Blog for 5/29/2013 and 6/5/2013

 Ciao tutti!  :D 5/29/2013

This week has been pretty great; we got to go to the TRC again to share a thought with some LDS Church members who volunteer each week.  It is always nice.  We also got to teach Fratello Taylor for the last time on Tuesday because he left for an internship he and his wife are doing in Italia!  :D  They actually leave a few days after we do, but they are heading up to Alaska first, I think.  Communiqué, in our last class with il notro insegnante, Fratello Taylor guessed where each of us would go for our first area in Italia.  It was really cool. :) He guessed that I would go to "una piccolissima citta" called "Mistretta" where the descendants of the first Italian to acquire a Book of Mormon live.  It was soooo cool.  I was the only one he guessed would go to Sicilia first from our class, so that was pretty interesting/cool/awesome.  :)  It was a great class period though: he invited his wife to our class so we could meet her, and they told us stories about how he proposed to her (Tangled-style on a river in a boat with floating lanterns around and the song from Tangled playing in the background.  Our class thought he was "super pro" for that, lol).  His wife (Hermana Taylor) also told us this really cool story about her mission in which she ran into a little boy, trying to give him a Book of Mormon.  He said, "I don't need it- my Grandpa reads it to me every night." She and her companion, being shocked, asked him a couple of questions and asked him to be baptized.  He agreed and was baptized two weeks later.  the Crazy thing is that they almost didn't stop to talk to him because they were late for a lesson.  Wow, right?!  After Hermana (Sister) Taylor left, Fratello Taylor showed us TONS of really cool pictures of his mission in Italy and told us lots of funny/spiritual/awesome stories of his mission days.  Hands down, best class-time ever at the MTC.  After class, we were all stuck in a daydream of Italy-ness.  Oh my goodness, I cannot wait to finally be there in Italia!  Less than two weeks left at the MTC!

A couple days before all this (Sunday, I think) our District and a few recruits from the Romanian district die the "Eternal Life" Challenge where we ate an entire cafeteria-sized container of Life cereal.  Holy cow.  Crazy/funny stuff!  One of the Elders in our Distretto ate NINE BOWLS of life!!!  :O  Then we had one sister and an elder who ate 6 bowls, and... it was crazy!  I was not going to do the challenge at first because I am super health conscious with food, but my district got me to do it because I saw that they were suffering... literally, lol.  They had about 3/4 to a half of the container left to go when they started saying, "Come on Sister Cherrington, go for it!"  or "Come on Cherri!"  Lol, so I got myself some almond milk and contributed to the cause.  ;)  After we had finished the container (yes, we succeeded!)  Sorella Stephens said, "Yah, that was the best thing ever when you joined in!"  So cool :)  We have lots of fun in our distretto.

Buuuuut, we have noticed lately that we have reached our "Mid-MTC Crisis," as Sister Mathews calls it.  We literally were starting to go nuts the other day during class when Frat. Guest was teaching.  We have been kind of slugging along since then, but things are starting to look up.  We have a new District leader who really wants to maximize our potential with study time, so that should be good.  But, in all honesty, it has not all been fun and games this week.  We are all wayyyyy tired because of our weird schedule, and we have been a bit all over the place lately.  I think Fratello Taylor's awesome class yesterday uplifted us though, and I am so grateful for that.  the devotional last night also helped a lot with that because it reminded us that we are representatives of Jesus Christ and His church, and we have set District goals for the week to have the classroom be a "learning zone" which I think will help a lot.  I am excited to see the progress that we will make as we strive to study, thinking of the people of Italy and God first.  It's all about forgetting yourself here.  And, as some of us were discussing earlier, when you forget about yourself and go to work, you are far less likely to be offended.  Interesting thought, that serving others can make one more peaceful.

