Week 1

Ciao Wonderful Family!

I hope all is well in good old IF! I absolutely love the MTC. My companion is Sorella Bollwinkel from Gilbert, Az. She is the second oldest of 9 1-2 kids. Her mom´s due to have the tenth in just a few weeks! Since she´s from Az, she´s never seen snow before. But it snowed here the other day and she loved it! It was really neat to see snow through some new eyes.

Wow. I don´t even know where to start. This week has been incredible in so many different ways. The spirit in the MTC is so strong. Learning Italian has had its ups and downs. The first few days were rough. We really had no idea what to do to learn, but we´ve got it down now.

Our investigator is a wonderful man named Nico. We started teaching him last Friday. The first few lessons were okay, but we never really broke through Nico´s shell. Basically, we would prepare our lessons in Italian and read them off. But Nico rarely shows any emotion, so it was really hard to know what he was thinking about our message. Then on Monday our lesson completely flopped. We said the words that we had prepared, but there was just something missing. So we reevaluated and decided that we needed to work together more as a team. The next day we planned our lesson together in English and then took a few minutes to make sure we knew the vocabulary that was needed. It was kindof crazy because our district was confused about the schedule and didn´t know we were teaching Nico until it was time to go. Luckily some other companionships went first, which gave us the time to prepare. But we went into the lesson fully relying on the Lord to help us be able to say anything. The lesson was on the Atonement and was soooo powerful! We read scriptures, bore testimony and asked what Nico felt. He said a lot of things in Italian that I honestly couldn´t understand, but somehow I knew what he was saying, and his gratitude for the Atonement was incredible. At the end he got emotional and had to stop speaking. It honestly was one of the best experiences I´ve had. Since then we´ve asked Nico to be baptized and he´s thinking about it. He said it was a decision between himself and God, but that we could help by continuing to teach him the truth. We read some of 3 Nephi with him and challenged him to read somemore. Hopefully it helps.

I have to say that Sundays in the MTC are absolutely incredible! There are meetings all day long, but also a lot of time to study the scriptures. And there was a special spirit when we had sacrament meeting and partook of the sacrament. The spirit is always so strong here, but that was amazing.

Well, my district is absolutely amazing. I love everyone. There are 3 sets of sisters. Sorelle Baer and Ervin, Sorelle Holloway and Halsen, and Sorella Bollwinkel and myself. Everyone has incredible stories about getting their calls or what they sacrificed to be here. There are also two sets of elders. Anziani Lemmo and Axson and Anziani Gunderson and Robertson (from Wanship!). Everyone's going to Milan except for the last set of elders, and we are seriously going to miss them in a few weeks!

So yesterday at lunch I was swallowing a piece of catalope when Sorella Baer said something and made me start laughing, really hard. A piece of cantalope lodged itself in my throat, but I was laughing so hard, I couldn't even do anything about it. By the time I realized I couldn't breathe, I could only think that it was bad manners to spit out a mouthful of food on my plate. I could totaly see Mom's face when we lick our knives or plates and I didn't want to disappoint. So I continued laughing and choking. My district couldn't tell if I really was choking or not and were unsure what to do. But I finally realized that my life was more important than manners and was able to cough up the cantalope. haha.

Also, here's a few notes for David (I got his email wrong, can you send it to me?) First, my teacher is a Fratello Carrington. He doesn't know David well, but they were in an Islam class together. Also I ran into a Sister (Rachel) Gaines who lived in Campus Plaza and also knows Dave. She's one of the people who helped out with the Marriage Campain when it was in the parade. Neat!

Well, I've got to go, but I love you all! The church is true. I love the MTC and being on a mission more than I can ever describe. I feel that everyone should have an opportunity to spend time in the MTC because it changes your life. 

I hope all's well at home.

Love you!

Sorella Pace