Ciao!
This week was great! My new companion, Anziano Boscia, is amazing! He's from Sicily and has an amazing accent. Things can get exciting sometimes because he is diabetic. Every once in a while we have to take a little break so he can drink a fruit juice or something sugary or eat something. Other times, usually at night, I get to help him put needles into his body so that his pump mechanism can continually give him insulin to help regulate his blood sugar. The other fun thing is that, since we still don't have electricity, he has to keep his insulin refrigerated at church, so we make a lot more trips to the church. A couple other cool things about Anziano Boscia - he eats a ton (and he's tiny)! He's an amazing artist (that's what he wants to do when he's older).
Anziano Boscia is a lot of fun and works really hard. I absolutely love his accent and some of his "Italian" personality traits - he makes me laugh and smile. We're getting along really well and we've been able to teach pretty well together. It started out a little rough because he loves to talk (and he can - he's italian - so he explains a lot more than he necesarily needs to), and if I wouldn't "jump in" to the conversation, I would never have the opportunity to say anything. This past week has been really good for me because I've learned a lot more how to keep conversations going in the right direction and my courage to "jump in" and say stuff when the Spirit gives me something to say has improved a lot.
Our member work is improving dramatically. Why? Italians want Italian missionaries! We have lunch appointments almost every day! The ward all of a sudden seems to love us as missionaries so much more. Anziano Boscia has an amazing ability to speak with people and to keep conversations on a spiritual level - I wish I could do that. One of my goals is to become more like him in this aspect!
Investigator update: The africans are doing really well! 5 of them are ready to be baptized! 1 of them is still trying to quit smoking. One says he still has not recieved an answer to his prayers that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the authority of the Priesthood was restored to him. And, the other, we're not really sure... However, a few problems have come up and we're not sure if we'll be able to do the baptisms on this sunday ... We'll see what we can do.
We haven't seen any of the other investigators for a while. However, Petrica is doing really well, he's just in Romania for 2 weeks. But he brought his Book of Mormon and has been reading! He gets back next week.
Cool miracle story: It was time to begin doing casa in casa. We saw a palazzo where we wanted to start. We rang one of the doors (from outside), and they let us in. We walked up the stairs, and they had the door open, waiting for us. We started doing "teach to find" with them, but before we could get out even one sentence, they said to come in. I was a little unprepared for that and asked "Cosa?" (What?). He said again to come in. So, we went in and ended up being able to teach the full restoration lesson to a man that was really interested! Right now he lives with his parents (who are 80 or 90 years old) so that he can take care of them. We'll be going back in a few days!
This time of my life is filled with so much joy! There are still a lot of things that I want and need to improve in - but I think that is a good thing (I don't like not having anything to work on...)! This is one of the greatest purposes of life - continually get better! And, I know that if I humble myself and come unto Christ, He'll help my weakness become strong unto me.
-Anziano Barnes
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