Ciao Mama!
My week has been great! We definitely did get back to work, and we have met a lot of cool people with the minimal amount of time for finding that we have had this week. We have met the young man that we found during finding, but unfortunately the mom has yet to answer her phone. It was a neat lesson with him though, we taught the restoration and he had tons of questions. One thing that he did not seem to be able to believe though was the Book of Mormon, which is obviously really important. We talked about Joseph Smith and he said it makes sense to have a prophet today, but we talked about the Book of Mormon and he was not able to see that it was an account of other prophets all testifying of Christ, he is kind of stuck on the "one and only Bible" thing. But we challenged him to read, so hopefully he receives a witness for himself.
Edison is actually a member, and he is an awesome guy, he accompanies us a lot to our English speaking investigators. Also, the Italian is coming along fine. I am able to understand a lot during lessons and church, and I can teach the lessons well, my problem is still talking about other things. I have held my own with conversations though, just slowly with probably incorrect grammar. Include that in your prayers though if you are not already doing so, I feel like I have hit a plateau and it is getting a little bit discouraging. But then again, I have only been here for a month and a half, so I try not to be too hard on myself.
A couple highlights of this week were the people we found! We were walking through Centro doing finding work, talking to people and all, and we met a lady named Rosaria. She is older, and when we first talked to her she said, "God thinks of me today", so we asked why, and she pulled out prayer beads, and said that someone had given them to her 10 minutes before us and that then we ran into her, which is funny, because those might have prepared her to want to talk to us a little. Anyways, as we were talking to her I saw someone struggling to get herself and her baby carriage in through to a shop, so I saw that chance to run over there and help her in, and it turns out she was the wife of an investigator we contacted from the area book that week, so we saw them again actually. Anyway, I ran back over to Rosaria and when I got back she had tears in her eyes, so I was thinking "ah man, I missed something important" and we continued to talk to her and she said she was having difficulties with family and other things, so we told her a little about the blessings of the gospel to families and the promise that we can live together forever through the plan of happiness which God prepared for us, she was really interested and we should be seeing her this week. We are excited to see her!
Also, another person happened along when we were sitting and waiting for my questura appointment, which is the place I get my permesso to live here in Italy. While we were sitting there waiting for that a girl who is attending the University sat by us and we did not really think anything of it and continued to talk to each other in English. As we were talking, we got on the topic of Russian literature, I am not sure why.. but as we were talking about that, she said "did you say something about Russian literature?" in english, so we started talking to her, and found out she was Russian, and spoke English, Italian, Russian, and German. We got her contact information and we just need to call her to schedule an appointment! So yup, those were some cool experiences for this week. Jackson, another investigator, is doing good, we just need to get his "getting to church" problem settled and he will be baptized this next weekend hopefully! Your prayers for this are appreciated too. He is finishing his curriculum, so hopefully he can find work and get this all figured out.
Your week sounds like it has been tons of fun! Owen is a goof huh, I love him. I hope he did not follow too much of my example by talking so much. Haha. Ellie will be great at basketball, and that is awesome that she and Lucas play together! Vaclaws have a telepathic communication when we play sports.
That is really interesting about the non-member girl in your young women's, I have already seen that being a problem to people here in Italy, the thought of giving up time, things, and wealth seem to baffle some people. The thing is though, you do not see the blessing that comes from sacrifice until you have taken that step to give it up. People want to know how it would help them, and we can only say, give it a try, with hope they will make that first step of faith. Like Ether 12:6 says, we do not receive a testimony until after the trial of our faith. So maybe something like that would help her understand, I am sure you know best what to teach though mama, after all, you taught me all these things. I hope everyone is doing well at home! Love you guys! And tell Jack to check his e-mail once in awhile, cause I am going to write him every so often!
Ti voglio bene, Anziano Vaclaw
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