Spiritually rebirthing people is hard work

Us missionaries and our best investigator friends

This week has been the best week ever! But also exhausting!  Exhausting in that we're-been-working-really-hard-seeing-lots-of-miracles way.   So it's been great!! Well first President decided to have a zone conference (even though we just had one two weeks ago) so back to Cagliari for us!! This conference was really inspired and just gave us a lot of inspiration for our work and I just loved it! 

Yeah...that's my companion.

 

I also had to do a scambio (exchange I think they call it in English) with Sorella Udall—our little Greenie!—for a day! 

Greenie and I got a little wet!

Okay can I just tell you how much I love this sister? She's brand new in the mission, but she doesn't have any fear at all to talk to everyone and she is so happy and going non stop without ever feeling down. She makes us all want to work harder. She's awesome. Also, my companion is super cool! We get along so great! I don't know how I am so blessed to work with such amazing sisters!

Greenie with her first pizza!

 

Okay so remember my last letter where we invited 3 people to be baptized...and they all kind of told us no or not yet. Well Sorella Patterson and I kept up this goal and kept inviting everyone to be baptized! We had a lesson with our investigator Antonella and it was a tough lesson. It was filled with questions and distractions and all these crazy things...but we wanted to invite her to be baptized so we just kept praying the whole lesson that the spirit would come back and the perfect opportunity. And it came! She was talking about how she wants to kneel down and pray to know if the church is true and get an answer—then we asked that if she does get an answer...will she be baptized. She said yes! She told her we've been praying about it and we know she can be prepared for the 22 of March and SHE SAID YES!!!!! So were so happy! 

Then we went over to Lucia Solinas! She had her boyfriend over, and he was making all these distractions and talking about the most randomest things...but we kept bringing the conversation back to the gospel (this is like my biggest, constant struggle...just trying to actually talk about the gospel! Hahah jk). Lucia was talking about how she likes to help other people and so we read a scripture about how when we are baptized we promise to help other people. Lately Lucia has been having a really difficult time and we've been trying to show her how faith in Jesus Christ will help her. We read Mosiah 24 together which is about the people in bondage who the Lord strengthens and delivers. At the end we asked why the Lord helped these people (kind of a difficult question), but then Lucia answered “because they made a covenant with them”. We were amazed that she picked out that part so fast. We invited her to be baptized and you could just tell that it wasn't a surprise, but that she has really been thinking about it! She said she wants to do it and when we gave her the 15th—she said she would do it then!!! Then, ah it was so cute, she said “But it's going to be hard...I don't know if I can get up at 6 am every morning” Hahaha! She thought she had to live JUST like us. She was happy to hear that our schedule was not a commandment. Ah she's the best! We love her so much!

These two lessons were the hardest lessons of my life! Satan was using every force to try and stop us, but Patterson and I knew we had to invite them to be baptized so we stuck with it and just prayed our hearts out during these lessons and we were able to come out with two dates. After one of the lessons Sorella Patterson said “Man spiritually rebirthing people is tough work.” Ah I know that that is true. But it is also the best thing ever. We have been so happy this week with our TWO BAPTISMAL DATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

….and ….then....satan came. He got both Antonella and Lucia to stay home from church Sunday! You have to come to church three times before you can get baptized so Anontella can't make her date now (which is fine, we'll just give her another). But it just bummed us out that neither one of them felt like coming. Then the saddest thing happened to all of our missionaries last night. So there's this investigator named Andrea. Sorella Felice and I found him on a bus, but the Anziani have been teaching him. He is AWESOME! He's 20, loves everything about the church, and has been reading and praying so much. He is the favorite of all us missionaries and the whole ward. Well he came to this activity last night and told us that his parents are really against him getting baptized and it's causing a HUGE conflict in his family and he can't do it anymore...so he dumped us all. I still think he will get baptized one day.

Well that's missionary life! You get a lot of miracles...but also a lot of disappointments come to. A big struggle that I've had on my mission is going from having a lot of faith for miracles and then trying to not be disappointed or sad or when they don't come and keep having that faith. When you get discouraged and lose faith then you became less effective. I'm getting better though! I prayed so hard and had so much faith that Antonella and Lucia would come to church...and when they didn't...I was fine. I still have a lot of faith without getting discouraged! They ARE going to get baptized one day...but sometimes the Lord has his own timing for everything and we all know his timing is a lot better than ours. So this week has been great and we're seeing miracles everyday and finding people who want to listen and who want the peace that the gospel brings to us. THIS GOSPEL IS AMAZING!!! I fall more and more in love with it everyday. Love you family! Have a great week! 

In bocca al lupa" means in the mouth of the wolf...which means Good Luck! I thought this was funny! 

That is so funny that you got my Christmas package back! Aw man! Thanks for always thinking of me and wanting to send me packages mom! Maybe just send me the letters and some pictures of Hayden and Kylie and don't worry about the package! As much as I would love those chocolate oranges... it might not be worth sending me a package! I wouldn't mind getting some souvenirs here so maybe just put some money into my account instead of worrying about a package! Thanks! Also thanks for keeping me updated with everything. I'm so sorry to hear about Emily and I'm definitely keeping her in my prayers. Also, I'm sending home a memory card with copies of all my photos—let me know if you get it! 

Love Sorella Knudsen