Cara Famiglia,
I feel so spoiled in Modena! Everything is too good. But anyway this week was great! We've been doing a lot of teaching and running around to appointments, it actually felt really strange today during P-Day when we had a free hour of nothing. I was soooo bored! I thought to myself 'I would rather be out tracting than just sitting in the apartment.' But oh well, P Day is still good to relax. Next week we have plans to go to the Ferrari Factory place and then play soccer with one of our investigators who is getting baptized on Friday! This Friday is going to be epic, Castro is getting baptized along with two of his nieces(who the sisters taught). We are also hoping and praying that our other investigator, Irese, who is Sampson's cousin can be baptized on Friday. She is being interviewed by one of the President's counselors tomorrow while we're at Zone Conference in Verona, so pray that that can go well.
Other than that we have some new and old investigators progressing nicely. It's sad because Sampson and Irese are actually leaving Italy forever like next week! Sampson is leaving for Vicenza this weekend and then moving to Holland to be with his fianceè, and Irese is going back to Nigeria to be with her husband! We are going to miss them a lot, they are an amazing and super spiritual family. Sampson's other cousin and the brother of Irese, Israel, is a really smart guy who is progressing and very interested. The only problem is his work schedule that keeps him from being able to get to church, although apparently he is interviewing for some other job soon.
Last week something awesome happened! We were tracting in these really new palazzi and it was going okay, and we knocked on this door and he wasn't super interested, but we kept talking and he let us in! It turns out he was way nice, his wife(I think they're married, you can never tell here!) and 9 year old daughter were also there. We talked to them for like 20 minutes about what we believe and gave them a Book of Mormon with some reading to do. And then they invited us over for dinner! We were so shocked at how nice they were. They actually really remind me of the Barringer family in our ward. So we went over to their house last night and had dinner which was cool, and taught them a half-lesson about the Plan of Salvation. They seemed interested and had definitely done the reading we left, so we are hoping to get back and help them progress towards baptism! They would be the best addition to the ward here, they're so nice!
We also have a cool investigator named Guido who is really sincere. His biggest hangup is the idea of a God allowing suffering in the world. It's a tough question to answer sometimes, but we are making some great progress thanks to the scriptures! There are answers in there for everything!
Anyway, not much else going on here. I did another scambio in Piacenza with the District Leader, it was fun. Scambi are good times. Also the ward is still awesome, we are working on getting better at bringing members to lessons since we have so many that are willing to come and help out!
In studying for our lessons for Guido we look for scriptures about optimism in the face of adversity and how it's always a choice, no matter what, to be happy even if your circumstances are really terrible. We left him Doctrine and Covenants 122 to read, and I hope he does because it's really powerful! Another good scripture is Alma 28:12 and 14. Verse 12 is good about having hope for the righteous that are slain, and than verse 14 is great about missionary work and the effect it can have! One of my favorite things that happens here in Italy is people just willing to talk to us for like 20 minutes. Whenever we have conversations like that we also feel really good about it because we could just teach and testify, even if the numbers don't show a lesson or baptism or anything. It's good to make the non-number missionary work effective. I know this church is true and that the Lord really does prepare people gradually to hear the gospel. It's amazing to see!
I love everybody!
-Anziano Benjamin Smith
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