Another amazing week!

CIAO!

This week was absolutely amazing!  Best news: we have a man with a baptismal date!  I'll get you his story in a little bit.  Anyway, life is great here in the huge city of Milano.  Here's some highlights of the past week: ...

On Saturday we had an amazing activity in church for members, New converts, less actives, and investigators - we watched The Testaments in Italian.  Wow!  It was amazing!  We were able to bring a couple investigators and a less active that we've been working with.  They all loved it - in the room there were even several people that were moved to tears.  The two people that we really wanted to be there, Ephraim (an investigator, I'll talk about him in a minute), and Willy (a less active that is starting to return) both came and loved it.  I loved the film too - and I understood everything!  It was also really cool to see how some little things were different in Italian - Italian is just better (I can't really explain why without explaining a ton of grammar rules- but some of the forms and ways they said things were a lot more funny, powerful, and meaningful).

Sunday was a cool day as well.  We were able to teach Ephraim.  He's studied with several different religions, but for the past several months he has been coming every sunday to our church.  The missionaries before I got here never really taught him anything, so Anziano Wilkinson and I decided that we'd better get on it (he comes to more activities and meetings than most members - he's basically a member...).  We went over to his home and he surprised us with some dinner.  Yum!  We probably downed 3 pounds of some of the best meat I've ever had (it's super fresh - the cow that it came from was killed only 2 days before we at the food...) and it was super simple - just cooked in a fry pan with a little bit of oil and touched up with a tiny bit of seasoning.  Yum!  He also made a very interesting combo side dish - potatoes and pasta and peas (nothing else, not even salt...).  To top all of it there was some really really really spicy hot sauce (let's just say my mouth was on fire for like 30 minutes...).  Anyway, after we were sufficiently stuffed, we commenced the lesson.  Ephraim has an amazing knowledge (thanks to all of the studying he has done with other religions).  However, it's difficult for us to say anything because he totally tries to dominate the lessons and talk about the doctrine he knows.  However, it was a good lesson (although it took a lot longer than we wanted).  Now he understands that he needs to be baptized!  He has a testimony that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true, but he said that he wants to be sure that this baptism is the right thing and he wants to study a little bit more.  We invited him to pray, and we'll work with him some more.  Hopefully he'll have a baptismal date soon!

Okay, and the biggest miracle of them all: Valentin. ... We got a call from some missionaries just north of us.  They had met a man named Valentin who really wanted to change his life.  They said they were actually with the guy right now and they had just found out that he lived in the area that we have, ...we set up an appointment for the next evening.  So, we were on our way to the appointment (it was about 10 minutes before...) and the guy calls us to make sure we were coming and to see how close we were!  We got there soon after and began talking.  WOW!  He really wants to change his life.  He said he's been feeling really sorry for the things he's done in the past and wants to begin a new life.  He wants to settle down, get a good job, find a wife and have a family.  And, he said that when he saw the missionaries the day before, he decided that he wanted to join our church.  So, in accord with all of these things, we briefly explained the what and the why of baptism, and invited him to be baptized - he accepted!  He wanted to be baptized as soon as possible - within a week!  However, we told him that there were some things that we had to teach him first to prepare him for this step he would be taking in his life.  He wants to see us basically every day, and he's perfectly willing to do anything (somehow he heard about a couple of the word of wisdom things like how we don't drink alcohol or smoke and he asked what else he needed to stop or start doing to become ready).  WOW!  After the lesson, it took about 30 minutes for us to get a smile off of our faces and stop laughing because of how happy we were!

So, that was basically the week.  I know that the Lord's hand is in the work.  When we do all we can, miracles happen.  They may not be by our doing at all (like we saw with Valentin), but the Lord knows our efforts, and he'll bless us accordingly!

-Anziano Barnes