A trip to Prato, lesson with Bishop, and baby bananas!

Anziano Wilkinson, Barnes and Hutchinson - a trip to Prato to pick-up residency permit.

Ciao!!! I don't have a lot of time today...  Yesterday (our P-day) we had to travel down to Prato (where I was serving earlier) to get my residency permit.  We were traveling for about 10 hours or so...  

We haven't really made any progress with the investigators that we have.  However, things seem to be improving greatly.  Yesterday, Luigi (the older Italian guy that bought us gelato last week) and Domenico (another Italian guy that's a bit younger and is looking for work and is just in a tricky situation right now) both came to the Family night that we had at our church.  We weren't there, but the sister missionaries were there and they said that both of our investigators had an amazing experience, and somehow the people began a conversation of why it's important to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and why the Book of Mormon is so key.  From everything that the sisters said, our investigators had taken it very well.

Also, Ephraim (the guy that is investigating a ton of different churches right now) seems to be changing.  In church on Sunday, his countenance was different - he had a smile and a light that lasted throughout the meetings.  He gave us a bunch of fruit (among which were those baby bananas that you'll see in the pictures).  Here's the cool thing - we were talking about baptism with him, (we've talked to him a lot about baptism and have invited him to be baptized several times, but he says no every time; he says he's not ready and doesn't know for sure and wants to learn more) and then he told us "We'll see this week."  So, when we see him on Saturday, we'll see!

The member work has continued to go really well as well.  I want to share one really cool story.  We went to teach the bishop.  He has two kids.  One is about as wild and energetic as you can get (his name is Luca and he's 5).  The other was born with some really severe physical defects, which caused him to stay in the hospital for a year (so his mom lived in the hospital for a year with him).  His situation has improved dramatically, but he's still quite limited in what he can do.  His name is Sebastian and is about the same age as Luca.  Anyway, we got in and the kids were going crazy and the wife had to do something with them.  Bishop then proceeded to tell us how hard it was for them to do things as a family - especially Family home evening - because the kids would never sit nor stay still.  With that in mind, we started the lesson.  Luckily, we were prepared.  We had brought the gospel art book and a portable white board.  Using both of those (and letting the kids use them to participate in the lesson), we were able to maintain a decent amount of order.  However, when it got time to share Joseph Smith's story and about the book of Mormon, everything changed.  The kids were perfectly still.  They had huge smiles.  We asked them questions about how they felt and if they believed the things that we were talking about.  Using very few words but magical body language, the kids bore their testimonies.  They felt the spirit.  We got to a point when we wanted to read the Moroni promise in Moroni 10.  We asked Luca if he wanted to "read" (he can't read for real yet), and he said yes.  We would say a few words of the scripture, and he would repeat them.  The spirit was so strong, and it was so cute to see these young children being filled with the spirit.  The bishop and his wife were both really impressed.  The spirit works wonders.

So, yesterday we went to Prato to get my permesso.  However, I forgot to bring my original receipts.  I managed to bring all of the copies of everything that they'd ever done and could ever want, but I forgot the 3 little original receipts.  We tried to explain what we had done and that it would be a pain to come back.  They told us we could do a denunciation (I don't really know what that's supposed to be).  So we tried.  I explained to this guy the same stuff and our story.  However, he said that if the original ones still existed, I would have to bring those.  However, if I were to say that I had lost them, they could give me my permesso right then.  I decided to be honest, so I didn't get my permesso.  The policy of honesty is quite backwards here...  Anyway, so we'll probably going back to Prato (with the original receipts...) next week.  The cool thing was that we were able to see Anziano Hutchinson (the missionary that I trained) and his companion for a few minutes (it's one of the pictures).

Anyway, that's pretty much my week!

I love you all and thank you all!

-Anziano Barnes