Email from Sara 6/17/09

Buon Mercoledì!!

Ciao Tutti!
It’s been another crazy week. We've been working in both Prato and Pistoia again and it's good but I feel a little bit like we're neglecting a few things in Pistoia so it will be good to get back to JUST working there.

President has been cracking down on a few things around here. It's good, but it makes things a little bit more difficult. We have recently been invited to not have another dinner appointment with a member without an investigator or less active member there, which complicates planning, but it's possible. It was nice before to go to members house because it's a little bit of a break, but it will be good to use that time more effectively. That's one of the problems here in Italy is that dinner appointments are usually a several hour affair, so it really does make a lot of sense to make sure you can use that time to teach and work with the members. I'm sure it will help.
We also have a goal as a district to find and baptize a family. We are working with the branch for all of them to be praying for and bringing a family to an activity that we will have in July. It's great to see the members getting excited about doing missionary work.

It's been fun to get to serve with Sorella Hawkey again. Sorella Stephenson actually had her conference for 3months and so it was jut me and Sorella hawkey. It was just like old times, but not in the MTC :). She is an amazing missionary.

We are working with some great people now. Sylvester, who is from Nigeria, is amazing. He asks questions and then listens to the answers. It's wonderful. His family is in Nigeria and his entire family is very catholic, but he loves hearing the word of God. He is so honest and I have a lot of respect for him. I hope we, with the help of the holy ghost, can help him understand the truth of the restoration. I just have to be patient and let him learn.

We are also working with Piera who has a baptismal date for the 28th. She's technically one of the elders investigators, but she's a 14 year old girl so we have lessons with her also. Her whole family will be baptized at some point, but they are the ones who are waiting for divorce papers to be processed so they can get married. She wants to learn so much, and was asking us the other day how she can serve a mission. Ironically, yesterday at our appointment with Sylvester he asked how he could be a missionary, too. I love that people want to learn and share what they know!

There are others too that we are able to work with. THey're not quite as close to baptism, but we're working on it. Our most recent counsel was to not spend too much time with those who aren't willing to keep commitments. I just have to make sure I help them understand why these commitments are so important before I can just let them go because thy're not doing what we ask. I'm not sure if that made sense, but oh well. :)

I finally got my birthday package! It was a very happy day... my one month birthday.. I opened them on June 16.

Okey dokey, well I gots to take off. We're heading to Firenze today to run a few errands and see some sights. It's been a great week and I'm looking forward to another one!

Love you all! The church is true!
Sorella Leckie

This is from when we went to Lucca. Le sorelle in front of the store Le Sorelle. Cute, huh?


Me and sorella hawkey. She informed me that our half way mark was on the 14th. Since that was a sunday, we had to go get gelato the saturday before. Of course we get gelato other days too, but it was a good excuse.