Oh!  And the other day, one of the Anziani (Anziano Brown- Morrone;) challenged me to a California Slang-off.  He thinks that, because he is from Southern CA, that his slang is better than what we have in Northern CA.  I said "No way!"  And agreed to get together a list of the N.CA slang that I know that would be wayyy better than his!  I am still working on it, but I am going to need all of the help I can get!  So all of my N.CA buddies out there- help me out!  That includes you, little bro and friend(Andrew+ friends)  :)  ANNNNNND Alana Conatser and Avri, Niz, Nai nai, etc.  As long as it is appropriate, you can send it to me so we can win the challenge!  Lol, just something goofy here that we are doing to stay sane.  After all, it is tough to be in such a small space with so many other people for 6 weeks.  Lol, "good times" as Elder Jensen used to say.  :) 

Felice questa Settimana!  :D

So this week, I have been wayyyyy happy and I cannot explain why!  Lol, actually I can.  First of all, I have been focusing more of my time on reading the Book of Mormon and on studying the scriptures, which has greatly improved my mood and my receptiveness to feeling the Spirit.  I have also been striving to learn by the Holy Spirit better by praying more often and by praying to read the things in the Book of Mormon that will help someone in Italy when I go there.  When you pray for other people, you are truly more strengthened in yourself.  It is amazing.

Other than that, I am learning tons here, making great friends, and having a great time serving the Lord.  :)

Ciao for now!

Con amore,

Sorella Corey Anne Cherrington

Caro i miei (parents),  6/5/2013

Ciao, ciao, ciao!  :D  I miss you guys sooooo much!  We had such a great week this week.  Me and Sister Mathews taught some stellar practice lessons yesterday to Fratello Carrington   and a new teacher (forgot his name).  We invited our first "simpatizzante" (investigator) to be baptized and he accepted!  :D  so cool!  And our second lesson was on the Restoration and the first vision.  It went fantastically!  :D and I also got to act as "un membro" (a church member)  in Sorella Kippen's and Stephen's lesson.  It was so great; in their lesson, when they gave "Danielle" a Book of Mormon, he tried to pay them for it and said (in italiano) "Do I have to pay money for this?  I would be willing to pay."  Lol, they had no idea what he was saying, so they just stared at him, al freaked out and what-not when I discretely shook my head "no" to them.  They responded "no, no."  Then, I told him, "It's a gift" in Italian, and he understood.  And after the lesson, I was telling some other people in our District about how their investigator wanted to pay them for the Book of Mormon, and the two sisters I helped out said, "What?!  He tried to pay for it!"  it was pretty funny.  I really love the Sisters in my district and I love helping them out.  :)  It is so fun!

Ahhhhh!  And Sister Mathews and I think Sister Kippen have told me that the past couple of nights, I have been sleep talking in italiano!!!  :D  Wow!  What a blessing!  I am so excited to be making good progress with Italian.  I really love this language.  Also, I can express about 80-90 percent the things I want to say in Italian!  It is so awesome!  :D  But I know that it is not just me, but that the Lord is helping me every step of the way.  I know that I could not possibly have learned this much in 6 weeks on my own.  It kind of reminds me of the "Footprints in the Sand" poem that Grandma Earlene always had hanging up in her house.  I will never forget that.  I've been thinking a lot about her this past week, by the way.  I'm not quite sure why, but I think about her all the time.  Interesante. 

So we saw Elder Noho, Elder Interaminese (from Brazil), and their other MTC English-learning buddies!  XD  they always bring tremendous joy to our days!  Lol, I love it!  So Elder Noho taught us a five minute lesson in which he practiced what he would say in English if he were to talk to someone at a bus-stop.  He did soooo great, and thought it was less than 10 min, both me and sister M. felt the trueness of his message.  Sooo cool!  And he used an analogy about prayer that we thought was cool.  He said, "Do you like burgers?  [a funny elder from the Philippines responded "No!"  right then ;) ] No?  Well, I like burgers!  I realllllly like burgers.  So, prayer is like burgers because we all have the same top, and we all have the same...  [he looks over to one of his friends and asks "what is the one you call that is not the top?" Another Elder: "Oh!  The "Down"! E. Noho, "Thank you!"] And we all have the same down.  We may have different meats in the middle and we all add different things to them, but we always have the same top and the same down."  It was really great!  Lol, we love Elder Noho and friends :)  they are such an inspiration to us because they came her knowing NO ENGLISH and now they are basically fluent and can share lessons and thoughts with us.  I hope that I can speak italiano 100% fluently someday (maybe even sooner than I think!). 

