Week 33 - Bike riding and singing loud

Cool story time. Anziano Buckles and I were riding our bikes earlier this week when I spotted a black man in front of us on a bike with a head shaped exactly like Jerry's (the Nigerian member of our ward). So, I floored my bike to catch up to him. Unfortunately, to my dismay, the black man with the Jerry-shaped head wasn't Jerry at all! However, when I rode my bike side by side with the man's to pass him, the man looked over at me and said, "Hey man! How's it going!" Hahaha, you have to keep in mind that he said that in English; we're in Italy! We started talking (while we rode our bikes side by side) and I learned that his name was Franklin. The whole situation got even weirder when he gave us his phone number, so we could meet again (don't worry mom, we stopped our bikes for this part ;p)... We found out that Franklin is the roommate of Alex, our incredible investigator I told you about last week!

On Sunday, considering it was general conference weekend and we had two really solid investigators that attend the same African church (Alex and Franklin), Anziano Buckles and I decided we would go to a different church on Sunday. It was incredible! I definitely won't be changing religions anytime soon, but it was an unforgettable experience. We were the only white guys there! It was such a cool experience getting to see how Africans worship. There was VERY loud music and lots of dancing. And my favorite part was that I could actually sing the church hymns loud and proud (no one was on pitch)! ;p I've been feeling pretty popular since Sunday because black people that saw us at church keep on coming up to us to see how their white friends are doing! ;)

Rewinding in my week a little bit, on April Fools Eve, Anziano Buckles and I got the idea for a little prank we wanted to play on the sisters in our district the next day. So, it was about 8:30 at night and we were walking to a supermarket to get some supplies to assist us in making some chocolate-dipped onion pieces for them. I can't say that our minds were completely on missionary work at this moment of time, but right before getting to the store, a man on the street stopped us rather abruptly by asking us if we were the Mormon missionaries. My initial reaction was that this man was a drunkard looking for some pocket change, but it wasn't long before we found that this man was far from drunk. He told us that his name was Carlo and that we had stopped him on Easter (while we were doing finding work) and had a conversation about the afterlife with him. He told us that later that night, his father died. He said he didn't recall everything we had told him on Easter, but he remembered that we had something in our eyes that most people in this world didn't have. It was an unbelievable spiritual experience for my companion and I! Unfortunately, while talking with him, he mentioned how much he respects the Mormons because they are a lot less pushy than other religions, so I didn't really feel like I could ask him for his contact deals... But, he does have our church's address and start time, so hopefully we'll see Carlo in our church one of these upcoming weeks.