asked me to do a broadcast about english course. uuummmmm.... I think that's about it.