I hope you're all doing fine and dandy because I know am! I got to talk to my family on Sunday and they are the greatest. Also, it's been really nice weather and that means two things: I'm always really happy and I'm consistently sweaty. I remember a few years ago when the sister missionaries visited the Anderson residence and they stunk! I remember thinking to myself, "Missionaries shouldn't stink! Who is going to listen to their message of eternal significance if they stink?!" Now, four years later, I'm that stinky missionary and no one wants to listen to me! 😂
The pinnacle moment of this week definitely occurred this past Friday when Daniel was baptized! I'm going to take advantage of my journal writing and share how things went from my perspective.
"Daniel got baptized today! Everything worked out perfectly. The font isn't filling up fast enough? No problem, let's dump trash cans of water into the font and raise the water later. We forgot to bring the eggs to make the chocolate chip cookies and there isn't time to go to the store? No problem, let's ask the church's next door neighbor for eggs. I am sweating a lot? No problem, I remembered to pack a deodorant stick before leaving the apartment!
For real. Everything went really well today. The font was filled in time for the baptism, we ate delicious chocolate chip cookies after the baptism, and Anziano Anderson smelled oh-so-good during the baptism. I'm pretty sure Abbey would've laughed at me today when she saw me singing in the "special musical number". The Rimini missionaries teamed up with Sister Allen and we sang the rainbow primary song right before Daniel got dunked... It wasn't atrocious, but it was by no means special!
After the baptism, Daniel was elated! He really opened up to me after the baptism and shared some personal stuff with me. I always love finding out why the Nigerians I meet decided to risk their life to come to Italy in the first place. What it comes down to is he's a jealous romantic (his jealously just manifested itself in a very different way than my preferred method of social media stalking)! As long as Daniel keeps reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church, he's going to be a grand great father and inspired church leader one day."
I'm so proud of Daniel! He came with us yesterday to help teach Samuel (our new contact that I told you about last week) and the only thing he's missing is a missionary name tag. Daniel wasn't scared to jump in to teach a doctrine or bare a testimony and by the end, him and Samuel had really hit it off. They are from the same state in Nigeria and bonded over that for a little bit.
On Saturday, the day after the baptism, we literally spent the WHOLE day in the church preparing for a stake youth activity the following evening. It was a long, tiring, but rewarding day. The activity consisted of a fake plane ride and cash, then a tour of the three kingdoms of glory. We put so much work into it and we weren't even the leaders organizing the event! It made me really glad that we have faithful leaders in the church that seek to provide a means for spiritual experiences to our youth. Camp Helaman was the most spiritual experience of my youth and that's thanks to awesome church leaders like the ones we have in Rimini! :) Unfortunately, from my observations, and I think some of the youth deprived themselves of a powerful spiritual experience due to their frivolity or flirtiness (teenagers can be serious flirt monsters). At the very least, all the kids are more informed about the three kingdom's of glory.
I think a really cool lesson we had this week was with Roberto and Paola! Roberto is an ex-member who the missionaries got in contact with a few months ago and now has started coming to church again. Roberto, although he hasn't been re-baptized, has such a strong testimony of the Gospel and ended up bringing his girlfriend to church on Sunday! We ate dinner with them a few days ago and presented a little message about Christ. It was a total success! Paola has two little boys who thought we were really cool and Paola accepted the invite to take the missionary discussions.
My life is really great! :)
Vi voglio bene,
Anziano Anderson
1. Daniel's big day
2. Just call me President Uchtdorf because I'm about to take flight
3. Cruising in Italy
4. Flyin' dat San Marino bandiera
5. When people ask if you eat well in Italy 😂
6. Coppia pic
7. I don't have instagram anymore, but I still know how to take artsy photos
8. P-day squad
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