Disco Sberna

Hello all,

Hey! Great week in Mistretta/Sant'Agata! The work is really exploding! We've found more new investigators and met more interested people this week than we have in my past three months here. I feel this is a good sign for opening up the city of Sant'Agata. There are people here prepared to here the good word!

One of the reasons for our success is the work past missionaries have done. Missionaries in every area keep track of the people they contact and potentially have interest and record them in an area book. We are then able to follow up with these people even years later to see if they remember us and if now is a good time. It's always so funny to look through the area book and the descriptions old missionaries write down about people. My favorite this week: "We met Pippo on the street one day. He is a gunseller searching for truth." I can see it now... "Pippo X: GUNSELLER OF TRUTH. COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU."

The other important thing to remember when you're looking people up is that in Italy, women usually keep their maiden name when they get married. So you have to make sure to ask both the man and his wife for their last name if you want to find them. We had one woman we were trying to contact forever before we realized that she had already been taught by the missionaries, but had been put under her maiden, not married, name. I like the maiden name keeping because you can get some great name combinations... this past week, we rang the doorbell of a "Re" and her husband "Aragona," which translates to King Aragon. They didn't answer, but I just assumed they were off protecting Rohan. (I attached a picture of their mailbox so you know I'm not making it up.)

However, we are stumped in our olive reaping service opportunities. EVERYONE in this area has a little countryside where they grow olives that they gather every year and press to make oil that will last for the rest of the year. We've asked everyone if we can come help them and everyone says yes, yes, they'll call us, but no one has taken us up on our offer. This week we were SO CLOSE... one of our investigators said we could come help him and we hadn't seen him in several weeks so we were extra excited for the opportunity. We even got all suited up in jeans (only the third time I've worn them on the mission) and drove out to the spot where he was going to meet us. He called us fifteen minutes late to tell us he wasn't going to do olives today since it looked like rain. OH! Soooo close! We were more crushed than an olive in an oil press. I never thought it would be this hard to serve people... Yet. We keep trying.

This week we had Stake Conference, which meant we all got to go to Palermo! Because most of our members don't have money for gas, the church reserved a private Sberna bus for our whole branch. That's right, all 15 some of us piled in a bus for an hour and a half ride to Palermo. I attached a picture of us and our branch, whoooo! That's Mistretta! Coming back was the FUNNIEST -- first the branch president and his wife started singing traditional Sicilian songs in the back. This quickly turned into the bus driver turning up the music and everyone shouting song requests. THEN the bus driver turns on these FLASHING DISCO LIGHTS. What short bus is equipped with DISCO lights? (It was the emergency LEDs just flashing from blue-green-red.. but still). The whole branch went crazy and everyone joined in for a round of "What Is Love?" (the answer is charity! the pure love of Christ!) Me and my companion are a little frozen, since we haven't heard any music besides hymns since we've started our mission and we're thinking, "Is this okay? I mean, the relief society president is dancing to 'Waka, Waka' in the back of a church bus..." But our poor branch hasn't had an activity in almost six months because their church still isn't ready yet. I think they deserved a little fun.

Every week we meet with the male missionaries from Palermo. Usually they take the train to us or we drive to them, but this week we decided to meet halfway in Cefalu. Since we don't have a church building there, we have an improvised meeting on the coast, which has to be the most spiritual spot. We really do work in the most beautiful area in the mission, with our nothern shore and sea side villages. I am VERY LUCKY.

OH. Letter shout out to JESSE SHEETS for your beautifully stationaried letters (as always) and TAYLOR JACKBOY and your package of joy... you know me too well! Also, I apologize to everyone who has sent me a letter that I haven't responded to yet. I have all of your names written down, there is just so little time. But you are not forgotten and everyone will get a letter sooner or later, hoepfully sooner.

Alright, that's all for this week. Say a little prayer for me and my companion. We have a lot of work ahead of us and we need lots of energy.

And in the words of my favorite Japenglish tshirt: "Smile and the world is happy!"

lots of love
Sister Fuller