Work in Genova is exploding!

Anziano Barnes, Osborn and Wilkey (replacing Justin as AP),
with two incredible missionary members in the Milano 2 Ward

Anziano Barnes and Anziano Ibba - companions in Genova

Four Anziani that share the apartment in Genova, two zone leaders

We had another great week!  The time is going by so quickly.  I'll start out with some investigator updates.
Kofi has stopped seeing us - he has trouble understanding that the Book of Mormon doesn't claim to be better than the Bible.  We'll try to contact him again soon and see if he's had a change of heart.
However, we have some super good news - Mimmo and Saro!
Mimmo is from southern italy.  He's known the missionaries for about a month now. He has been devouring the Book of Mormon, but hasn't really been applying his heart to understanding.  He has two big obstacles - the biggest being that he doesn't want to pray at all, the next being that he smokes a ton (25 cigarettes a day).  But, we made a breakthrough finally!  Our last lesson, we started talking and he told us that he'd been really considering choosing to get baptized.  He then told us that he's been praying in "his way" (with his thoughts and not out loud!).  We invited him to baptism and he said certainly!  We asked him if he'd prepare to be baptized the 18th of August and he said "Let's try."  He needs to be smoke free for 2 weeks before he can get baptized, so he has just under two weeks to quit.  He was able to quit once before (but then fell back into temptation) and he did it by just choosing one day to stop cold turkey.  And, it worked.  He's going to do that again.  This time, however, he wants to try to get less and less up until Sunday and then stop smoking 100% that day!  Then, to make it even better, he said our closing prayer out loud - something he's never ever been even close to doing before!
Saro is a south american man that we found the end of last week.  He's probably about 60.  He wants to get baptized!  It was a really fun lesson when we were able to sit down with him for the first time and we started out telling him that at the end of the lesson we were going to invite him to follow Christ and be baptized.  He told us immediately that he would, but that he wanted to be sure that it was the right thing first.  Perfect!  He then asked us how long it usually takes for people to learn enough.  We told him - usually about a month or so!  He's reading the Book of Mormon and making some good first steps to prepare to be baptized!
We've been doing a lot of finding work and it's been a lot of fun!  We have so many new people and potential new people that we'll be seeing in the next few days!
The work here in Genova is exploding for the whole district!  It's been really cool to see a change in the missionaries' attitudes and happiness levels and in the increased efforts they put in!  I love being a district leader!  It's really cool to see how directly God answers my prayers!
There have been SO MANY miracles this past week - I couldn't even come close to describing them all.  But it's amazing to see how we're put exactly in the path of people that want to learn more about the restored gospel.  I don't think I've ever seen so many people be so receptive to us before!  And, just after two weeks, my agenda is as full as it is after a full transfer of finding - full of people that actually have really good potential!
Vi voglio bene!
-Anziano Barnes