Verona, Italy - August 25, 2010

Okay, I would just like to begin by saying that it is a good thing I had brainstormed and written down during the week a list of things to write home, because it is really hot today and I am exhausted! So I am sorry if this isn't as energetic sounding as normal, but you can blame it on riding bikes in the heat all day. hehe.

We had a neat experience last Wednesday night after p-day ended (p-day is never a full day, it starts at 10 am after studies and ends at 6 pm in the evening). We went to visit a couple of investigators and a member came over and gave one of the investigators a blessing because she wanted one. It was cool to see how she really was calmed and touched by the blessing. And then afterwards we taught a really impactful lesson about how to hear the Spirit, because right now that is the investigator's biggest hang up. She has felt the spirit, and she has felt the truth of our message, but she absolutely refuses to recognize it or admit it. She just keeps insisting she has not felt any thing, no change whatsoever, so we keep trying to teach her about how it is not likely to be some gigantic thing and she isn't just going to suddenly become a different person, but that it is a soft feeling. There is a quote in preach my gospel about how the spirit does not get our attention by shouting or shaking us with a heavy hand, but rather, it whispers, which we read to her twice now and I think she is starting to understand. It was really fun to have the other investigator in the lesson, because she could talk about how she came to recognize that she was feeling the spirit when reading the Book of Mormon. We have seen the first investigator a few times since that night, and she still is not willing to recognize the soft feelings of the spirit. I think there are a few distractions we need to help her eliminate. She is in a lot of pain from some of the tragedies she has suffered in life. It is so hard to watch her just persist in her pain when we know that the gospel will truly bring her peace and healing, and she is just refusing to see it or accept it. She is reading the Book of Mormon now though, abbastanza spesso, and still really loves for us to come visit her, so it is not that she isn't moving forward, just very slowly and having a lot of trouble overcoming this particular stumbling block. But it will come, though.
Anyway, the next night we finally got our Brazilian family of investigators to do a serata with our Brazilian family of members. We told the wife and mother of the investigator family that we would come by at 6 pm on Thursday then all go together by bus to see the member family, and she said ok. So we show up at the investigator’s house, but she and the older son, are not at home and are going to meet us at the station, so we go with the husband and the younger son by bus to the station and then we put them on an out of city bus to take them to the place outside Verona where the members live. But we didn't tell them beforehand how far it was, and they were a little hesitant to get on the bus, but we just acted like it was totally normal and way cool and we were super happy and excited and then they were fine. Luckily it is not too far outside the city. And then the member family took them back home afterwards in their car, so I think that helped. It was really cool! It makes me really want to learn Portugues, actually, because we teach a lot of Portuguese speakers and use a lot of portugues speaking members, and sit through a lot of lessons or evenings with familys that happen all in Portuguese with us just trying our best to understand. It is way fun though! I think it was especially good for the husband, who is a lot more hesitant than the wife. She already knows that it is true. We found her during my first transfer, right at the end, and through her started teaching her family. They are super awesome, I really love them.

Anyway, we also had zone conference this week, which was way cool! We got to spend some more time learning from and about our new mission president and his wife, and I feel a lot more comfortable with them now and like I know what they want for the mission and what they expect of us. They are really great, I love President and Sorella Wolfgramm. As part of the zone conference, we found out about some changes that are happening world wide for missionaries, particularly with the scheduling of zone conferences and interviews with president, as well as a couple of extra training things they will be instituting. They have come up with these condensed lesson thingies that relate to the information in preach my gospel but are differently formatted that they want us all to start learning, because next summer they will start teaching this way to the missionaries going for the whole world in the MTC, and we have to be ready when the new type of missionary hits the field, to train them well and to work with them well and to step missionary work up a level world-wide. I think it will be really exciting to get to see this shifting process throughout pretty literally my whole mission, since I should end up coming home just after the switch over takes place, I think. Plus then I get to be constantly learning new ways to do missionary work through training from the church and working hard on constantly implementing them and thinking as differently as possible all the time. It should be really cool. I am excited!

Also, I have been thinking a lot about less active and new convert work this week, and how that really is an extremely important part of missionary work. New converts need to be visited after baptism regularly, and need to be integrated quickly into the ward, or else they will simply get lost, and all the work before baptism will be in vain. We had scambio this week, and so Sorella Harper came back here again to Verona with me, and we got to see a new convert who got baptized with Sorella Harper and the sister before me, and she freaked out when she saw Sorella Harper. She was so excited to see her because she loves those two so much, those are really her missionaries, you know? And then we also saw another investigator, and she sort of told us the same thing, that it was Sorella Harper and I who started teaching her and took her through that process, and so we are the ones she will always have as the image of the sister missionaries in her mind. It made me feel really good to hear her say that, because I love this investigator and she is so important to me, and it was nice to hear she likes me so much too. =) It is nice to know I have really made that difference in someone's life, that the Lord let me be a part of that process with her. Yay. And then also less actives, we have been working with a family from peru here, and they have just started coming back to church and it is so exciting to see them there every sunday and to see the changes in them as they come back to church! I never knew that reactivating was so exciting, because those people still really need that help. It is cool.

Also, during zone conference, they had this example thing, where the assistants were teaching a lesson and they brought out this gigantic barbell with tons of weight on it, and said they needed someone really strong to come up and lift it for them. So they said, 'Sorella Langham, why don't you come lift this for us?' And I laughed and so did everyone else, because we all thought they were joking, but they totally weren't. So they had me come up in front of both zones full of missionaries, and then they gave me the authority to lift the big bar with so much weight and made me try. Twice! Obviously I hadn't a chance. So they called up a pair of big strong elders to help me, and they represented power, showing that we really need to back up our authority with power or else it is in vain. It was kind of exciting to get to participate in zone conference; I liked it.