August 25, 2011

Ciao!

   Hey there all, how's it going?  It sounds like you guys are just having a blast back there in Utah with your lakes and boats and pirate crusades.  It's still hard for me to believe that Searle is back home!  You'll have to read him some of my letters, since I hardly kept my promise to write him on the mish!  Anyways, it was great to hear all of the fun news about Brittany and Katie.  I'll bet that was fun for Katie to come play in her home town.  I always wanted to play in the Salt Lake Valley when I was at Dixie State.  Also, I love hearing about how the PC team is doing, so keep letting me know.  I remembered this week that Matty Moore is a freshman now, and I think he said he was going to play on the freshman team.  Is he?   That's amazing about Alexa!  Tanti auguri a un amica stretta! 

   We went to Verona again for P-Day because Anziano Jolley (our district leader in Reggio Emilia) and my comp Anziano Wilkins had never been.  It was fun to go there again, although I think after 3 times I basically have seen all that there is time for on the mission.  We saw L'arena, which is kind of like Verona's Colloseum, La Casa di Giulietta and Torre dei Lamberti, which is the tallest tower in the city (I think).  It's the tower that I'm on in the video I sent home on my SD card.  Anyways, it was a lot of fun to see all of the street actors that they have here.  All along the streets they have people dressed as knights, gladiators, egyptian statues, etc. who kind of just interact and take pictures with the people and basically act in the strangest ways they can to make money.  My personal favorite is the man who masquerades as a newborn baby.  He has this bright pink stroller that he sits under and pokes his head out of, and has some sort of doll for a body.  He uses some sort of device to make his voice super high like a baby.  It's quite ludicrous :)

   Things are beginning to run smoother here as the month of september comes closer.  Like I'd told you we had been working and working without seeing (or maybe realizing) many miracles.  However, this week we met up with a man we met about a week ago.  His name is Biju and he is a converted cristian from India who speaks english (and who lives in Italy... what a combination of cultures)!  At first he didn't seem super interested, although he was very friendly.  But then we met with him this week, and something changed in him.  He all of a sudden had a very large interest in knowing what we believe and what we do as missionaries.  He said he was struck by our faith and dedication to come here to Italy to share our testimonies, faith being a very important characteristic in the Indian culture (according to him).  He had a lot of questions about Joseph Smith and the First Vision, so we sat down and explained more in depth that he wasn't the founder of the Mormon faith, but that the Church of Jesus Christ was restored through him and that we now have a living prophet on the earth.  Once he understood exactly what it is we believe he told us that it was almost exactly in line with what he believes.  We met with him again last night and he already has faith that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  He asked us how being baptized into the LDS Church would change his life, and upon hearing our response we could see that he was putting some serious thought into what baptism means to him.  He has a wife who is 2 months pregnant who is cristian just like him who we want to teach as well!  Once again, this man kind of just came out of nowhere.  Who knew that Christmas comes 2 weeks in a row?

Sono contento di aver sentito da voi e tutte le buone cose che mi avete scritto.  Mi mancate e penso di voi sempre.  Ma sono grato anche di essere qua in Piacenza predicando il Vangelo di Gesù Cristo.  Sempre lavoriamo and facciamo fatica nella vita di raggiungere le nostre mete, e pensiamo che le benedizioni non veranno.  Ma c'è una cosa che mi ha detto un altro missionario, che forse le benedizioni non sono venuti ancora... ma la parola importante è <<ancora>>.  Se perserveremo e andremo avanti avendo fede in Cristo, le benedizioni veranno.  Il Signore ci ha promesso questo e ci credo.  Comunque, devo andare.  Vi voglio bene!

-Anziano Proctor