Email from Sara 12/17/08

Ciao tutti!

Well it is a beautiful day in Rome!  It’s not very cold and the sun is shining for the first time in days.  We’ve had some really good thunderstorms here though.  The thunder just seems to rumble for forever.  I love it!  Lots and lots of rain though.  But I manage to stay dry enough.

I will be staying in the Rome 2 district.  I’m pretty excited about that and look forward to getting to know my way around a little better.  I am still with one of my companions, Sister Bennion.  Sister Ross headed home this morning :(.  But I’m excited for her to be home for Christmas.  We are actually still in a Threesome for the moment because the °Dying° missionaries leave on Tuesday, but Transfers don’t actually happen until Thursday.  So another of the Sister’s (Sister Johnson) who’s companion died is paired up with us until tomorrow morning.  We are actually sleeping in the other district, but still having to do what needs to be done in our area, so it’s kind of weird.  I’m excited to be able to get into a routine.  And I’m super excited to be working with Sister Bennion.  For the past month, I’ve felt like we were just kind of plodding along, doing what had to be done and nothing more.  But S. Bennion and were discussing that we don’t want to plod along.  So we’re stepping it up.  I’m just hoping that we step it up to a pace that we can both maintain.  It will be great!

Okay... I guess I’ll take care of this little item of business.  I can get an international phone card her for €5.  Which is really really cheap and that will allow me to talk for the 30-45 minutes we are allowed.  So,  I don’t know for sure what time I’ll be calling, because that has to be arranged by our district leader who is being transferred in tomorrow, and  I think we’ll be having P-day on Tuesday because Wednesday is Zone Conference ,so I’ll try to let you know on Tuesday what time I’ll be able to call.  But, as far as who to talk to and how I’ll talk with everyone...  I don’t think I’ll have time to make a bunch of calls and I’m not sure how I would do a conference call, but if you wanted to have a trial run and see how well you can hear when you have the cordless on speaker phone and a cell phone on speaker right next to it or something.  I’ll let you all figure that part out.  But I’ll be calling from the church here with a phone card at some time on Christmas day.  The tricky part will be figuring out the time difference so I’ll let ya know when to expect that.

Alrighty, what else… I always seem to forget what I wanted to tell you when I sit down in front of the computer. I’m not exactly sure what the problem is :) Probably that my brain is fried.  That seems to be the most likely.

We have our ward Christmas party coming up this Friday and we have several non-members who have said that they will come.  We’re really excited.  There are so so so many good people who are friends with the missionaries and members but seem to be content with just that. They aren’t interested in hearing the lessons or anything, but they just want to keep on they way they are.  It’s tricky to work around, but there’s a quote in Preach my Gospel that says something to the effect that one day every person will be backed against the wall of faith and we will have to choose if we are going to follow our Savior, Jesus Christ, and try to live His gospel.

We do have one investigator, Jackie, who is fantastic.  She’s been learning for a while, but she works on Sunday’s and hasn’t been able to come to church, but she knows that’s what she needs to do to be baptized. She wants to be baptized and do what’s right and that is so exciting!  There truly are people who are prepared for the gospel.

Okay… well we still have lots of things to do and not much time to do it, so I’m gonna run. I’m super excited to talk to you on Christmas day!  I love you all and hope you have a fantastic and very merry Christmas.  And mom, you better have made lots of goodie plates even without me there to practically force you to do it :).  Love you!!

Sorella Leckie

p.s. – I spent €45 on a pair of boots.  It just rains too much to have something that doesn’t cover your entire foot.  They should be very adequate for this winter and next.  Just wanted to let you know where that chunk of money went  :)