Still in Modena?????

Cara Famiglia,

 

The answer is yes! I am staying in Modena. Anziano Kimball, however, is not so lucky, as he is being transferred to GENOVA!! He is going to be training again aaaand opening a new companionship! Pretty intense! He is super excited though, his brother served in Genova in the Milan mission about 10 years ago. My new companion will be Anziano Hutchinson, who is one transfer above me, I knew him in the MTC and he's a really good guy, so I'm looking forward to serving with him.

 

This week was pretty exciting. The first thing I would bring your attention to would be last Thursday. Guess how many lessons we had planned? Answer: 9. Guess how many fell through? Answer: 9. Buuuuuut, it was still an awesome day because we taught three new lessons and picked up three new investigators, two of which are now progressing! And one accepted a baptismal commitment! And they were all even Italians! So even though that day was kind of rough it ended up being dang good. Also, for the second time in my mission so far, a family invited us over for dinner after knowing us for only about 10 minutes. It was great, but unfortunately they weren't really interested in the gospel. But we did get a nice Italian dinner. Our other investigators are doing well. Paolo is an awesome guy who is the companion of a sister in our ward, i.e. they are not married but live together with a kid. He's known the church basically his whole time being together with this lady but only just recently said he'd be interested in learning about the gospel. I don't know if I've mentioned him in previous emails since we've only taught him two or three times, but he is a stud, really sincerely wanting to find God in his life. At our appointment on Sunday after church, he showed us that he had taken a bunch of notes on the Alma 32 reading assignment we left him! It was awesome! I loooove when investigators keep commitments. Our other investigators are doing great too, progressing along pretty nicely. Pray for them!

 

This week in studying for Paolo's lessons we were reading about faith and I was really impressed with the Hebrews 11 and Ether 12 team-up. They both just give a run down of amazing miracles all throughout scriptual history wrought by FAITH! It was literally awesome, to see how much Faith is a principle of power. It is also good to know how to increase your faith based on Alma 32. I still always remember the quote I think from Sister Hekking who wasn't even my seminary teacher, but who says 'great faith has a short shelf life.' I know that as we read and hear the word of God, and pray, our faith will increase! I've seen it go up a lot since I've been out here, and every day and night I pray that I can have enough faith to work miracles here in Italy. And it works! I challenge everyone reading this to improve their faith every day, it makes life much better.

 

I love being out here in Modena! I love Italy! I love being able to wake up and go out to spend 100% of my time serving the Lord, without having to worry about school or anything! I know Heavenly Father answers prayers, even if it's not always the way we expect! I love you all!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith