Sorella Williams: BUON NATALE

Ciao!!

     This week was crazy and packed. I'm also extremely sick and just want to throw my body off a roof top but other than that it's been great!!

     We had our last scambio of the transfer (what what) laaassstttt scccaammmbbbiiooo (uh uh) last last last sca sca scambiooooo YA! Man, what a time to be alive. 7 scambi in 4 weeks. And because we are such amazing STL and such loving, beautiful and, humble people, we did it that way so everyone could be in their cities for the week of Christmas. It's a great time to make friendships with members.

      Anziano Johnson of the quorum of the seventy come to visit our mission so we had a big mission tour. He is the general authority over the church in Europe. Aka he's a busy man. Basically President just split the mission right down the middle in two and had two big conferences on Wednesday and Thursday. It was awesome and they all spoke and inspired us so much. I had a chance to speak with him one on one. Prettttty neat.

     We also had Consiglio which is a leadership meeting with the STLs and Zone leaders. That was super fun because I got to see old friends! It was also my year mark. Which is so crazy. Anziano Johnson came to that as well and gave us really helpful advice as how to be better leaders over this mission.

This Christmas season has been really fun for me also. The whole city of Milan is really beautiful with trees and lights and shopping. This year's Christmas video made by the church is truly amazing and has been shared with almost everyone we have talked to. On sidewalks, metros, streets, and proselyting and the duomo. We had our church Christmas party which was really fun. I even got to ride one of those weird hover board things..and completely fell. We had a couple investigators come so it was awesome.

We saw Fernando and Iglida a couple days ago and it was AMAZING. the spirit was strong and they are making big moves towards marriage. They know this church is true. We talked about the importance of families and had them read The Family A proclamation to the world. There truly are no ifs, ands, or buts, in that. Fernando wants to be married and said he would tomorrow. She is scared to offend the parents but we reassured them that it was the right thing to do and that it would bless their family tremendously, but ultimately it's their decision. They are making a lot of progress.

We have other progressing super exciting investigators right now as well and I really hope I can just stay in Cimiano and keep working with them. We receive transfer calls Saturday and I don't know what will happen!

Sunday we were all invited to a massive Filipino party in a tiny apartment. I'm still dreaming of the food. It was so fun. Filipinos go crazy for karaoke so that was probably the highlight of the party.

I hope everyone truly appreciates that this year Christmas falls on a Sunday. We cannot choose a better place to be or a better gift to give Christ than by going to church as a family on Christmas day. Everyday I meet people who are so lost, so lonely, or just without family. Their Chritmas will not be anything special and when we tell them that we are having a special hour of church on Sunday they get excited to have somewhere to go. Reach out to those around you and invite them to come. I read something this week from President Monson and it really made me think. He talked in a conference about Alice in Wonderland how she walked up to the cat and asked him what road she should take and he said "That depends on where you want to go". Let's decide that our end destination is Christ. We are given promise after promise that the road will be paved for us. Complicated decisions suddenly become more simple when we ask "Does this take me towards Christ? Temple attendance? church attendance? the spirit? my family? or does it take me away from those things?"

Have you ever given someone a present that you thought a lot about, put a lot of work into, or spent a lot of money on, and they were just kind of partial about receiving it? They Didn't understand how hard it was for you to give them that thing? Or maybe they accepted it but now its just kind of sitting collecting dust. We were given that gift. Jesus Christ gave us EVERYthing he could, his life. Do we accept it gratefully? happily? humbly? promising to take care of it always with love because we know what it meant for him to give it to us. Or the fact that the Father gave us the gift of his own actual child as sacrifice? I don't think any one of us appreciates it to the magnitude we could. This year let's take that present and treat it with respect. We take the name of Jesus Christ by being baptized, we follow Jesus Christ when we persevere to the end. Let him have the heavy burden he already paid for, he wants to take that off our shoulders. Follow Him and his example and we won't just have a happy life, but our happiest life. It is truly the greatest gift of all.

I know this is the church of Christ on the earth today. I love my Savior.

BUON NATALE

Sorella Williams