Last night after the Devozionale (Devotional), we got to have a District meeting with President Willis and his lovely Italian wife.  It was probably the coolest Riunione del Distretto that we have had yet because they told us tons of stuff about Italy basically the whole meeting.  It could not have went better because now we all know so much more about what to expect when we get to Italy.  Also, Sister Willis pointed me out in the Middle of the meeting and said (in her beautiful Italian accent) something along the lines of, "Yah, you look like you could be from Northern Italy or Rome because there are so many redheads in Italy! Wow!!!  How cool is that?!  I know for a fact that there is no other place I could have gone on my mission except Italy.  I know that my mission call was prayed about and inspired.  It is great to be a missionary!

We made our last Temple trip today too.  It was sooo nice, and we actually got to go with the Anziani (Elders) in our District this time because we coordinated better beforehand.  :)  It was very delightful.  I always love the P-day temple trips.  It will be our last temple trip for about 17 months though, so that will be crazy. We are all praying that the Rome Temple will be finished by the end of our missions though!  It is not looking pretty right now because they are having some issues with the building standards being met 100%, so they have estimated a drawback, making the completion date sometime in 2015  D: But we still have time until the original completion date comes along, so we are hoping and praying that it will be finished in Summer 2014 or before then.

And OOOOOOHHHHHH MYYYYYYY GOODNESS!!!  XD When we arrive in Rome, we will be staying at the Mission home, no?  And this mission home just happens to be the ex-palace of Benito Mussolini!  :O  Holy goodness, right!  There is soooo much history in Italia, and I am excited to finally be there!  We are all way excited to find out what our first area to serve in will be!  I cannot fully explain how awesomely-happy we all are!

One more story: So, the Sisters in our District like to prank the sisters in the other districts, and the other night we decided to target Sorella Jones.  I had found a random gift bag in the give-away pile, we put an empty box of tissues, a fortune from a fortune cookie, a Mexican candy, and this creepy/hilarious note that Sisters Mathews, Stephens, and I collaborated on.  Sister M wrote on it," SORELLA JOOOOONES!  WE LUH YOU!", Sorella Stephens kissed it, and I put a mustache on it and drew a face around it.  It was a pretty amazing gift.  ;)  So, we doorbell-ditched it to her, whilst we his in the room next door with some of the other Sisters from our Zone.  Lol, when we left to go back to our room, Sister kippen had disappeared!  Haha, Sisters Wiltbank and Pancheri said, "Sorella Jones Kidnapped her!"  So, Sis. M and S. and I went to go get her back.  We arrived at Sister Jones' room to see that S. Kippen was being forced to tell stories about her life... lol, so random.  S. Jones called her Wendy Bird and had a pillow case halfway over S. Kippen's head.  So we leave S. Jones' room with kippen, but Sister Jones insisted that she had to escort S. Kippen herself.  She put the pillowcase all the way over "Wendy Bird's" head, and walked Sister Kippen back to our room.  It was fantastic.  Haha, we love Sorella Jones!  XD 

Communque, my time for e-mail has almost run out!  Sooooo Arrivederci per adesso!  the next time I e-mail, It will be from ITALIA!!!  XD

Con Amore,

Sorella Corey Anne Cherrington

Two Gingeys

Viva Italia!!!  June 11th 2013

Peeps of the same District!!! :)

Beautiful Flowers at the Provo Temple.  :D 

 

ARRIVEDERCI MARIA!!!!! COREY'S THIRD WEEK AT THE MTC!! :)

Ciao Tutti!  (La mia famiglia!)  5/22/2013

So I'm going on week four here at the MTC, and we leave in three weeks!!!  I am sooooo excited!  XD  We study so much every day, and I feel way more prepared to be in Italy than the day when I first arrived here.  I've been having a lot of day dreams too about Italy and about all of the fantastic people I will meet there.  Also, the devotionals here get me more and more pumped to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Per esempio:  Tuesday we had a nice devotional by a member of the 70 and his wife.  They were fantastic talks, but the Elder's talk was a bit more serious.  It made me think a lot about giving my all for my whole mission, and not wasting a single moment.  That may sound a bit cliche but, to quote the devotional directly, "Don't hold anything back from the Lord."  And after the devotional, our lovely Sorella Wiltbank (Vilt-bank in italiano ;) quoted this same line in our district meeting and added, "Don't hold anything back from the Lord because the Lord had not held back anything from you."  Wow, that really hit me; I need to get past my shortcomings so that I can be an effective missionary not for myself, but for Jesus Christ. 

