Busto Arsizio #1

Cara Famiglia,

 

Well here I am in Como for P-Day. Funny story, the reason we are here for P-Day is because at transfers I accidentally took Anziano Portellano's small bag and he took mine. It is fortunate that we are in the same zone or we would probably have to wait to get it for another week or so. We met here because it's halfway in between. Como is beautiful though! Also Busto Arsizio is awesome. Anziano Webb and I are tearing it up here. For the first time in my mission we are teaching all Italian people! Not that it's a bad thing, but in Modena a lot of the people we taught were African. It's just different. But we have some awesome investigators.

 

My second day here we challenged this awesome guy named Rafael to baptism and he accepted! He is a stud. The only problem is that he, like many of our investigators, is super busy and can only meet on Saturday and Sunday. But we're going to fix a date with him when we see him next. We are also teaching a cool guy named Filippo who knows more about the Bible than anyone I've ever met. Sometimes it's kind of distracting. We're hoping he can progress towards baptism because he's come to church four times and has a bunch of member friends, but he's just doing the bare minimum of keeping commitments.

 

So in fact we do not actually live in the city of Busto Arsizio, we live in Legnano, a small suburb about 5 minutes away on train. Both cities are smaller than Modena. We mainly work in Legnano, Busto, and another city called Gallarate, about 10 minutes past Busto on the train. The church is in Busto, and is the 2nd floor of a palazzo. We take our bikes everywhere even when we go to other cities.

 

The ward is really good! It is pretty big, although not quite as big as Modena. But it is still nonetheless a ward and we have awesome members. Sunday was a cool Sacrament Meeting, I bore my testimony about how happy I was to be here and it was great. Then we had this guy who's in our ward who's also in the Stake Presidency get up and bear his testimony about how the ward needs to help out the missionaries and told them to pray for us by name. It was pretty powerful, and we're working a tonnnnnn with members here. We have five lessons planned to teach members this week and will get even more the next week, we are trying to jumpstart missionary work through them. It really is so much easier and better that way!

 

So this week I did a scambio in Varese with our district leader and it was awesome. One of the best things I learned is the power of using the First Vision in finding people. We talk to people about something simple like prayer, faith, or the family, and then tie it to the Restoration. I told the First Vision on the street like seven or eight times in the past two days, and it works sooooooo great! We got so many people to listen to us and we gave out a ton of copies of the Book of Mormon too! It made me realize how grateful I am for that special and sacred event, and how powerful it is to share with people. I know that Joseph Smith really saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in that grove, and it is really a gift to be able to share it with people every day. To quote Ezra Taft Benson(although on a different subject) "I love this work, and it is work!"

 

I love you all and hope you are all doing great!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith