Modena Week 2

Cara Famiglia,

 

This week has been a good one in Modena! The weather has gotten a lot better than it was my first week. It's been at least sunny almost every day since last Tuesday.

 

So the big news this week is that we are hopefully having Sampson's baptism on Saturday! He's being interviewed tomorrow, so pray that that goes well and he can be baptized. We also have 2 baptisms scheduled for the 26th of this month, and then hopefully one the week after that, with another one on either of those days. Our goal is to get 6 baptisms for the transfer and we have five of them pretty for sure! It's a good time to be here in Italy, especially in Modena.

 

So yeah didn't really mention this much in the last email, but my companion is Anziano Kimball from Highland, Utah. He's a super cool guy and a great missionary, really good about taking the work seriously and is very obedient which is great. We get along together well, and are working hard.

 

The ward here is amazing! We have about 45 people that come regularly every week and we have a really nice ward building. It seems brand new, I don't know how old it actually is. We even have three guys in the ward who have all gotten back from serving missions in the past 2 months! Two brothers, who went to Paris and London respectively, and then one guy also named Sampson who served in the Rome Mission and gave his homecoming talk my first Sunday here. Everyone is great, and excited to do missionary work because they want Modena to be part of a stake.

 

Anziano Kimball and I are the only two Elders here, there are also two sisters, Sorella Langham and Sorella Snodgrass. They are good as well. Our district also includes Reggio nell'Emilia (they actually had a nice baptism in our chapel last Saturday that was cool), and Piacenza where our district leader is. I had a fun exchange in Piacenza with the DL's companion last Friday/Saturday, we had a sweet experience where some guy flagged us down as we were biking home for the night and talked with us with his wife for about 20 minutes about who we were. We got to give him a Book of Mormon and bear testimony and it was great. They are from Pisa but they were in Piacenza for work and apparently the man was always curious about who we are. Apparently there's some lame 'documentary' going around Europe that confuses Mormons with the Amish. And a lot of people mistake us for Jehovah's Witnesses too.

 

So this morning I really liked reading Helaman 3:35, in relation to Alma 17:2-3. It talks about how important prayer and fasting are and how we can grow in joy in our soul! It's great. The scriptures are amazing. I know this church is true and that the work here is truly inspired of God, and I'm amazingly grateful for the opportunity to work with the people here!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith