The Fourth String

Buoooooongiorno!!!

Yikes. I can't believe it's Wednesday again already, even though a ton of stuff happened this past week! First of all, shout out again to Slla Baker...75 lessons in one week...last week we had 6. Yeah. That bites. We were talking to one of the YSAs here and she has a friend who is serving in Mexico. Apparently this friend had 30 baptisms in one month...and their goal was 50. She told me that and I almost passed out. I was like "how many lessons a week do you have to teach to be able to baptize 30 people???" Seventy-five lessons a week? That's like more than 10 lessons a day!! Oh my gosh.

Well, like I said, it's been an exciting week! We had specialized training on Friday and all got new bank cards! So now I have a brand new Bank of America card...oooOOOooo. The Lynches are the senior couple in the office and they've been traveling all around the mission to do these trainings. They were also the ones who drove us down to Siena and witnessed first-hand all that went down in our apartment! I talked to Slla Lynch a little bit and she said she was talking to Slla Capece earlier that week at their training and Slla Capece told her "I miss Sorella Soh!". Well I miss the Capeces! The training wasn't anything particularly special, but the most exciting part for Slla Lyman and I was the special musical number we performed! Yes!!! A violin/ukulele duet!!! Yep.You read that right. Violin and ukulele. That's right, folks, the Fourth String Sorelle performed their spectacular rendition of the Italy Milan Mission Hymn!!! I had joked with President about doing a violin/ukulele thing because Slla Lyman is a STELLAR violin player and studies it at BYU and stuff. Well, last week in his email to me he said "if you and Slla Lyman come up with something for the training on Friday, let me know!" so then I started to take it seriously. So Thursday for our language study/lunch, we spent an hour and a half or so writing a violin part to the mission hymn. I wasn't sure if it would work at first, but we decided to try anyway. As I had been thinking about how we could make it work, I kind of came up with a little tune in my head that would sound cool with the mission hymn, and then when we acutally got the violin out, Slla Lyman is a boss and could just play whatever I hummed out. The end result was AWESOME!!! Seriously, it sounded so cool. Everyone was pretty much blown away when we performed it at the training (don't worry, they filmed it and I'm working on getting a copy). The sound probably wasn't that great because the violin is pretty loud, but we got a standing ovation at the end. It was really fun. Slla Lyman told me it was the first time she's ever written anything on the violin - I'm glad I was there to write it with her! It's super awesome.

Other exciting news, we set a baptismal date on Sunday night! So the sisters here before us (Slla Forbes and Slla Mancuso) met a guy named Atilio and taught him the Restoration. Then he was out of town for a few months working and then moved and all kinds of crazy things so they didn't ever see him again. Anyway, long story short, we got in touch with him again and on Sunday night went with a member to his house and talked to him about the Book of Mormon. He said that he hadn't really read it, but really liked the story about Joseph Smith and Christ in the Americas and stuff. We always invite to baptism our first lesson with someone, so Slla Lyman asked him if he will get baptized when he knows that what we teach is true. He said yes without any hesitation, and I was kinda surprised. I also thought that if he accepted so easily that we should go ahead and try to set a date with him. Since it is Slla Lyman's job to invite people to baptism because she is the trainee, I whispered to her "Date! The 23rd!". Unfortunately, as I was saying that, Atilio had gone off talking about prophets or something and so I carefully tried to wrangle the conversation back to baptism. Once I got it set up, I handed it over to Slla Lyman and immediately she said "terremo una ceremonia battesimale il 23 febbraio. Si preparerà per farsi battezzare quel giorno? / we will be having a baptismal ceremony the 23rd of February. Will you prepare to be baptized on that day?" And he responded "Sì. Dove? / Yes. Where?". Haha. I wasn't sure if he really understood what he had just agreed to, so I kinda followed up with things like "well, you need to read and pray and come to church if you WANT TO BE BAPTIZED ON THE 23rd" and he was like, "yeah, yeah, I understand". And then we set up to see him twice a week - we have an appointment with him tonight! But he seems to understand that we want him to get baptized and he wants to do it, so we've just got to make sure we help him get ready! 

Today the Sorelle serving in Bergamo (Slle McNamara and Harward) are coming to do pday with us, and then I'll be going back to Bergamo with Slla Harward to do a scambio (exchange) with her. Slla Harward was companions with Slla Lyman in the MTC. Neither she nor Slla McNamara have served in Milano, so we're going to go out and take a little tour of Milano with them - the Duomo, the creepy bone church, etc. I'm also excited to scambio in Bergamo! I've never been, but I've heard it's really beautiful. They also seem to have a lot of work there, so it's going to be a really good scambio, I'm sure of it!

Oh, mom! I got your Christmas package! THANK YOU! YOU ARE THE BEST!!! Slla Lyman also appreciated the Reese's trees you sent. As I stuffed mini kitkits into my mouth I kept saying "my mom is the best!" and she seemed to pick up on that trend because as she unwrapped a Reese's tree, she said "man. Your mom is the best." and savored every last bit of that chocolatey peanut butter goodness! So mom, it's been said in the mouth of two witnesses that the word shall be established, and Slla Lyman and I both have declared that you're the best! Thank you! We've had lots of fun sorting out jelly beans...Slla Lyman told me "I feel like I've just learned so much about you" as I told her all about my jelly bean preferences. And don't worry, I also shared some of the treats with the Elders in the ward, Anz Sciarretta and Anz Bedzold (sp?)...it's a hard life being an Assistant to the President...but they were also very grateful. "Those were the best jelly beans I've ever had!" Anz S told me (he only eats orange jelly beans). 

Well, we're off to go do our grocery shopping for the week! Oh, and another thing, shout outs of awesomeness to my second cousins who just got called to the Peru Lima and China Hong Kong missions!!! Yeah! That's three of those Hafen cousins with mission calls! Word.

Keep reading your scriptures! I finished Alma 37 today! Be a GEM!

Love,

Sorella SOH