ALSO!!!  :D  We had one of the best devotionals ever on Sunday by a Sister Mary Ellen Edmunds.  She was soooo funny and I felt like the things she said were directed towards me!  It was sooo crazy how her talk was basically an exact answer to many of the questions I had prayed about beforehand.  Wow, prayer really works, my friends, I tell you.  Haha, she was soooo funny though :)  I really appreciated her uplifting words and the fact that she let the Elders take off their suit coats in the meeting!  (Usually the Elders have to keep their suit coats on as a rule that they have in the devotional room.)  It's sort of funny though because the week before, when it was really hot, I was thinking, "If I ever gave a talk here, I would let the Elders remove their suit coats."  Funny, eh?  ;) 

Other than that, my comp and I are still really solid with teaching lessons, and with working well with each other.  I love her so much!  She does this creepy elmo voice thing sometime too, and I love it... Haha, reminds me of Alana a bit. ;) I just feel kinda out of place sometimes because I usually hang out with older people (one of my best friends is 27 :) and my comp is a year younger than me, and for the most part, so are the rest of the girls in my district.  They just like to talk about different things than I would talk about, is all :)  I really love them, however, and I would absolutely not exchange them for any other MTC district in the history of ever.  :)  They are seriously fantastic :)

OH!  :D  And I have to tell you about Elder Noho!!!  XD  So, Elder Noho is from Tahiti, speaks French, and is going to Chicago for an English-speaking mission.  When he got here, he did not know a speck of English and needed an interpreter just to get around, but as of the 2nd week here, he started coming up to our district and practicing door approaches/meetings with us.  It is so cool how much English he has learned and is able to speak with us!  :D  It makes me feel like I need to have more faith in myself when it comes to learning italiano.  :)  Communque...  Elder Noho approaches us often to practice his English.  And lately, he has been saying, (because he knows that we are an Italian district) "In my country, we have a song that goes "Arrivederci Mariiiiiiiiiaaaaa!!!  Buona Sera Signorrrraaaa!!!"  We all love it sooooooo much!  And whenever he sings it to us, he does this hip-dancing thing that is so awesome/funny!  And he started cracking up when Sister Stephens told him that we get his song stuck in our heads all the time :)  LOVE IT!  Not to mention, when Elder Noho is just talking to us of practicing a door approach, he does his distinctive hip-dancing thing then too!  He is fantastic :)

SO we have finally reached our "halfway" mark here at the MTC, and we get to be in Italy in less than 3 weeks.  I know I said that already, but I am soooo excited!  :D  Oh!  And I have seem quite a few of my friends here, :) including CHAUNTEL CROMMARY :)  who is getting married the week after I leave, I believe, and my friend Lauren Barden from MUN. :)  I see Sister Barden a lot, and she gave me an Asian Candy the other day that was wayyyy good!  (She is going to Taiwan on her mission).  I really love seeing my friends from BYU here.  Also, I have tons of new friends, and I make friends with random sisters in the hallways in the evenings!  It is so fun.  One of the sisters who I talk to a lot has red hair, is going to Latvia, and is sooooo nice!  She gave me a small pack of M&Ms the other day, and she always asks me how I'm doing.  Sooooo nice :) 

So, I should go now because I have barely any e-mail time left...  D:  Well, I love you, famiglia, and Ciao to everyone else out there!  :D

-Sorella Corey Cherrington

Corey and some wonderful sisters!!  :)

The beautiful mountains behind the Provo Temple!! :)

More beautiful scenery at the Provo Temple!! :)

A very bored elder!! :)

Elder Noho, the hip dancer??!! You have to read the blog!! :)

The elders and sisters in Corey's district!! :)

Second Blog Post From Sister Corey Cherrington - 5/15/13

Hey, Ma!  Annnndn Daddio and Andrew!!!  :D

What is up?!  I miss you guys :)  Here is my blog-appropriate post:

