Baptizm!

Cara Famiglia,

Baptism happened this week! Martin got baptized! We met with him last Thursday morning to see what he had decided and he said "Yeah I want to be baptized this weekend." So on Sunday he got baptized and confirmed! It was a really great service, we had some members that speak English give talks and us missionaries did a special musical number! He had a really good experience and bore his testimony afterwards, and his wife was crying she was so happy. So it was a great Sunday.

Congratulations to J [a family friend who just got his mission call]!!! Berlin is gonna be awesome! Almost as sweet as Italy haha.

That's basically the biggest news this week. Bright and Collins both came to church again, but they left before the baptism unfortunately. We saw Bright yesterday and he is the man, reading the Book of Mormon and praying and sees a difference. We are still working with some other investigators, Ali, Antonio, Giovanni and Gabriella, etc. that we hope will be making some progress soon.

Fun random story: in most missionary apartments, at least here in the Italy Milan mission, there is a large collection of Ensign/Liahona magazines piled up from over the years. A lot of time I read them when I have some free time, and so today I picked up an issue from way back in April 1994 and there was an article about member missionary work in [our home] stake! It was crazy.

Torino is still doing great, it is getting quite cold. I am rockin' the scarf and jacket almost every day. But there are still lots of people to talk to and the work is going really well. My companion is a stud!

This week I wanted to share a really cool verse I found about faith in Alma 44! It is verse four and it says this:

4 Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith.

It's some awesome testimony thrown down by Moroni to Zerahemnah, and really shows the all-encompassing trust in God that defines faith. Moroni didn't have any doubt that his faith in God would see him through all the wars and everything, and I just thought the scripture was really good! I know faith has power to work miracles because we see them every single day! I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and will bring us closer to God than any other book, and will truly strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ and his gospel when we read it every single day. I love you all!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith