The Most Miracle-filled Day!

Office Elders, Traveling Assistants and APs

Ciao!

We had another great week!  Brief overview: We found 2 amazing families that we are teaching.  We did a couple more trainings, in one of the which were Elder Steve Allen and Brother Lusvardi (Elder Lusvardi's dad).  And, we did a couple amazing scambi!...

Last week I mentioned how we committed ourselves to teaching 20 lessons - something that we'd never even come close to.  Well, we taught 18.  However, as we look back, learning of course several things we could do better the next times, we did everything in our power to try to reach our goal, and we feel good about our efforts.  In fact, President Wolfgramm was happy to see that we didn't reach our goal because we were perfect examples of some principles he was trying to get across in our trainings - the way to know your standing before the Lord is through the numbers.  Not the numbers that you get, but the numbers that you set as goals.  He was pleased because we didn't get the number that we wanted but we grew in setting our goal and doing all that we could to reach it....

The couple exchanges that we did were incredible, especially the one in Firenze.  We were able to teach a couple of the people that I had started teaching that are approaching their baptism!  We set a new baptismal date.  And, we found a ton of new people.  This, I think, was the most miracle filled day of my mission.  The night before, we planned a full day of finding.  But, we planned out miracles that we wanted to have for each portion of the day (basically one per hour).  We wanted to find a Peruvian lady, a Peruvian man, a family from the philipines, a teenage Italian boy with a blue hat and white shirt, and an Italian family, and our goal with all of these people was to set up appointments in which we could give them a BOM.  The only one we didn't find was the Italian family, but we found all of the rest plus a bunch of other super solid people.  I want to tell a couple of the sweet miracles that happened.  We were walking down the street, and it was the time in which we were searching for the Peruvian lady.  And, we saw one, but she was on the phone.  I was talking to myself (I think I was even talking out loud...) - get off the phone!  Get off the phone!  But, she wasn't getting off.  Luckily, my companion, Anziano Glowa, had no fear.  He thought, Chi se ne frega!?  I'll talk to her anyway!  We started to speak to her, and, to our surprise, she started having a conversation with us - she just completely stopped her conversation on the phone.  It continued for probably 30 seconds - the person on the other line was probably wondering what in the world was going on!  Then, she said in the phone - I'll call you back later.  And, we continued to talk.  She was super curious and we were able to teach her a little bit about the restoration and the BOM.  It was super cool.  I just think what would've happened if we hadn't have set the goal to find a Peruvian lady and do anything - even talk to someone on the phone - to do it.  Another awesome experience happened as we were looking for the boy with the white shirt and blue hat.  We thought that we would find him in a park.  And, in finding so many cool people along the way, we were late.  However, as we were nearing - probably about 10 minutes away - and as we were waiting at a stop light.  A boy with a light blue shirt and dark blue cap walked by.  We a few seconds later, my companion said to me, we gotta talk to him.  We related quickly to each other that at first we were like "no, maybe not..."  But, we both felt that we should still talk to him.  So we chased him down and started to talk to him.  As we spoke, we discovered some amazing things.  He has had some marital problems.  And, 3 days ago, he was praying that he would be able to fix up the wrongs between he and his wife.  And, he promised God that he would always come closer to him if he would help he and his wife get back together again.  Well, in those few days a lot of problems were resolved and he was sure that God answered his prayer.  So, he has been trying to find how he could come closer to God.  And, of course, there we were!  We taught him about the BOM, bore our testimony, and shared with him our excitement of the miracle of how God placed us in his path to help him come closer!  We set up our return appointment and left!  It was incredible.  It was as close to being a white shirt as it could be, and he still had the hat!  But, he wasn't the Italian youth that we thought would be sporting those things.  But sure enough, that "ragazzaccio" came walking down within a minute of finding the other guy.  He was super solid as well!  Anyway, the whole day was like this, and we're sure it's because we did all that we could to plan out the miracles, and God blessed us with all of those plus a ton more!

Well, that's my week!

Vi voglio bene!

-Anziano Barnes