Torino is a Gold Mine

Cara Famiglia,

Well this week has been awesome in Torino! The big news actually is that my companion is getting transferred to Milano 2! He's pretty excited, and he will tear it up over there. My new companion will be Anziano DeVincent, he is coming from Livorno and is going into his 4th transfer. I don't really know him but I've heard he's a cool guy.

Now that Martin got baptized we are looking for more people to enter into the "strait and narrow path", and the Lord is really blessing us! We recently found a bunch of awesome new investigators! The first is this sweet Italian family, the husband is named Gianpier and the wife is Filomena. They have a 10 year old daughter named Caterina. We knocked on their door and they said to come back last Friday and talk. My faith probably wasn't as strong as it should've been because other pass-bys haven't yielded much success in the past, but we went back and taught them an awesome Restoration lesson! And now they want to meet the prophet and the 12 apostles and read the Book of Mormon. We went back on Monday and Gianpier had already read 10 chapters! They are awesome. And also Filomena's mom was at the lesson and she was super interested too! So we are seeing them again on Saturday and finishing up teaching the Plan of Salvation and helping them come closer to being an eternal family.

We also found Alex! We stopped him on the street and he was in a big hurry but he gave us his phone number and said we could meet up with him. He is half-American, half-Italian. His mom is from Baltimore and his dad(who died maybe 20 years ago) is Italian! He is possibly the most golden investigator I have ever heard of/met. We called him to set up an appointment and he says essentially "I really want to meet with you guys, I think I'm mature enough to really make a decision and be a part of something. I want to get to know God better." So we are seeing him again tonight and we are going to set a baptismal date with him!

Bright is doing okay, we saw him yesterday and really re-committed him to baptism for the 5th of February, it will be tough for him to make it but we are going to try our best. We are also seeing Collins tonight and we're going to see what's up with him and try and help him get on board for baptism. And then we are also working with other various investigators mentioned in emails past. But the work here is going really good, Anziano Russo gemmed the city for my new companion.

I was thinking a lot this week about this analogy our awesome Ward Mission Leader likes to make that's really simple. He talks about how some people have the gospel in their life like the air conditioning in a car, it's just an accessory. But to really fulfill the purpose of the gospel and receive the true blessings it has to be the motor in the car! It's really simple and obvious but I just thought it was a really cool analogy and I liked it a lot. So make the gospel the central, all-defining purpose in your life, it changes everything! I can testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. I know that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that he will always absolutely love us. I know that this is His church and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

I love you all!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith