January 18, 2011

President & Sister Wolfgramm, Justin, and
new companion Anziano Hutchinson

Okay, so I got my new companion!  His name is Anziano Hutchinson.  He's from Bountiful, Utah.  A bunch of the people that were with him in the MTC called him a "fireball," and that title is very fitting - he's a blast to work with!  He wrestled and played football in high school, and he does swimming/diving stuff as well.  We've gotten along really well so far, we've had a lot of fun, and we've seen some cool little successes together!  Plus, the Lord is definitely qualifying me for this work - my language skills have improved dramatically (I can speak basically fluently with the people when we are teaching to and talking with people), my abilities to teach the gospel have improved, my memory has gotten better, it's easier to love people and keep a good attitude, I have more energy, and we're able to do the work that we need to!  Here's a little bit about what happened this week...

Last wednesday night we went to Bologna (it was still Anziano Koponen and I) and we crammed in an apartment with 10 missionaries.  We all ordered pizzas and we had a lot of fun all together.  Then, bright and early (4:45) we got up to go catch the train to Milano so that I could go meet my new missionary!  We had the little introduction meeting with all of the trainers and fresh from the MTC missionaries and learned who we would be with.  We had lunch, then went on our way!  Then, that night, for the first thing as far as real "missonary work" goes, we had a lesson with Rosa!  She is absolutely amazing!  However, she hadn't started to read the Book of Mormon yet, but she had probably the greatest excuse I had ever heard (the last time she was there, we invited her to really "study" the book of mormon - to ponder, ask questions, and really dive into it; but she had gotten sick right after our visit and was in bed almost all the time feeling horrible, and she said that she wanted to be able to focus on what she was reading and really give it her all).  Nevertheless, she still didn't read it, and I'm sure she would have been blessed if she would have tried.  Anyway, we invited her to be baptized, but she said that she wanted to get an answer first so that she could know for sure.  It was a good lesson (we had a member there too - he was absolutely perfect!), and we see her again tonight - we'll see how it goes (and we want to invite her again to be baptized)!

On friday we were able to do finding work almost all day!  A cool miracle happened as well: we got lost!  However, while we were lost, we found a huge new area that I'd never seen before with a lot of really good (and really big) palazzi!  Then, we tried to find our way back and got lost again, and we found another cool area with lots of good-looking casa to do!  So far we've only been back once, but we're excited that we have a new place to begin working!

Saturday was a really good day for us!  We entered and taught several times, and we got several new investigators! 

Sunday was a really cool day - we saw lots of cool little miracles, especially with our 10 inviti!  One time, we were walking towards an intersection, and I saw a family who were in the middle of the street.  I had the feeling to talk to them, but I felt awkward because they were already in the middle of the street, and we weren't going in that direction.  However, at that moment, the father looked back and looked in my direction, and I took that as an extra hint that I needed to talk.  So, I jumped on the opportunity and called to them and stopped them (they were still in the middle of the road...).  Anyway, from this invitation, we got an appointment with this family!  Then, another time, we were walking down a sidewalk and we saw 2 ladies.  I told Anziano Hutchinson that he needed to stop them.  However, when we got closer, I saw that one of the ladies was on the phone.  I was about to tell Anziano Hutchinson not to do it, but it was too late.  But, the ladies stopped, and the lady on the phone quickly finished her phone call.  It turns out she is from Peru, knows a little bit about the church (she actually went to church several times in Peru and has a couple friends that were baptized), and we got her information!

Monday we had to do a bunch of stuff for Anziano Hutchinson's permesso di sogiorno so that he can be legal here.  However, we still saw some cool successes!  We were doing casa and it was almost time to go home.  We had the feeling that we weren't quite in the right spot, so we decided to get on our bikes and start riding back, and if we saw a palazzo that we wanted to do, we'd stop, otherwise we'd just go back close to our apartment to try a palazzo.  Well, we saw one that we wanted to do, got off the bikes, and all of a sudden this dog came out of nowhere and started jumping all over us.  Then the owner came around the corner.  I waved and made some joke about how "friendly" his dog was.  We talked to him for a minute, and it turns out that he had been to the English course that the missionaries did in the past, and we talked a little bit about why we were really there, and he was interested in hearing our message, and we got his info!  By that time, it was time to go back to the apartment.  So, we felt like we had to do that palazzo because we were going to run into this guy (and we didn't even get to do the palazzo...) - cool!

And now, today is tuesday.  It's our P-day today because tomorrow (our normal p-day) we have a zone conference with one of the members of the quorum of the 70, and then we're doing a scambio with the traveling assistants to the president (they're both coming to Prato, and we'll pair off with them and all stay in Prato) on thursday.  We went to Firenze today, which is always pretty neat!

Anyway, I am really enjoying be a trainer.  I'm hubled that I have this great responsibility, but it really is a lot of fun.  Right now, we're the youngest companionship in the mission (probably one of the very youngest in history - someone in the 3rd transfer with someone in their first...)!  However, right now we're both trying to come up with some new, a little bit more creative, ways to do missionary work.  Yesterday we tried putting some of them into practice when we were doing casa in casa, and it worked better that the "standard" approach.  We're going to continue to refine it, and hopefully we'll be able to see/make some amazing things happen!  I know that there is something amazing that we have to do together, otherwise we wouldn't be in this extraordinary situation together!  ... Watch out, Prato, here we come!

-Anziano Barnes