Positivity, Desert Island, and filling church seats!

Well can I just start off with this quote from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland that completely rocked my world this week. Here goes, "God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities. God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can't if you don't pray, and He can't if you don't dream. In short, He can't if you don't believe." I truly loved that quote when I heard it. Isn't life always better when we look at it with an attitude of positivity? It's something that I have really been working on in the mission. I have really been trying to see my life, the mission, myself, my companion, the work, everything in a happy, positive light. Everything goes better when we can see potential and when we can enjoy even the moments that don't work out for us--at least not in the way that we think they're working out. It has been interesting but I have seen many blessings and have enjoyed many moments in the mission when I'm sure I could have otherwise complained or gotten frustrated or sad. I still have a lot of work to do in continually being positive, but I have a testimony of how beautiful life can be when we chose to look at it that way.So...Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone's Christmas was beautiful and happy and full of love! There's a family here (The Mannucci family) that always invites the missionaries over every Christmas Eve and they buy whatever food we want and WE make THEM Christmas Eve dinner--the way it's done in America. I was completely mentally prepared to laugh my face off about it because the Christmas Eve dinner that we do with my family isn't really...one that I would mass produce for people and stamp it as a classic American Christmas Eve meal. Because we just do it very simple--I adore it--but I would hardly claim Cheese enchiladas and oranges as an all-american Christmas eve meal. So we decided as a district to make what Sorella Skabelunds family eats for Christmas Eve. It was practically Thanksgiving. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravey, carrotts, salad, rolls, the works. It was quite exciting actually. They put us in charge of the kitchen and it came at me like a dragonfly into a windshield how much of the kitchen vocab I do NOT know in the italian language. It's all good though. Language study. :) The branch here is great and I was amazed at how much love they showed us missionaries during the Christmas season. It was really touching that they got us presents and invited us into their homes at this time of year.What did the La Spezia missionaries do for the big day of Christmas? What a fantabulous question! We went to the church by 10 (yes, the elders had us all on a schedule) and we pretty much watched movies in the church---all day! Oh my stars! I kind of felt like I was living one of those desert island questions. You know, "if you could only bring 2 books on a desert island, which would they be?" Except our question was, "If you could only watch movies one day a year, what would you watch?" Granted we have some fairly strict rules on what we can watch so that kind of took a toll on our Desert island fun but alas, we ended up with goods like: Ratatouille, Life is Beautiful, The Polar Express, stuff like that. I decided by the end of the day two things: 1. It was kind of nice chillin' and watchin' some flicks. 2. There is not much that's fulfilling about watching films in large quantity. ha ha Seriously it was fun, but I also just wanted to run 5 miles after a day of Christmas laziness....and that feeling actually worked out in my favor because the buses weren't running so we got the priveledge of walking home! :) Merry Christmas to all eh!?I got a phonecall on Saturday night from Fratello Ricciardi letting me know that I would be giving a talk the following day in sacrament meeting...because they forgot to assign speakers. ha ha So I got to throw a talk together and it was actually kind of fun. At the beginning I kind of wanted to judo chop a cork board to let out my stupified..ness of not knowin what to talk about but I ended up talking about the importance of the commandments and that when we obey we're blessed. I got a little crazy with analogies to soccer and castles but I think it went pretty a-okay.BIG NEWS!! Sunday was the first time that the Acevedo family has ALL come to church! Oh Mamma Pajama was it a delight! We had a nice talk with Judy last week about how it she needed to get to church and apparently something worked because she was there with Arianna and Leo. Ah, it was a good feeling. ALSO the inactive member that I talked about last week...you know...she came to church this week!! WITH her 9 year-old-son. I love seeing the chairs of the church filled. It just makes me feel all chipper inside.Well we had a crazy cool day yesterday full of MIRACLES but I'm afraid I don't really have time to write about it. Maybe next week? Some kookster from the bus followed us into the internetpoint and was bugging me so I used up a bit too much of my time. Oh well! Pazienza! P.S. If you have not watched Life is Beautiful recently, put that on your lists because it was a winner! I laughed my face off and nearly cried my eyes out...okay that last part was thankfully false. It was really cool because I watched that movie before my mission but I obviously had to read the subtitles. This time I watched it without english or italian subtitles and it was a Christmas miracle noticing that I actually understood these wonderful italian people. And when I laughed, it was because I understood what they said and not what I read in english. AH, love it! Hope you had a holly jolly Christmas. Lots of La Spezian love, Sorella Hansen