Cleaning, Walter update, You are my sunshine...

What another splendid week in the mish. We had President's interviews which were so pleasant. ALSO Saturday was a holiday here in Italy--surprise! ha ha I love Italians. I wish I could tell you exactly what the point was but alas, I find myself very uninformed but essentially everything was closed. So all of the missionaries stay inside and clean the whole apartment. It gave me flashbacks of doing "white glove" checks in college. Since I couldn't listen to sweet tunes while I was cleaning (like I did in college) what's a sister missionary to do? Welp, you bet your bottom dollar she put on some talks! ha ha Oh my life. It was actually so great. I have never learned so much and cleaned the kitchen at the same time. Win win!On Friday we had an activity where we watch "The Testaments" in church. We had a couple of people from English class come and Walter and his cousin Paolo came. It was great. We are having another activity this Saturday. We're going to watch the Sunday morning session of conference together in church and we invited all of English class last night and of course....Walter is going to be there. Yup yup. I'm so excited that we're watching that session. There are some ridiculously wonderful talks and I'm so excited for Walter to hear the prophet speak. We were reading the scriptures with him and he asked us about modern prophets and....that was a bit much for him. He just couldn't wrap his head around the fact that there could be someone even remotely comparable to Moses on the earth day. I was kind of worried that he reacted that way but at the same time...not so much. It's great that he understands what a big deal it is that there's a living prophet on the earth today. Now he just needs to pray about it and we need to be careful to be doing everything we can to help him.Walter came to English class last night and he seemed a little...not like himself. It was sad. I asked him what was going on and he said that he talked to his family about coming to the church and to put it simply, mama and daddy aren't too pleased. I remember just looking in his face and feeling so sad for him that they reacted this way, but feeling like this was going to be a good thing for him--an extra push for him to really pray about this and find out if it's real. Well, after my shower this morning I heard our little ring tone for when we receive a message and my companion was confused and asked me what it meant. Well essentially here's what the text said, "Good morning Sisters. I know." I waited a second and thought, "Wait a sec...WHAT!?" I called him and he said that he couldn't sleep last night and he grabbed the Book of Mormon and started reading in Moroni. He said he feels like he needs to increase his faith and repent. Let me tell you why this was crazy: So remember how I was cleaning on Saturday listening to talks. Well, I was listening to an AMAZIN' talk by Elder Holland and he was talking about the importance of investigators having faith in Jesus Christ and repenting before baptism. I remember listening to that talk and my heart kind of sunk and I felt grateful that we didn't set a date with Walter because I didn't feel like he was at that point yet--it was still something he was learning but not quite internalizing yet...if that makes sense. Well what in the world! A couple of days later, he figured it out! He knows that he needs to prepare to be ready for baptism. I'm just so excited for him. There have been many moments when he'll say things that just make me so happy because I know that he feels something. In fact, this morning when we were talking about what he read last night I asked him if he felt something and he said, "Yes, and it was strong." And I was like, "That was the spirit. It's amazing huh?" He said that he hasn't felt this way in a really, really, really long time.ALSO, his cousin, Paolo, is an investigator and makes me laugh so much. He is ...quirky--just a complete character. Anziano Smith was talking to him Sunday night and Paolo said that he'll get baptized when Walter does. I was like, "That's great Paolo, you're going to be baptized?!" And he had a completely straight face and said matter-of-factly, "Yes, when I am ready." Oh man. I wish you could meet this guy. Too funny.In other news, I'm trying to think of other fun things that we can do for English class and uh....we taught "You are my Sunshine" last night. ha ha It was actually super fun and they loved it. Don't worry, I did not continue on past the first verse because then it just gets depressing and in my opinion, no song with "Sunshine" in the title should be depressing. But...what do I know...Well, there are so many great moments that come up thanks to awkward ones. For example, we set a goal to kneel for all of our prayers so as soon as we enter the house we kneel and say a prayer. By the time we get up we usually slip on our tile floors because our knees are sweaty. Who knew how many good times are to be had thanks to sweaty days? I certainly had no idea, but they make themselves known more and more often. Love it.Well, transfers are this week. HOPEFULLY we'll hear on Tuesday night where we'll go and with who but...who knows, it could be on Wednesday morning like last time. And then Wednesday night we've gotta go. I honestly have no clue what's going to happen. Just hope whatever's best for our investigators and the branch. I love you all and hope you're loving every day of your beautiful lives. Read your scriptures and do your home/visiting teaching! :) Sweaty, lovable Italian love, Sorella Hansen