Ciao Tutti!  :D

I am loving the MTC and I have been improving sooooo much at Italian!!!  :D  People in my class still ask me for help a lot, and I am so glad to be able to help them through their struggles- even though I struggle at times myself.  It is sooo cool because I have witnessed the Gift of Tongues in action, and I know that I would not have been able to do two teaching appointments and two TRC meetings on one day (monday) without help from the Holy Spirit.  I know that God lives and that He speaks through His missionaries; I have experienced it firsthand while here at the MTC, and I haven't even gotten to Italy yet!  :D 

Lol, so sorry for any spelling errors, I am typing at the speed of light right now because I only have less than an hour!!!  D: 

Communque, class is pretty fun most days, but sitting through three hour block classes two times a day plus additional hours of study is a bit of a test to one's sanity... Lol, we make it really fun though :)  Per esempio, one of the girls in my District, Sorella Stephens, says "viscido" all the time, which means "creepy" in Italian.  (lol, at least that's what we think it translates to.)  So, the other night, she starts singing "Viscido, oh viscido"  in the tune of "I need thee, oh I need thee".  HAHA!!!  Soooo funny :)  And then my companion, Sister Matthews starts harmonizing with her, then Sister Kippen joins in... Lol, we had a very "viscido" chorus ;)  Lol, molto divertente! 

Oh!  And, Ma, you will LOVE This because you love this Apostle :)  Elder Russel Nelson gave the Devotional address last night, and it was amazing!  He talked about missionary work in terms of teaching people- not lessons.  His wife also spoke about the power of Family History work in line with Missionary work.  It was soooo cool!!!  :D

(Mom, I will send a letter with more about it :)

Other than that, our first investigator, "Raimondo Borg" actually ended up being our 2nd teacher here at the MTC, Fratello Carrington.  He is a very fun teacher because he is so dramatic and he has very animated facial expressions.  Fratello Taylor is awesome, too, but he maintains a different sort of mood about his class.  Both teachers are equally awesome, but in different ways.  :)  And because we are into our third week now, they began acting like they don't understand English!!!  :D  So fun!  lol "Non capisco inglese!"  Haha, Fratello Carrington always acts so shocked when one of us asks a question in English.  It is so fun :)  And, sorry to skip around so much, but after our devotional we had an amazing District meeting where we all shared our thoughts about Elder Nelson's words.  One of the Elder's Testimonies really touched my heart because he went around the room, calling each of us by name and saying "Sorella/Anziano ..... Jesus Christ loves you, and Sorella/Anziano.... jesus Christ loves you." It was so awesome.  And I shared my Testimony as well, and I felt the Spirit so strong.  (Family, I will include more in a letter to you guys later :)

Oh yeah!  And we had our first meetings at the TRC with members in Italian.  We did pretty well with our visiting experience, and the first lady we spoke to was very nice, and helped us out when we stumbled with the language.  For a moment I thought "Wow, I am so ready to go to Italy; I really think I will love talking to and teaching people there."  Haha, but theeeeen, my companion and I faced a humbling experience because the second lady we spoke with talked soooooooooo fast it was incomprehensible!!!   :O  We were both quite shocked, and were at a loss of how to respond to her a lot of the time.  We later found out that she was speaking troppo veloce because she was worried she would be late for work (she cut our lesson short to leave for work).  So no worries!  Lol, or at least that's what I think!  I'm sure that I will be humbled much more with my Italian skills in the near future... Oh well, that's how we progress, no?  We have to make mistakes every now and then to learn. 

Also, I had a fantastic time at the temple today, with the Sorelle from my district :)  Famiglia, I will write you more about it later.  It was one of the most beautiful experiences I have yet had at the temple. 

Annnnd, did I mention I love my District?  They are so awesome!  We have soooo much fun and sooo many laughs together :)  Their names are: Sorella Matthew, Slla. Stephens, Slla. Kippen, Slle. Pancheri and Wiltbank, And the Anziani are Jiminez, Apple, Loertcher, and Zemp :)  (the titles we have are Sorella and Anziano because they are the Italian equivalents of "Sister" and "Elder"  :) which are the typical missionary titles in our church.)  Well, that is all I have for now!!  I am loving life as a missionary right mow, and I am loving the MTC.  I am BEYOND excited to go to Italy though!!!  XD  (Only 4 more weeks until we go!)    Ciao for now!!!  :)

-Sorella Corey Anne Cherrington

This Plaque hangs in our church in Clearlake!!

