Verona 1 - Transfer 6 - Week 4

September 7, 2011 Dear Family and Friends, We had a great week this week, and it's been great to hear from all of you!  I have tried to respond to a few letters from this week, so hopefully I get most of you.  :)  Thanks for the updates and miracles that you've shared with me!  I just love you all so much, and I pray for you often!   This week we have been working with our new convert, Charles, and he is AMAZING!  He bears his testimony to everyone, and he has also introduced us to two of our investigators, Alex and Michael, who are getting baptized this transfer also.  But I got a phonecall a couple of nights ago, and the man introduced himself as Charles (I thought), and asked if we could send our people to fellowship him because he found a job and was moving to Sicilia.  We both were so sad to see him go, but told him how happy we were for him to get work.  Then yesterday in the lesson, we asked Alex if he'd heard from Charles and knew how he was doing in Sicilia, how he'd found the job, etc.  He said, "He's great!  He was at the Questura with me this morning. But I don't know what you're talking about with Sicilia, etc."  Then we tried to explain the phonecall, and he said, "How many Charleses to you have in your church?"  So we called this number again of the guy who I thought was Charles, and we had Alex ask his name (because sometimes the accent is hard to understand for me).  He said it was Stanley! Which maybe doesn't sound a lot like Charles in American English, but they sounded almost identical to me with the awesome Nigerian accent.  :)  Stanley was the friend of one of our ex-investigators who we passed to the Anziani because he (Mavin) had a crush on Sorella Smith.  But Stanley had also come to the lessons, and he was so touched that when he moved away from Mavin, he called us to send missionaries to him!!!  We then had a double celebration that Charles was still here, and that Stanley had felt the Spirit enough to ask for missionaries!  Hopefully the Rome mission gets on that referral!  He's pretty golden!  :) Alex is getting ready for his baptism on Friday, and we looked at his progress record yesterday and realized we've seen him EVERY SINGLE DAY since the day we met him!  He just can't get enough of church, the gospel, and the Spirit!  On Monday, we gave him the homework to start working on his family history, gave him a pedigree family group chard to start filling out, and encouraged him to call his mom or someone to help him get started.  YESTERDAY (Tuesday) he brought it back nearly half-way finished, and said, "I would have done more, but the network was bad when I called my mom."  He's the oldest of his family, has 8 siblings, and I wish I could remember all the names of his siblings.  First or all, his parents are Mary and Joseph.  Then some of his siblings names are: God's Gift, ABlessing, Little One, Mercy, and I don't remember anymore.  But it's so funto start learning about his culture and hear about his family.  They don't seem to have last names in general, but his name, Alex Igho, is actually special because he got his Grandfather's name!  SO COOL!  I want to do Nigerian family history work!  It sounds incredibly difficult and therefore full of miracles and really fun! Hopefully we'll be able to have enough to teach him.  We're nearly finished teaching him the new convert lessons, and he's already learned a lot about the temple, getting REALLY excited to go, and today he's learning about the priesthood!  SO FUN! Anyway, I'm about out of time now, so I've got to wrap it up.  But it's been really incredible this week to feel the Spirit teaching with us.  I've really felt that the Lord has blessed me with special talents and gifts here that I know I never had before the mission.  I hope that I can develope them and use them enough that even after the mantle is taken from me I can have a little extra help getting back to normal life.  I still see my weaknesses, they're definitely still there, but I feel the help of the Lord in overcomming and resisting temptation. I love you all, and I thank you again for your support, friendship and love! Keep the faith! -Sorella Willey -- Sorella Willey elizabeth.willey@myldsmail.net Sorella Elizabeth Willey Missione Italiana di Milano Via Gramsci, 13/4 20090 Opera MI ITALIA