Best.....Week......EVER!

Cara Famiglia,

 

Can I just say this was probably the best week of my mission and thus the best week of my life? It is amazing to be here in Busto, Anziano Webb and I are tearing it up. We had sooooo many miracles this week and the work was on fire, all thanks to the Lord for preparing people for us to find. It started out last Friday, we went out for like 20 minutes before weekly planning started and we prayed that we could teach a lesson and find a new investigator. So we go to this park near our house and just start talking to people. We saw a guy down the path but felt inspired to talk to a girl before we got to him. Her name was Melinda, she's from Ghana, and she was asking all the right questions. It was amazing! My bad for not following the prompting to bring an English BoM when we left, but we said 'Will you still be here in 10 minutes?' and she said 'Yeah!' so we ran home and grabbed a copy in English. Then we came back and finished the lesson. She is awesome. Then later that day we talked to this Brazilian guy who had already met the missionaries about a year ago but had fallen out of contact with them. His name was even still in the phone! Aaaaand we met an awesome Italian lady named Francesca who was super interested in hearing about the gospel. That was Friday, but wait, there's still two more days in the week!

 

On Saturday we were doing finding in Busto Arsizio and got a call from a certain Massimo who neither of us remembered talking to, but who wanted to meet with us, so we set up a lesson in the church that afternoon. We saw him and taught him about the Restoration and he accepted a baptismal invite! Following which, we taught our progressing investigator Rafael with this amazing member Mario Ricca who helped us out a lot on the Plan of Salvation lesson, and set a baptismal date with him. And it didn't stop there! We went to teach a recent convert's parents a lesson, we were originally just going to teach the idea of God being our loving Heavenly Father, but as it started we just went to teach the full first lesson. it was unreal, we had a sweet lesson and everything was great. And then we challenged them to baptism and he said yes! And it didn't stop there either! That evening we had about an hour to knock some doors and so we found this giant 14 story palazzo. We start knocking, not much happening, and then Anziano Webb calls a door. He says 'we are totally getting in here!' A kid opens the door without a shirt on. We do a little approach and ask to come in, but he says no. Then we teach and testify some more...and he lets us in! His name was Alex. He started out not really being super religious (although he said he had studied with Jehovah's Witnesses in the past), but it ended up being an amaaaaaazing spiritual lesson. The spirit was seriously smacking everybody in the face. We did a short lesson for like 10 minutes about the Restoration, and then we challenge him to baptism!!! Dun dun dunnnnnn!! And he said 'It will take faith, but yes.' He is sooooooooooooooooo awesome!

 

And then Sunday rolled around. Sunday morning was really tense, as we were going in planning to talk to a bunch of the members and set up lessons with them. And then seven investigators came to church! It was unreal. We had Rafael, Angelo (who miraculously improved his progression over the past week), Massimo, Angelo's girlfriend, a guy named Carlos who randomly met the missionaries a year ago and who we met in the train station about two weeks ago and invited him to church, Filippo, and a Spanish lady who is living with this awesome family in our ward named the Bermudes Family. Seven!! It was amazing! Church was phenomenal, especially for Angelo who accepted a baptismal invite yesterday. The week was amazing. We taught a total of 22 lessons, it was ridiculous!

 

So basically the work is going crazy right now. We are addicted to inviting people to baptism. In fact, today we are going to invite a lady named Manuela to baptism who we met in the park yesterday and had an awesome lesson with.

 

In other news, the past two days the Traveling Assistants came and did an awesome two day scambio with us. Guess who I was with? Anziano Duersch, who is an amazing missionary, mainly because his trainer was Anziano Hekking! He is seriously awesome, and we tore it up. Between the four of us we taught 12 lessons in two days. Anziano Duersch really inspired me to be better and it was a sweet scambio.

 

So that's basically all that's going on right now. Keep up the prayers because we know they are working. We are so schocked by all these miracles that we keep asking ourselves whether we are really worthy of them! There are seriously hundreds. I know that this gospel is true, and that living it brings 100% joy to people. We see it every single day. Keep being awesome and I love you all very much!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith