Piacenza = City of Miracles!

Cara Famiglia,

Welcome to Piacenza! This city is awesome! The work here is going amazingly. It is awesome! We are so busy with appointments and stuff we have barely had time to do finding work. Piacenza is a bike city too, which is really nice.

Well I will run through our awesome investigators! Gianpaolo is an awesome Italian guy. We went to his wedding on Saturday where he married Rosa. He should be baptized this week and then Rosa the week after! They have been taught everything and are ready. Gianpaolo is Italian and his wife is Ecuadorian. They are really cool. Another awesome investigator we have is Alex, who is from Ukraine! He even understood when I said hello in Russian(Thanks Diana!) He is a Seventh-day Adventist, but is really loving everything we teach and even came to church on Sunday! It was an interesting experience haha. We are also teaching a really interesting guy named Valerio who is a 60 year old Italian man who used to be Shinto but now really wants to change his life! He loves the Book of Mormon and came to church on Sunday and loved it! He and Alex both have baptismal dates for the 10th of November! The work here is so good!

We are also teaching some other cool people including Silvia, a student from the English class who's looking for real happiness, and Betty and Daniele, who are a family from Cape Verde in Africa. All these people are super cool and it is awesome to work with them. The work here is just on fire, and everything is going well. I have never had so much work to do!

We had a really good zone conference this last week too, and they highlighted a quote that I really enjoy from Preach My Gospel. On page 19 Boyd K. Packer quoted says: “True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.” It really is true! I'm grateful that the gospel really addresses every single concern we could have about becoming our best self, that's why we constantly need to study it every day and apply it in our lives, so that every day we can try to become a little bit more like the Savior. I know He is the perfect example and I'm grateful that every moment of our lives we have the opportunity to choose to become more like Him. I love this gospel and I know this work is true! I love you all lots!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith