How are you all doing? It's been a busy, but productive week for us
here in Rimini. It's been so nice having a car to get things done.
Yesterday, the sister's needed to take the car to go to a far-away
appointment and we were left with the bikes... I forgot how
inconvenient it is not having the speed and the GPS capabilities of a
car. Luckily, we made it to all of our appointments (with just a
little bit of tardiness to a couple) and only had one minor
catastrophe (I had some zucchini bread batter spill in my bike
basket). When we arrived at the ward family home evening last night, I
gave a brother in our ward a wet handshake (I had been biking all day,
so my hands were a little moist
pulled me to the side where no one else could here and said, "Hey
Anziano... I used to have sweaty hands too. Wash your hands in cold
water mixed with apple vinegar twice a day- it will heal you."
The two greatest things that happened this week were setting baptismal
dates with Courage and Sunday! They are preparing themselves to be
baptized on the 30th of this month. These men are both really
hardworking and spiritual. They both come to our Italian class and
have been studying the Book of Mormon. Their questions of the Book of
Mormon have been making me realize how much new content we present to
Christians as we reveal the fullness of the gospel to them. We have
Book of Mormon prophets and modern day prophets and principles to
expound upon (don't even get me started on the priesthood or temples)!
Another cool lesson we had this week was with a part member family.
The mother and daughter our active members, but the father is not. The
dad isn't really interested in the church. Fortunately, since we
helped him move lumber last week, he felt obligated to invite us to
dinner. At this thank-you dinner, we were able to talk a lot about the
church. During our time together, he really opened up to us and it was
obvious he was truly interested in what we were saying. He has a lot
of doubts and doesn't believe we can ever reach a certainty of
spiritual things as humans, but agreed to read in the Book of Mormon
and take Moroni's challenge. I'm not sure who was happier by the end
of the night, us or the man's wife.
The other highlight of the week was getting to go to Florence for
stake conference. It was refreshing getting to see all my friends from
Pistoia, Livorno, and Pesaro again. A member of the area seventy spoke
at the conference and it was a beautiful talk! He was by no means a
native Italian speaker (he only spoke in the present tense even when
referring to the past or future), but the gospel principles he taught
could've been spoken by Joseph Smith during one of his legendary
1840's sermons in Nauvoo.
I wanted to share a couple of the most prevalent concepts he shared
with us. First, pray to your FATHER. When we are in need of miracles,
we often pray to Heavenly Father. But, before Heavenly Father was our
Heavenly Father, he was our father-father. As the Seventy put it, "I
don't always want to talk to my God, I want to talk to my father." As
we go through afflictions or difficulties, we can pray to God like our
father.
Secondly, don't get offended! We need to love the people around us. To
build godlike attributes like long-suffering, we need people to offend
us. We should let people offend us without becoming offended (pretty
weird right?). If you feel offended, you can have a more eternal
perspective by realizing that you have room to progress. We can
literally find joy in our afflictions as we submit ourselves to the
Lord.
Another interesting thought that he shared with us was about Jesus'
stepbrother, James. James was living with a PERFECT person. Imagine
how difficult it must have been! He couldn't tell a lie to Mary
because James knew darn well that Jesus was going to tell the truth.
;)
I love you guys! I hope you have a really good week.
1. The man himself, Anziano Wheeler
2. We did a companionship exchange with the elders in Ancona this
week... They taught us how to do Briscola finding (a really popular
card game here)!
3. Ancona is so pretty!!
4. Italian class
5. On Saturday night, we watched the finale of the Champion's League
(Anziano Montalto wanted to use one of his culture events to watch
it). It was pretty fun being around a lot of people that cared so much
about a sports game, but it also made me feel like a freak because my
care level was at an absolute 0 no matter how hard I tried to get
pumped up.
girl during the whole game so that was a success.
6. Who needs a car when you look this dang good on a bike?! ;)
7. At the ward family home evening last night, Paola showed me Noah
(he's one of those black kittens). They are picking him up today!!
8. This guy is a little trouble maker....
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