hey everyone!
so sorry that my letters are super unorganized. we have a certain amount of time we're allowed to be on so i just kind.. go........
so first- Sunday for relief society we had a guest speaker. Ann M. Dibb. the prophets daughter. um. so cool! she basically just told us stories about her childhood and some lessons she'd learned and then she was like "so last night i was taking a drive with my parents..." all casual. so with the prophet. no big deal............ haha anyway she asked the prophet what advice she should share with us. she told us a bunch of stories. the one that stuck out to me, i had heard before, but she told the story about when president monson was a bishop and he had a prompting during a sacrement meeting to go visit one of the ward members in the hospital. but he didn't want to leave in the middle of the meeting. he got the prompting again and ignored it, telling himself he'd go right after sacrement. as soon as sacrement was over he rushed to the hospital where he found out that the guy he went to visit had just passed away and was asking to see him. moral of the story- never ignore a prompting. no matter how stupid you may feel. always, ALWAYS, follow promptings.
then in sacrement with our zone, i sang a musical number with another sister and an elder. we sang "i know that my redeemer lives" in italian. it was powerful and i wont lie... we sounded amazing ;]
at the sunday night devotional Steven B. Allen of the missionary department came and spoke. it was one of the most intense talks i have listened to. like.. ever.. he talked a lot about enduring hard things on your mission and pushing through the hard times because no matter what, it will be worth it. then he called us all to repentance. it was so intense. he is such a fantastic speaker.
on monday we had class with one of our teachers that doesn't normally teach but is over the italian department. Brother Bullouch. he is amazing. and for about an hour during class he pretty much bore his testimony about how SYL (speak your language) is amazing and helps missionaries so much and is what we all should be doing.
he sold it. the whole time he was talking i knew he was going to challenge our district to only speak italian. now this may not seem like a big deal but when you think abuot it.... it is...... i started crying.. out of fear of losing my personality and not being able to express what i really feel. i mean... its a scary thing! we decided as a district we were only going to speak italian from that point on. we set up two chaires in the room and one side of the room was english and the other was italian and you had to walk through the chairs and it was like leaving the english language behind and you say your last words in english. SO INTENSE!!
so............ i was the last one to go.. i said "right now, i am giving up fear for faith." and walked through the chairs. man... chairs have never scared me this much. so i have been struggling through the last few days, trying be best to speak italian..... messing up a lot but hey...... its actually been really good. i have been learning a lot faster and realizing the things i need to learn in order to be able to talk day to day.......... its crazy. it has also kept us more focused, cause lets face it, the only thing we really know how to talk about in italian is the gospel. so that's good too.
um...... lastly- on tuesday night, we had a devotional (we have them sunday and tuesday nights) and Russel M. Nelson came and spoke. 2 things from his talk:
"there is cleansing, healing, enabling power in the atonement."
"true testimony is irrefutable"
well anyway... i love you all and i miss you a lot. keep writing me!
and keep praying!!! HE ANSWERS!
Sorella Sudweeks
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