Another Amazing Week!

Anziano Barnes in the beautiful city Pavia.

Last week together, Anziano Neff transferred to Modena.

Ciao!

We had another amazing week!  I'll get to that in a minute.

So, transfers are this week... I'm staying here, but Anziano Neff is leaving to go to Modena to be with Anziano Hutchinson (the missionary that I trained)!  He's going to be a district leader!  I'm really excited for him - it'll be a perfect opportunity for him to grow a lot more.  I hope I did my part this transfer in helping him prepare for the future things he'll have to do!  As for my new companion, to continue the tradition of foreign companions, I'll be serving with Anziano Boscia (Boe-shuh - the accent is on the "Bo").  He's an Italian from Sicily!  It'll be an adventure - a lot of missionaries call him the "bionical man."  He's got diabetes and some other medical stuff - apparently he's got a tube in his stomach and he injects himself with insulin and/or other stuff often.  The potentially tricky thing will be that we don't have power yet, and I'm not sure if he needs electricity to get along (refrigerated stuff or light).  We will see!

Okay, back to this awesome week!  The African investigators are doing pretty good.  All of them are progressing, but, of course, each one has their own concerns.  Two of them (Bismack and Kelly) say that they have not yet recieved an answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet (they have questions about being baptized by authority), one (Wilfred) may still have problems with the word of wisdom, another (Larry) isn't reading the book of mormon, and a few do not understand English very well (Austin, Frank, and Immanuel)!  However, we're working with all of them and trying to help them gain/grow their testimonies.  Here are some cool things that they've said:

Larry - in his prayer he said "give me strength to obey all of these commandments that I've learned about...  Bless the missionaries that they can help us understand better thy word and thy commandments."  Also, he understood what the priesthood was so well that he taught it to Austin!

Austin - we went over several of the baptismal questions with him, and he would respond "Yes, I believe."  He said that he has been living all of the commandments that we have been teaching and says that he wants to repent and be baptized and to change his life.

Wilfred - in his prayer, after we had explained how the priesthood was restored, said "I want to be baptized by someone who has the authority."

We hope and pray to be able to help these men continue to grow their faith, repent, and prepare for their baptism!

Petrica is doing pretty good as well.  We taught him twice the past week.  One cool thing that happened was when we were talking about repentance.  We read a little bit from Alma 36 (Alma the younger's story of repenting - being harrowed up by sin but then being filled with joy that was as exceeding as his pain).  After reading the verses, he asked if he could read them again because they were so beautiful!  His problem is that he wants to understand things too much with his head and less with his heart - through the holy ghost.

We went to see a less active lady and her husband (who is very less active - hasn't had anything to do with the church for 25 years).  She is absolutely amazing!  She is starting to come back to church finally!  She is from the phillipines and absolutely loves to talk.  Let's just say she loves missionaries!  When she lived in the phillipines she fed missionaries at least every week, often times more.  However, since they have been in Italy (20 years) the missionaries have only been over to them a couple times, the last time being 5 or so years ago.  She fixed us up a TON of food (we weren't even hungry when we got there - some other members had given us lunch about 3 hours before...).  It was really good.  To top off the meal they brought out a tub of ice cream.  They said that in the phillipines they would give each missionary a 1/2 gallon carton to eat.  They said we had to down this one.  So, I stuffed myself with about a 1/2 gallon of the best chocolate gelato I've ever tasted.  Let's just say I was a little bit full that evening...

We had some really good experiences with other members this week - they're starting to bring friends to church to meet us.  On Sunday we went to eat lunch with and teach one of these friends.  He is really interested in the church (90% of what he knows he found out on his own through his own efforts of studying).

Miracle story!  On thursday we went out to teach a less active lady and her husband (they're about 70 or 80) and a member family that lives right close by.  They live out in the middle of nowhere.  We take a train for 30 minutes and bring our bikes along.  Then, we ride our bikes for 20 minutes (8 km - 4.5 miles) to get out to their place.  Anyway, after finishing with them, we went back to the train station to find out that there wasn't a train for about 2 more hours!  We had an appointment with a couple African investigators - the two that,at the time, were struggling the most (one of them hadn't committed to baptism yet).  If we waited for the train, we would be unable to teach them that night (we would get back with just enough time to get to our house on time).  So, we looked at the distance - 22 km or 14 miles - and decided that we'd bike back.  An hour later, after riding at a pretty good pace (especially considering that we had already biked over 20 miles and been on the bikes about two hours that day...), we arrived at the hotel where the africans lived.  We had an amazing and spiritual lesson.  Both of them understood really well, and Austin (who had not yet committed to be baptized), said that he wanted to be baptized!  I'm glad that we made the journey!

We also had a scambio on monday and on tuesday.  I learned a lot.  I really want to change and get better.  I've realized that I haven't been applying as well as I should the things that I am learning.  So, one of my new goals is to study and apply something new from Preach my Gospel or the supplement.  It's helped my studies become a lot more effective, and I feel like I am becoming a better missionary.  I know that with faith and humility, the Lord can use me to do awesome miracles, and that as I continue to become more Christlike, the things that I need to do will become more natural and I will become a much better servant of the Lord!

-Anziano Barnes