Week 47 - Bad Food

Italian Twins!

My District

We just got our transfer call news and I'll be staying in Livorno with Anziano Freckleton for another transfer! I'm excited to get some good work done in the next few weeks. Some highlights of the week:

It's been 19 years and they were finally able to do it; I was stuck in a psych ward this week! ;) Luckily, my stay was short-lived. We had a man call us earlier this week who wanted a blessing because he was in the hospital. When we got to the hospital, we discovered that he was in the psych ward! So, after passing through some tight security, we were able to meet with him and apparently he's a member of our church who has not participated for 10 years. He was a very pleasant man, but some of the other patients in the facility really scared me.. But, it was cool getting to reconnect with an old investigator of ours that we stopped seeing a couple months ago because he seemed a little crazy (we made a good call on that one)! AND, we were able to give out a Book of Mormon to a nice lady before we departed.

Another unusual experience we had this week was helping one of our African investigators stick it to the man! Our investigator, Stanley, has had some problems with the cook in his African camp (the cook is an old African lady that's been in Italy for 20+ years). About 6 months ago, the cook was pressuring Stanley to sleep with her for bigger food portions. When Stanley declined, the cook gave him "bad food" that made him really sick. Since then, Stanley has avoided the camp's kitchen and has been using his own money to buy his meals. Stanley tried taking this problem to the government a few months ago, but the government assigned THE COOK to be the translator when he went to file his claim. So, this past week, the Mormon missionaries in Livorno helped present Stanley's case to a government official. It was definitely an usual act of service, but it felt so cool being apart of
something bigger than us (besides from the message of eternal significance that we share with people on a daily basis).

You guys always might be interested to know that at our African family home evening this past week, I beat all the Africans that came in a race! It was also pretty funny because we were racing TO Anziano Freckleton and one of the men took that to mean we had to touch Anziano Freckleton to win the race, so as this particular man nears the finish line he sticks out his hand to touch Anziano Freckleton (me and this man our neck and neck at this point).... WHAM- the man NAILS Anziano Freckleton in the gut as he passes him! Needless to say, I love being a missionary in Italy.