Modena Week 17!

Cara Famiglia,

 

Well it sounds like everybody at home had a busy and fun week doing lots of things, but I have you beat because I'm on a mission in Italy! Ha! Pride aside(and also bad rhymes), this week was excellent, and today we are going to Parma for P-Day to go bowling with the Anziani from Reggio and Piacenza!

 

We had a sweet lesson with Paolo this week, he basically taught us about prayer and feeling the Holy Ghost. I love teaching him because the spirit is always super strong, probably how it should be in all lessons. He's really humble and sincere and definitely has a strong desire to strengthen his relationship with God, so we are excited to help him progress. He's sooo going to get baptized and sealed in the temple. The only problem is he works a ton during the week so we can only see him on Sundays after church. We also taught a good lesson with the miracle guy, Giuseppe, who is also trying to find God in his life. He's given us three bidoni though, and each time we had a member there with us. But we are still workin with him. Unfortunately we dropped Michael for now, he wasn't really progressing enough, but we are working hard to find some new investigators and help them progress. The work is going really good here.

 

This week also had the worst day of my mission. Last Friday we had four straight awesome appointments fall through, including two with a member. The worst part is that as part of one of the appointments falling through, one of our best investigators, Bouba, moved to Napoli without saying anything! It was a major bummer. And then literally 30 minutes later we called one of the other investigators who had given us a bidone and he had also moved to Napoli! It was literally Move-to-Napoli day, and it was not fun. But it was a good learning experience about how to cope with some major disappointment.

 

There was also a sweet zone conference this week, again held in Modena. We learned a lot about just how to be better in every way, especially in using the Book of Mormon. I love the Book of Mormon! I dunno if I mentioned but we had a goal to give out 50 copies this transfer and we are currently at 29, so we are on track to reach the goal. It's awesome to give people a copy of the greatest book in the entire world, for free too! We always try to literally pour out our testimony to people when we give them the Book of Mormon, it's really great.

 

Well this week I really liked reading some stuff in Doctrine and Covenants Section 6. My favorite is verses 22-23, which was conveniently already highlighted in my scriptures. It's a really good thought that we don't really ever lose a testimony, we just forget it momentarily! It made me think of the part in the New Testament where Jesus says the Holy Ghost will bring all things to our remembrance. A lot of times I think we need to simply confirm our testimony, not ask for a whole new one. I'm really grateful for the testimony I have that Jesus Christ lives as our Savior and Redeemer, who atoned for all of us. I am grateful for the Book of Mormon and for the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the prophet Joseph Smith. I know this church is true, and this work is amazing!

 

I loooooooooooooove you all!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith