Palio Adventures!

Cara Famiglia,

For another year the Palio is no more in Siena! Although this most recent Palio will live on in infamy! During the second turn of the race six horses fell down leaving only four to finish. Valdimontone, a contrada that hadn't won in 22 years, pulled out a stellar victory. The race was a lot more exciting than the last one to be honest. Other interesting note: we were actually right by the drain at the bottom of the piazza with just a couple people between us and the fence. In front of us there were a bunch of kids that were watching over the fence to see everything, including a 10 or so year old German kid. What happened, I didn't actually see, but Anziano Benson describes it like this "The valdimontone supporters as they saw that they were going to win, seemed to appear out of nowhere, and proceeded to tear the kid off the fence and throw him on the ground without a second thought." The poor kid was traumatized! He was crying afterwards. Seriously, these people are nuts for this horse race!

Other than the Palio the work is always progressing, although that isn't necessarily measured by outstanding numbers. We are teaching Chiara, who is still facing some serious economic and spiritual difficulties, but she is really visibly changing as she accepts the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is awesome to hear such sincere prayers! We are also teaching a cool guy named Bismar, he is from Bolivia. I may have mentioned him last week, but he apparently almost got baptized in Bolivia about 10 years ago but then moved. Now he's here in Siena, although he works in Firenze all week so we can only see him on weekends. But he is a stud.

We also had a cool finding experience the other day. Actually finding work in general is just better lately. We are seeing a lot of success from varying things up. Anyway, the other night we were out and it was kind of late. Anziano Benson felt like we should go down some side streets that I honestly wasn't too excited about because it was off to the middle of nowhere Siena. But we went and we ended up at a big, nearly empty piazza in front of a big church. There weren't very many people but we started talking. We ended up finding a really cool student named Andrea, who is this girl from Mexico City. She actually lived in Houston for a year so she speaks almost perfect english and was welcoming to see us again to get a copy of the Book of Mormon. We are teaching her tonight so pray that goes well.

This week my spiritual thought is an invite to read the 'Pray with Faith' section from Chapter 4 of Preach My Gospel. It is probably one of the most inspired things I've ever read! Then do the prayer evaluation activity on pg. 95 and see how you can improve! I would say one of the toughest but most rewarding testimonies I've had is my testimony of prayer, how it is a literal conversation with Heavenly Father and I'm glad we can pray about anything anywhere at anytime. It is unbelievable. I know that God answers prayers and that his Son Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. I know this is His church. I love you all!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith