"We Discovered That He Believes the Book of Mormon to Be True"

Hey!......So yeah, Verona is freezing!!!haha. I'm hanging in there though so don't worry at all! We've been super busy the last couple days with Zone Vision, planning and meetings that we haven't had tons of time to do missionary work. We also went to Modena on Monday to attend the district meeting there, and do a scambio with them. It was very fun getting to see the city in winter. The trees were completely empty as well as the streets. Welcome to winter Anziano Neff! Anziano Owens and I went and taught one of their investigators and along the way we saw the new converts Felix and Seth so that was cool. It was sad to hear that many of the African new converts in Modena haven't been attending church regularly. As much as they understand the gospel of Christ they really just don't understand it. It's frustrating at times but we can't force people to be obedient. On a more positive side Antonio is going strong and is just awesome(at least the missionaries told me this).

We are gearing up to visit all the other district leaders throughout the transfer as well. We will be visiting Reggio Emilia, Bolzano, and Bergamo. Our zone is the biggest Zone in the mission with five districts. We just finished our Vision for the zone and it is focused on the things that Elder Causse told us the other week. Our focus is on being a true disciple of Jesus Christ. It entails a lot of things but we feel it will really help our zone grow. Tomorrow we have a consiglio (Council) with president and the other zone leaders to present it to them and be trained a bit on how to help our zones.

Well right now our work is so so. We have one date right now whose name is Fernando. He is from Sri Lanka and is christian. We haven't taught him a ton, but he came to church last Sunday and really liked it. In our last lesson we discovered that he believes the Book of Mormon to be true. After having prayed about it he felt prompted to read it. He says he hasn't had many experiences with the spirit but we helped him realized how this prompting was it. He's about 20 years old and is super cool. We are really focusing on getting one baptism this transfer. Seeing how we are traveling all over the zone we think that one is a good goal for us.

My companion anziano Mèszàros is a stud. He is probably one of the best Italian speakers in the mission. Right now we are living in four. ME and my companion along with Anziano Webb and Ramjoué. Webb actually is a year younger than me and went to Olympus. We know each other really well because we had seminary for like 3 semesters in a row. His sister is actually married to Scott Neff...what a coincidence. Ramjoué is from Riverton. They are all awesome and we will have a lot of fun...obedient fun. The last couple days have been fun yet at the same time has made me realize how much better I need to be.

I spent a lot of time comparing myself with my companion and other missionaries in terms of teaching and language skills. I struggled a lot with confidence the first few days here. I kept thinking how inadequate I am as a missionary and wondering agh....there are better missionaries that could do better than me as a zone leader. BUTTT I finally got over my own worries and self pride(I guess you could say). I need to just be humble and grateful for the skills I've been blessed with. I also realized I need to just work harder on those skills which I lack. So now I'm good. I know I'm here for a reason and we are gonna kick butt. I am really going to love this calling and having this great opportunity to help grow our Zone to be true disciples of Christ.!!!

So how are the Jazz doing?....

Grazie for the emails and have a GREAT WEEK.