Ciao!!!
This week was really good! Let me start with some updates on a couple of our investigator situations:
Michelle is doing pretty well too. For one of the lessons, I felt like I should bring my Children's songbook in Italian because there was one hymn that really stood out to me for her - I feel my Savior's love. We sang it at the end of the lesson and it hit her a lot! She began to get a little emotional and, the next time that we went, she described how she saw us as "angels" as we sang. She had an interesting dream as well - we're not quite sure if she took it well or bad. She dreamed that we (missionaries) were talking to her sister (who is dead now) and telling her to let Michelle come with us (her whole family is really tied to the Catholic Church). At that moment Michelle came and the sister asked if it was true what we were saying - that she was meeting with us. She said yes and then said "sono la mia squadra" ("they are my team"). And then the dream ended. It's cool because she realizes that she wants to join the church and she wants to be baptized. There's just a lot of things right now that she needs to work out, and she's going to need a lot of faith, courage, and help from God to do it.
We had a really cool miracle with Joseph. We taught him at General Conference with another African about the restoration, but it didn't seem like he understood super well. However, he understood that he needed to read the Book of Mormon. Well, he's been reading - 40 minutes every morning! We had no idea that he was reading that much because we haven't been able to see or talk with him for almost 2 weeks now! When we saw him, he had a testimony of the Book of Mormon, of Joseph Smith, and of the restored church. We invited him to be baptized, and he said "okay" and proceeded to tell us how he wants his family to know about this as well. We got the info of his family and we're sending it to the missionaries in Ghana!
We had another cool miracle on a train one day. We were on one train and we had to transfer to another, but it was a couple minutes late and we watched the next train that we had to take go on its way as we came to a stop in the other. So, we caught the next train. On this train, we met an amazing lady. We talked to her and discovered that she was going to visit her 23 year old nephew who has been in a coma for 1.5 years and his parents. She had a lot of needs, and we were able to meet them exactly! The spirit was really strong. There were a couple points when it got really personal - both for us and for her. One cool thing that happened was I shared a little bit about something that happened to me one time and how God had comforted me. She said that as I shared the story and as I smiled at her after, that I looked exactly like her nephew. She talked about how she knew that it wasn't by chance that she had caught that train (it was a miracle that she made it for that one) and knew that it was in the designs of God. We were able to leave her a Book of Mormon and she was super excited to begin reading. She's from Milan, so we set up the missionaries there with an awesome lady!
Like normal, I'm still super busy. We've had a couple more scambi - those were awesome. For one of them we went to La Spezia and we all stayed together (however, they're having some apartment repairs so we actually all stayed together with the missionaries in Pisa in their apartment...). Anziano Bona from my home ward is one of the missionaries from La Spezia (I didn't serve with him this time, though, I'll be with him for the next one...)! It was cool to finally be able to work a little bit with him! For the other scambio I was with a brand new missionary named Anziano Droghei from Idaho Falls. That was a blast - it was a really good scambio. He even taught me a lot - how to teach from the heart - for he is amazing at that! Another crazy thing that happened was my trip to Pavia to do my Permesso di Soggiorno. We had to leave Tuesday night and go to Bologna. Then we got up a bit before 4 on Wednesday morning so that we could catch a train to Pavia to get me there on time for my appointment at 9:00. Right after that we came back to Firenze. It was a long but really good day - we taught people for as much of the time as we could! Anyway, that's the reason why I'm doing email right now. We don't really have a P-day this week. We crammed shopping in and now we have a little less than an hour before our last appointment so we can write home. But, I am doing great! I've been trying to forget about myself and focus all of my heart, might, mind, and strength on others. It's starting to work! It's really cool to see how far I've come over the past while and it's really cool to know that the Lord will continue to help me get even better.
I've got to go now, but I want to say thanks to all of you. Vi voglio bene!
-Anziano Barnes
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