Cara Famiglia!
This week was excellent! Last Thursday we headed off to Zone Conference in Verona. I didn't remember it all too well from when Mom and I went but it really is a beautiful city. It was really good, we talk a lot about the importance of inspired questions. One of my favorite things to do as a missionary is to think of really good questions that really dig deep in people to find out how the gospel can really help them. Even just asking why a lot is great! But in Zone Conference we took Jesus' example and asked some of his inspired questions to ourselves. It's really powerful asking yourself questions like "Whom say ye that I am?" "Where is your faith?" "Will you also leave me?" and "Lovest thou me?" It reminds me of how every transfer we do the Christlike Attribute activity in Preach My Gospel, which is great! Sometimes it feels like a game you can just never win, but it's good to try and progress to be more like the Savior.
On Friday we had an excellent day! I did my fingerprinting for my Permesso di Soggiorno so in about a month I should be totally legit here in Italy. Friday night was even better! Castro Ohene and Irese Asemota entered the waters of baptism, in addition to Castro's niece Jennifer! It was awesome. Samson got to baptize Irese since he got the Aaronic Priesthood last Sunday, Anziano Kimball baptized Castro, and an awesome recent RM from the ward named Jon Volpe baptized Jennifer. I've attached pictures. They are all amazing. Unfortunately though, at the time of this writing Irese has moved back to Nigeria and Samson is in Vicenza for a while before he goes to Holland to marry his fiancee! But we're hoping and praying that they stay strong and active in their wards. We even helped them find the addresses for the ward buildings nearest them. One of the best feelings in the world is giving recent converts a triple after they are baptized! That is our go to gift. Samson was already getting really interested in the Pearl of Great Price before he left! We hooked him up with a PGP manual that we found in our apartment.
Not much else is going on here in Modena. The weather is finally getting pretty nice, we are looking forward to when we can take our jackets off in the middle of April. Also today we finally made it to the Ferrari Factory! They have some pretty nice cars, some of which they let you test drive. Only 60 Euro for 10 minutes, and only 500 Euro for an hour drive to the mountains! We actually asked them and they just let us sit in it for free, I will attach pictures of that as well.
In preparation for General Conference I've been reading some of the talks from the last general conference. They are all so good! I was recently reading Richard G. Scott's talk "The Transforming Power of Faith and Character" and it is really good. 'You become what you want to be by consistently being what you want to become each day.' It applies really well to missionary work because we always have things to improve on. If we want to be a successful missionary, or obedient, or spiritual, we have to do those things every day! I can't just decide one day halfway through my mission to become the missionary I want to be, it requires work. I'm doing my best to keep improving each day so that I can look back on my mission and say 'I have no regrets; I did my best.' Keep doing the little things everybody, the church is true!
-Anziano Benjamin Smith
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