Email from Sara 2/18/09

Ciao tutti!!

This will be a little bit quick today. We’re having a fun day at the Villa (mission home) today. We’re going to work outside in the garden and we’re learning how to make Sorella Acerson rolls. They are delicious and she’s teaching us the ways. But because we’re here there’s only one computer. We’re pretty excited about it too, because we get to wear pants!! So exciting!

Alrighty, well... lets see what’s new. We have a new couple here in the office from Utah. They are great and will be really fun to have around. Sunday was such a great day. We had a wonderful sacrament meeting that was absolutely perfect for the investigators and inactives who were in church. The final talk was on the restoration and was absolutely wonderful. It was given by one of the counselors in the bishopric. After church we had a lesson with one of our investigators, Jackie, who is really close to being baptized, but she works on Sundays. She’s from Peru, and pretty much told us that even if she were able to come to church two times in order to get baptized that she would never (as long as she was living in Italy) be able to come to church every week. It was good to get that out in the open, but we were a little bit discouraged, but she was talking about how she could go to church more when she goes to Peru and how she wants her daughter to go on a mission and how she should start saving money now, etc.. Anyhow on Sunday we had a lesson on obeying the 10 commandments, and she kind of had this “ahh....” look on her face, that she didn’t realize that by working on sundays so she could buy a car, and by not honoring the Sabbath day she was denying herself blessings. Anyhow, so now we’re hoping and praying that she’ll have the faith and desire to change and not work on sunday’s anymore. We’d love any prayers that you can send up that Jackie will decide not to work on Sunday anymore so she can come to church.

After church on Sunday there were quite a few families who stayed after church to have a dinner and it was wonderful to see how all of the different ethnicities were intermingling, because sometimes it seems like we have about 4 branches within the ward (Italians, Phillipinos, South Americans, Americans) But it was wonderful to get to talk with the members more. Sorella Bennion and I brought brownies to contribute and everyone LOVED them. They were gone in less then 3 minutes.

We’ve also been able to meet some great potential investigators. We’ve been out looking for some inactives that the ward asked us to find and every time we’ve been going out to do that we’ve come accross others who are very curious about the gospel. There are people prepared and it’s wonderful!

This next week will be wonderful. Elder Dallin H. Oaks is coming to Rome and there will be a special mission conference and he will also have a special meeting for the members. We are trying to get some of our investigators to be able to go- as I know it would be so strengthening for them to be able to be in the presence of an apostle of the Lord. So we’re really excited about that and we have been told that we will have the opportunity to shake his hand at the mission conference so that’s really exciting!!
Other than that, we’re just keeping on keeping on. There are days when I really just feel lazy and have trouble being motivated, but my companion is great about getting me going, and hopefully I can do the same for her when she has her down days. It’s great to be a missionary and I’m so thankful for this opportunity. I love you all and hope you are doing great.

Love,
Sorella Leckie

We had zone conference this past week and it was WONDERFUL!!!!!! These are all the sisters in the Rome zone.


This is the group of members who stayed after church to eat on Sunday. Good times!