Corey's Companion is Sister Mathews in the black skirt second from the right!! :)

This is Shannon, Corey's roommate from fall Semester at BYU!!  :)

This is one of the elders in her district.  :)

Another elder in her district. :)

Just outside the Provo Temple!!  :D

First official blog post from Sister Corey Cherrington from Provo MTC!!!

Today's Date:  May 8th, 2013

Caro i miei (dear mom and dad)

 

The first week at the MTC has been a blast!  :D  SUCH hard work, but a blast.  It's kind of cool because you expect the MTC to be one thing, and it is completely different from all expectations.  The Spirit here is so nice, and it just makes every day so much better than it would otherwise be.  We eat, sleep, and breathe Italiano; we spend around 6 hours in class a day (except for Sundays and Wednesdays [P-day]) and we have an hour of this language program called "Tall," AND we have about an hour and a half for language study aside from all that (lol, Mom, feel free to correct my spelling because I can't go back to look at it).  In one of the two three-hour block classes that we have every day, we have all been teaching a volunteer investigator in Italiano!  :D  It has been SUCH a great experience.  We had some good times and... not so good times teaching, but we learned through our mistakes that (1) We have to pray before every lesson or the Spirit is not with us.  AKA we have to invite the Spirit before it will come.  (2) It is best to study the Gospel first, and then the language because when you have the Spirit with you, you learn the language sooooo much faster.

 

At the end of our lessons with "Raimondo" he said "Granpiacere" and seemed very grateful for our lessons; he also said that he understood our lessons and asked how much experience we had with Italiano.  It was sooooo great; I wish I could tell you guys in person :) 

 

Another thing, I have been speaking Italian a LOT.  It is sooooo awesome!!!  :D  I love speaking this language so much, and I hope to be able to learn it well enough so that I can share my knowledge of the Gospel with others.  Gah!  I love Italiano!  I love Italian people, I love Italy... I can't wait to go there on June 11. :D  Oh!  And I am like the Italian guru in class because I've studied it so much before.  It is so cool to be able to help the people in my class with the language.  Sometimes, in language study hour, I constantly hear "Sister Cherrington, what is this?"  Or "Sorella, what is the meaning of 'egli'.  Lol, I love it :)  I just hope I will be able to continue helping others as we progress. 

 

So the day before yesterday, I went with a small group to Salt lake to process/sign Visa stuff.  I was in the only group that was able to meet the new mission president before we are actually in the field.  I feel so blessed to have been able to be there. :)   I thank the Lord for this great opportunity.  Communque...  the mission prez is wayyyyyyy cool!  :D  He is a very large person- being very tall.  His wife is sooo funny too!  :D  Lol, she does not know much Italiano, so she said, "You want to know what my favorite [Italian] word is??? BELLISIMO!!!"  Haha, I love them both already.  Lol, and on the way out of the consulate in SLC, the missionaries all took the stairs, while the Presidents took the elevators and when we arrived on the ground floor, we discovered that our Presidents and the Church Travel person, Katy, were no where to be found.  This lady came over to us, informing us that our peeps were all stuck in the elevator!  So she took us up to this random conference room up four flights of stairs to wait for them (we were very reluctant to do this...lol).  About 5 min later, she told us the elevator was fixed, and by that time, Katy thought that she had lost a whole slew of missionaries!  We went next door to this Sandwich place we talked about going to beforehand, and found her there looking for us.  We all laughed so hard about it all, haha.  It was sooo fun :)

 

Oh yeah, and I absolutely love my district; I feel like we are constantly LAUGHING!  Haha, I love it :)  I apologize ahead of time if I do not attach photos this week because the computers here are weird...  But I do have lots of photos for you guys.

 

Well, that is it for now.  I love you guys sooooo much!  Please Dear Elder me (dear elder.com)  because I love your letters :)

 

Ciao for now!   :D

Love,

Sorella Cherrington

Missionary Countdown

Only 15 days left until I report to the Provo MTC!

Sister Cherrington

Italy Rome Mission

You report in 15 days.

Mission Call Opening and More

At Anderson Marsh; I love that place!

