I
love Genova! Anziano Ibba is fantastic! And, I love being a
district leader again!
We
had a cool miracle my second day here in Genova. We found a man from Togo
as we were by the docks and we taught him. He was super interested!
The next day we saw him again and he accepted a baptismal date (in the
sense that he says he'll prepare himself so that he can feel ready and sure and
be baptized on August 11)! His name is Kofi. He's reading the Book
of Mormon and marking things and he's understanding really well! He asks
tons of questions and is super smart!
Other
than that, there are a bunch of other investigators that were here when I
arrived, but none of them are making much progress. There is one,
however, named Luis (from south america) who wants to get baptized but has to
wait until September. So, we're dedicating our time and efforts to
finding new investigators. It's great - I'm trying to talk to even more
people than ever before and be super specific with all of our goals and plans!
And, we're visiting different member families trying to get referrals
from them. We have a few potential people from the members that they will
be working on this next week and we'll see if we can meet all together next week.
I
feel awesome. Yesterday we had a zone conference. I thought it was
going to be really nice and easy not having to do anything but listen and be
taught by the spirit. But, no. President Wolfgramm surprised me and
asked me to share my "departing testimony" (I thought for sure that I
would do it at the end of the transfer at one of the other conferences that
we'll have). But, it turned out great! Yesterday was incredible - I
don't know exactly why it happened yesterday, but I was filled, from the moment
I entered the church building where we did the conference, with a huge amount
of love for the other missionaries that I'd served (and am still serving!!!)
and a desire to help all of them in their various circumstances.
Anziano
Ibba, like I said earlier, is fantastic. He is hands down the best
teacher I've ever met. He's super intelligent and he's able to figure out
how the person he's teaching is thinking and, in an instant, figure out how to
teach them and create an amazing "lesson plan" of how to make this
person learn and understand. Not only that, he has an amazing capacity to
connect with other people, help them feel comfortable and happy, and then open
up and talk. One of the first things that he told me was that he's the
best missionary in the world, but he's lazy. I told him that we'd work
super great together then, because I'm not super great but I'll try to do 100%
and then a bit more. Over the past week, he's doing more and more and
becoming more and more happy! It's fun to see him after he goes up on the
bus or train to talk to someone (something he'd never do before) by himself and
smile and ask if I saw that and then jokingly say "che bravo sono!"
(I'm so great!). It's really hard to not be happy when you're with him!
In
my apartment we're living in 4. The other 2 missionaries are Anziano
Winegar and Anziano Torgerson (from Canada). They're part of my district
plus 2 other companionships - a companionship of sisters (1 of whom being
Sister Oaks from my home stake) and a companionship of elders (Anziano Moh and Anziano Grimaldi
from Italy! It's been super fun trying to help them and serve them - I
think I feel more pressure and responsibility now for them than I've felt ever
before for anyone!
Anyway,
that's pretty much my week!
Vi voglio
bene!
-Anziano
Barnes
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