Ciao tutti!
This week has been crazy, to say the
least! Last sunday I went on splits with President Wolfgramm, we had a
super crazy monday with a billion things to do, tuesday we were down in Bologna
on exchanges. Wednesday (4th of July) we had a barbeque lunch and then a
day stuffed with appointments, Thursday was our mission council (the best one
I've been to), Friday we were in Como on exchanges, and then this morning we
had another crazy adventure...
Going on splits with President
Wolfgramm was a lot of fun. We found some cool people and I learned a lot
- he teaches so well! And, he helped me realize how I can better improve
how to find people - particularly the Italian families (we want to find them so
bad!).
Oh, there's still no new news on the
investigators. None of them came to church this week and we haven't been
able to see them yet. So, we're out finding new ones!
Also, this past sunday was great
because we got to work with almost all of the young men and potential elders
(there are about 15 of them). We organized it so we could meet with all
of them right after church one by one to see how they were doing spiritually
and what their thoughts were for a mission. We want to get out on splits
with all of them and help this desire that they have grow!
On Tuesday, down in Bologna, we had a
day full of miracles. The big thing I learned from the scambio was that
God will answer my prayers when they are in harmony with his will. One
thing I wanted to emphasize down there was the importance of talking with
everyone - any time and any place. I prayed that the elect people would
be in those random times and I promised that we'd speak to everyone that was
even close to our path. And, we found a ton of people! We found
more people in that day than they have for 2 weeks! And, the missionary
that I was with was struggling with something. And, throughout our time
together, it became more and more apparent what the cause was and what needed
to change. In my prayers that night and the next morning I figured
out what I was going to do and I asked God that He would prepare the missionary
to hear these things. And, He did - more that I expected! The
missionary learned those things in his study and his mind was brought back to
experiences that he'd had where he experienced exactly what I was trying to
teach. It was amazing!
Our 4th of July was great! We
ate our BBQ lunch with President and Sister Wolfgramm and the office Elders and
the couple that works in the office. And, the next day was even better -
we had consiglio (mission council). This one was the best one that I've
ever been to! We think that the reason why was that everyone came very
prepared to participate (they were given assignments and specific directions of
things to do), and there was a great spirit of accountability and desire to
improve! That evening as we went out to work, we were amazingly blessed!
But, the blessings came after some hardships - there were some very angry
people and one lady got so angry/scared that she called her husband right after
we knocked on her door and he came and found us and tried to get on our case
and send us away. It was actually interesting what we were thinking - we
said "well, there must be some really awesome thing waiting for us if
we're getting this kind of opposition." Sure enough, in the next
palazzo, we knocked on a door and a young couple with a 2 month old child let
us in. The lady is from Congo and the man is from Angola (another little
African country). Their house was beautiful and there was a great spirit
inside. They speak both English and Italian perfectly (as well as their
native language) and they are very well off (the man is a petroleum engineer).
They were super interested in learning about the restored church. We'll
be going back tomorrow to give them a Book of Mormon in their language!
Then, on Friday, my birthday, we went
to Como to do a scambio. I was with another missionary who shares my
birthday! We had also some cool miracles of awesome people being put in
our path. One of the coolest was a young man on a bus. He came in
and came right towards us. As we started talking, he opened up completely
and got really interested. He doesn't believe in God, but he wants to -
he's been searching and studying several religions without finding anything.
We talked about how he can find out if God is there and talked about our
experiences in finding out. We opened up the BOM to Moroni 10, and right
after he read the verses he told us "I swear that I'll do it!"
We had to get off shortly after that and he decided to get off with us (even
though it meant that he'd have to walk more than 30 minutes through the rain to
get home) so that we could exchange information adequately. We got pretty
wet - it rained all day. But, it went pretty well! I opened a few
gifts and we got surprised by both of our companions who had organized a super
dessert for us that we enjoyed right before bed!
And then, this morning, to top it all
off, we had some craziness. We were walking back to get our car.
And, instead of our car in the midst of a bunch of other parked cars, there was
a street market. Our hearts sank. Our car had been towed! We
asked a lady at the market who we needed to contact. She said that the police
station was close. We walked there. It was closed. We were told,
however, that it was probably another police force that took the car (there are
a bunch of different sectors - we don't really understand...). We walked
about 20 minutes to find them. They told us that it wasn't them, but it
was an independent towing company that had the car. He told us to take a
bus. We went to the stop and saw the bus we needed to take pulling away
(it only passes only 30 minutes) so we ran as fast as we could for a while
to catch up (fortunately, God blessed us with a great stoplight situation that
allowed us to catch up to the bus). We rode the bus for about 30 or 40
minutes, talking to the people on the bus (so it wasn't completely wasted or
boring...) about the gospel. Finally, the bus driver told us to get off
and showed us the towing company. It turns out that that company wasn't
the one who took the car! The lady told us of another place about 20 more
minutes away on foot that we could go to that probably took it. We went
out there, and finally were able to get our car back! It was crazy!
Fortunately, we didn't really know what to think about the whole situation, so
we laughed about it all the way through.
I'm happy - it was a great week!
Next week will be crazy for sure. The new missionaries will be coming and
the old missionaries will be going home. And, it's transfers - I don't know
what's going to happen to me at all. We'll see!
Vi voglio un sacco di bene!
-Anziano Barnes
No comments:
Post a Comment