I haven't posted in quite a while, so I will need to give many updates.  I came home to Clearlake Oaks, CA for Christmas break, and opened my mission call at church right before our annual Christmas party.  It was amazing; I opened my call with people who I have been friends/pseudo-family with for years, and I felt tremendous vibes of love/awesomeness from them all.  :)  For those of you out there who don't know the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have "Wards" in towns and cities that cover small areas, while stakes cover a wider area of, sometimes, many counties.  In our small ward in Clearlake (Highlands Ward), we have sent a total of zero missionaries out in the past 10 or so years...  Thus, you can see what generated so much excitement at my call-opening party.

I was delighted to open my letter from the first presidency, finding that I had been called to the Italy Rome Mission.  It's funny because my parents, my brother, and I all seemed to know where I was going before I got my call.  I even had a few strange dreams while still at BYU that, when I woke up, made two words came to mind: Rome, Italy.  The Lord has an interesting way of telling us things.

On the Bridge at Anderson Marsh

On a slightly different note, I have been looking through numerous mission blogs/e-mails from current missionaries which continue to inspire me to bring the light of the gospel to others.  One of my friends mentioned me in an e-mail as well:
"It is so crazy how so many people I know are going on missions! I got a letter this past week from one of my friends from BYU, Corey Cherrington, and she is going to serve in the Rome Italy Mission! The same country where Brother Peel served! So that will be really cool. And I´m sure many others will be heading out soon too. It is all so exciting!"
It really is exciting to see so many missionaries going out to do this awesome work.  I am proud to be a part of this huge movement, and cannot fully express my gratitude for all the support I have in my decision to be a missionary.  I'm especially surprised and delighted by my Grandpa Ben's enthusiasm about my mission.  He is not a member of our church, but he has expressed on many different occasions how proud he is of me for devoting my service and time to my religion.  He even asked me to read my mission call to him after I had opened it at the church.  While reading, I could tell that both he and I felt the Spirit.  I made no comment about it at the time, however, because I lacked a means for explaining the feeling of the Spirit without seeming crazy to him.  And Grandpa, if you read this, know that I love you, and I have hopes of finding better words to explain my faith to you in the future.

Me and Dad after my Mini-Y Conference talk

I have also been doing a fair amount of speech-making in the past couple months.  Just recently, I had the privilege of speaking at a mini-youth conference in Ukiah, CA about the "Sweetness of the Gospel."  I really enjoyed the assignment, and the youth seemed to like my talk.  Also, I will be speaking for the Upward Bound classes at my old high school, Lower Lake High, on Wednesday.  My message there will be quite a bit different, but I still hope to be able to inspire the Upward Bounders in the same manner as the kids from my home stake.

Haha, gotta love Laura.  :)

Pic from the Mini Youth Conference

 So, what else have I been doing?!  It seems like so much has happened, I could hardly share it all. :)  One thing that I am really looking forward to is going to the Oakland Temple to do my pre-mission temple work and finally being able to have some time with my Dad.  He's been working at this really intense job in Rohnert Park (approx. 1 and 1/2 hours away from where we live...) that requires him to be there 6 days a week.  I'm really proud of him though because he has taken a significant leap from being unable to move much due to his back/back surgery, to heading up a really big Casino job as the Supervising Foreman (or something to that effect).  He has an apartment up there now with his buddy Dennis (who is pretty funny by the way!) and we get to visit them every now and again.  Just looking on the bright side- he will get some time off soon.

Me and Andrew at the Dollar Store; I love my little Bro.

 Sorry for my deficiency in re. to blog brevity, but I have one last thing to say for the time being: I officially love Guido from Life is Beautiful and I aspire to, someday, be able to speak Italian with as much excitement and life as he does!  Haha, "Arrivederla, Principessa!"  Now: I miei amici, ora devo a andare.  Percio, condivido questo messagio con voi:  so che il Vangelo di Gesu Cristo è vere.  Amo il mio Padre Celeste e le tante benedizioni nella mia vita che lui mi dà.  So che la Chiesa di Gesu Cristo degli Santi Ultimi è vere.  Ringrazio il Signore per la mia famiglia e per le benedizioni del loro sostegno.  Queste cose, dico nel nome di Gesu Cristo, Amen.

Oh!  And I forgot to mention: my mission will be an 18 mo. break in my studies.  I will be returning to BYU in about 18 months from May 1st.

Round Table after the ward Temple trip

Ah, the Dollar Store... Good times.  ;)