Transfer 3!!!!!!

BUON GIORNO A TUTTI I MIEI CARISSIMI!!!!

Well well well this is Sorella Soh, the trainer, coming to you live from Torino with my new companion/trainee....Sorella Bunker, from Orem, Utah!

What. A. Week. So on Thursday Sor Walton and I went to Milano (on the 6:50am train. Ick) and then "broke up" at the train station when I left to pick up my new trainee and she waited for things to get together for her to go to Varese. There was lots of hugging involved. I'm gonna miss her! Let's be real, I already miss her! Anyway, after that I went with the other sorelle who are training and we picked up our new trainees. I actually kinda know the other two sorelle - Sorella Forbes and Sorella Bush, the latter being from Madison, WI and also coincidently in the Allen's ward.

The big news of the week (other than the training stuff) would have to be the weather/nature! Last week there were some earthquakes in Italy, and we felt a little tiny bit of one of the aftershocks or something. I thought my leg was just twitching, but then it didn't stop when I moved and also Sorella Walton felt it. It was weird!

Also, THERE'S SNOW. Yeah. It started snowing Saturday night, snowed basically all day on Sunday and snowed a little bit on Monday and Tuesday. Ah! While snow is nice and pretty and all, it makes the work so much harder because no one is outside in the parks and no one wants to stop and talk on the streets. And bikes? Ha. Good luck. I've had to learn how to get us around the city on the bus and trams because using our bikes is out of the question - it's just too slippery. It's all very annoying.

Well, I guess you're all wondering about how training is going, so I'll tell you - it's going! I don't really have much to offer Sor Bunker in terms of her being able to have a lot of confidence in me, seeing as how I've only been here my two transfers of training, but she tags along with me anyway. She had taken most of Ital 101 at BYU (she didn't finish because she entered the MTC before the semester ended) and of course studied Italian at the MTC. Her Italian is pretty dang good for not having studied a ton, and she can pretty much follow in our lessons and has had opportunities to jump in and teach and bear testimony and stuff, so she's just gettin' it done! Unfortunately, we have had weird appointments for her to get all her paperwork done and we keep getting stood up for appointments and stuff, so we've ended up having to do a lot of door to door contacting. It is not easy as a new missionary to try and buzz in to a stairwell and then go ring everyone's doorbell and try and talk to them about Jesus! Shoot, it's not really easy to do that as a not new missionary! But we keep going at it. In fact, the first day, we were ringing doorbells and happened to meet a woman who was basically stuck in her house because she has to use a big breathing machine nose tube thing. Anyway, we talked with her at her door, gave her a Book of Mormon and prayed with her. We showed her the picture of Christ that is in the front of the Book of Mormon and she started to cry and said "it's not easy to make me cry!" so that was really cool. And then the next night while we were knocking on doors, we met a woman who has an LDS friend and gave us her number so that we could come back and talk to her when she had more time.

It's been amazing how becoming a trainer has changed my mission. Training means that I'm the senior companion and that means that I have to basically do everything - make sure that we have appointments, deciding what we're going to teach, we're we'll go to do finding work and making ALL the phone calls. Do you know how much I hate calling people on the phone? Gag. And then of course I had my own problems about being nervous talking to people and tracting (knocking on doors - we call it "casa in casa") and all of those things that make being a missionary hard. And then to add the calling of being a trainer on top of that? Yikies. But you know what, I know that I am completely incapable of doing all those things of my own accord, regardless of what my qualifications look like on paper. And so this is probably the first time in my life where I have had to completely and fully rely on the Lord to do something. Mostly it's because I don't want to ruin Sorella B's mission by starting her off on the wrong foot. Being a trainer is a big responsibility! And so I've had to rely completely on the Lord. So what good has that done me? Well, I'll tell you: MIRACLES. I don't know how we've managed to find places to go and people to see and teach, nor do I know how our schedule all of a sudden got filled with appointments. And then of course there are all of the little things that happen during the day, like catching the right tram or bus, not falling off our bikes (oh yeah, our first day together my bike got a flat tire and we couldn't get to an appointment because of it), and just the people we meet and talk to. So my testimony is this: The Lord QUALIFIES those who he calls. So somebody start working on a certificate for me because I'm being qualified! And all this despite my abilities or lack thereof.

Anyway, time's up! Love you all so so much. Can't do this work without you and your support and all that :)

LOOOOOOOOOVE from Torino!
Sorella Soh (yikies, I almost put Katie there!)