Christmas is coming!

Cara Famglia,

Christmas is coming! Happy December! The weather does not feel like Christmas though, it is still Autumn type weather here. Pretty crazy. But it is cool because in Legnano and Busto they put up Christmas lights all over centro, and in Busto they have a cool manger scene on the main piazza. We are even busting out the pass-along cards with the nativity scene on them haha.

The work is going well. We are teaching Isaac and Rita, and they are both doing really well. They really really really need to just get a job, get married, and get baptized. We pray for them to get a job often. Isaac came to church on Sunday, unfortunately Rita could not because she was sick. And Isaac fasted! And it was his birthday! It was really cool, he's great in church. Even though his Italian is a little tough, he tries really hard to understand everything, and actually gets a lot out of the lessons. We taught him about Following the Prophet during the first hour of church and he was excited to learn that there's a prophet on the earth today. We are really lucky to have that knowledge! We are going to see him tonight with a member and it is going to be great, we are teaching him about praying often. If you go into Preach My Gospel, you can actually count 15+ blessings promised just in the 'Pray Often' section!

We were also struggling to find new investigators this week, but last night we found one! It's a 20-year old kid named Miguel, from El Salvador. He is cool, and we are going back to teach him Saturday with a 21-year old member kid from El Salvador. So we were really excited about that. We even had a copy of the Book of Mormon in Spanish to give him!

This week my spiritual though is from the spiritual giant, Abinadi. I've gained a lot of respect for him as a missionary, thinking about how the only possible hint of success he may have seen as a missionary was seeing Alma say 'Hey guys, maybe he's right?' before Alma was kicked out of the High Priests' Group. But Abinadi is the man, in Mosiah 16 he throws down some T(testimony) of Christ:

9 He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death.

So remember that Christ is the real Christmas light! I'm very grateful for Jesus Christ being the light and the life of the world, for myself and for my family. I know that God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the grove of trees in the year 1820, and that "the field is white already to harvest" has never been repealed, but is a truth revealed to a prophet of God. I see the fruits of this "marvelous work and a wonder" every day! I love you all a lot!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith