"Come On, We're Going to Church"

Well first off I will answer some of the question and other stuff before i give an account of the week. I did receive your package this week and I loved it! I pounded the candy super fast haha and I was playing the music first thing when I got back from district meeting. Thanks so much!

Domingo and Gianluca are both doing really well. I think Domingo gets the whole "what it means to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" thing. Gianluca is solid but he is a bit weird sometimes haha. I dont know how to explain it haha. Both are doing great though, and it has been cool to see them bless the sacrament and everything. Domingo is still trying to get his wife to find find the same light that he has but she doesn't have much interest just yet.

I will have to say Dad, HAPPY FATHERS DAY!...you will like the little present I sent. I sent off a CD of pictures last week but I realized that hardly any of them actually have pictures of me in them...oops. I just haven't had too much time for picture taking in the last little while. Missionary work is time-consuming but awesome! We really had a great example of this "awesomeness" this past week. Here is a question, could the girls really not think of anything better to buy than garments?.....I bet dad was super excited about that gift haha!...just kidding. I'm still not sure what type of camera I have...NEXT week I will let you know. Sorry I will tell you that I do really like Mineral Water...although now it is called FRIZZANTE. It was so so at first but now I love it.

Alright, so this is a long story.... all last week we just kept pushing ourselves to teach 20 lessons. We had been challenged last month to teach 20 lessons a week. We had been promised but some of the general authorities(through the mission leaders) that the number of baptisms would increase. After Zone Conference we were super pumped and ready to teach 20 lessons. We had only taught 7 lessons the week before and we were not happy about it even though it had been rather successful in other ways. It seemed like everything had gone all wrong though because we had many member lessons scheduled and almost every single one fell through.

We had gotten to the Thursday afternoon and we only had about 7 lesson taught. We weren't even close to 20. We kept pushing each other though and we were convinced we would teach 20 lessons by the end of the week; we knew that God would provide a way. Thursday night we met two Africans while doing strada and both of them could barely speak English. We were able to find out that they lived super close in a hotel and they told us we could pass by the next day.

So the next day we go over and we find both of these two guys, Frank and Immanuel outside of the hotel. They quickly tell us to sit down and that they would go get their brother to come and listen, too. Within the next five minutes there were about 10-15 other Africans surrounding us ready to listen to our message!!!!!! It was so funny because while they were coming outside to listen to us we could hear a few saying "come on, we're going to church!". We shared the Joseph Smith story and talked about the Book of Mormon. They were all super interested and they said we could come back again the next day! We felt like Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount, it was AWESOME!

The next day we taught them again and we brought Book of Mormons for all of them. The lesson went awesome and again they loved the lesson. We gave them a soft baptismal invite and they accepted. The day after that we came back to teach scripture study, prayer and obedience and invited them all to be baptized on the 10th of July and they all accepted. A few of them were not there but we set dates with them the following day. Sunday was amazing! On the way to church we stopped by their hotel and picked all of them up. We walked with them to church and when we got their the members were shocked(in a good way). We had to translate for them but after church they all told us that church was Amazing!

As of now there are about 7 Africans who have baptismal dates and are all really interested and want to be baptized. A few don't understand as much as the others but it is very evident that they feel the spirit and want to know more. The others translate for them after the lesson.

Anyways, the other awesome part of the story is that by Sunday we had only taught 14 lessons, which was already more than any other week of this transfer. We taught one to the Africans during church so we were at 15 lessons. There was a young men stake activity that we were invited to that was in the afternoon. We would be doing splits with the young men for about an hour. On the way to a stake youth activity in Milano we taught a lesson on the train, and I was able to teach a lesson during the splits with the young adult. On the way back to Pavia we taught another lesson on the train. We went directly to teach the Africans(Frank, Immanuel, Bismack, Wilfred, Austin, Larry, Richard, Kelly). We were teaching in groups of 2's with them so we could really get to know them better because in a big group it is super hard. We taught 4 lessons with them and each one was so spiritual. It was amazing!. By the end of the night we had taught 8 LESSONS!!!!. We finished the week with 22 lessons, we smashed our previous record of 12 during this transfer and I smashed my record so far in the mission(17). It was an awesome day and one of my favorites of the mission. It was full of fun, full of the spirit and bringing others closer to Christ. Heavenly Father truly does work miracles we just need to do our part and continue going forward with faith!

There is a Romanian we are teaching that also has lots of interest. We met him this week and had a lesson with him Monday that went awesome. He was asking us at the end of the lesson when we could come back. He said we could come Thursday, Friday, or Saturday or even all 3 days! haha. He is a sweet dude and i will talk more about him next week.

Our work is really going awesome right now and has just exploded. I felt like it was going to happen any day and it did. When we go forward with faith, being diligent, things will happen.

Thanks for the updates! Love you all...keep the sports coming. Facciamo Così (that's how we will do it) .....we will trade spirit for sports...sounds good. haha. You are awesome.

PS..I will try getting some pics with me actually in them....my bad. By the way did I tell you yet we have been on bikes this whole transfer? These last few weeks have been a doozy...over 200 miles combined...YIKES. Talk about going the extra mile...just kidding.