Awesome Week!

So this week was pretty amazing. I'm going to have to start with yesterday. A member of our ward, Sorella Caricato got married!! She is an RM from the Milan mission, and so is her husband, although they served at different times. They got married in the church, and then they went up to the temple in Switzerland to be sealed.

I had heard lots of good things about Italian weddings, and although this was a small one, I was still very impressed. All of us missionaries expected to avoid cooking lunch because we figured we would be filled at the wedding. I was pretty disappointed when I saw that there was only little appetizer-type food set out.

Then, all of a sudden they started bringing out lasagna!! It was awesome. I hadn't even thought about them having multiple courses. I decided that I needed to eat my fill, so I had two plates of lasagna. Then they brought out another plate with 2 balls of Mozzarella di Bufala (Buffalo mozzarella), another kind of lasagna, and some sort of potato thing that was cooked in the oven. I struggled to finish it, after which they brought out cups of fruit that were handed to everyone. Then they went to dessert!! There was tons of different desserts, and of course a cake, and basically I thought I was going to explode. It was awesome. I love weddings.

 

There was also a lot of dancing that we unfortunately did not participate in. Anziano Shaw is going home in about a month so the members love talking to him about after his mission. This one member, a 20-something year old girl was talking to us and she says: You know, when you go back to America you don't have to just date American girls. There are Italian girls too. hahaha. It was so great. Then she started talking about how they know how to cook and all these other good qualities that they have. It was pretty funny. I'll be honest, a wedding is not the best place for a missionary because all the single girls start to feel lonely and they see a bunch of clean cut nice young men and just want to come talk to us.

 

One of the best things about the wedding though is that during it we actually taught a lesson to a new investigator named Favour. He's from Nigeria (I think), and he speaks English. He crossed the Sahara desert to come to Italy, and has seen many of his friends die. He has strong faith in God, and knows that Jesus Christ is our Savior. This was only our second meeting with him but he already wants to be baptized! So we're going to have his baptism on the 5th of June (after we teach him everything). Then that night we had English Course and I was talking to one of my students and he wants to come to church on Sunday to check it out!

Sorella Caricato (the one who just got married) gave us some good advice the other day. She's a really shy lady, but as she was taking us to share the gospel with some of her friends she said: "When we have fear, we are thinking of ourselves." It's true. If we really love the people then we want to help them and will talk to them.

This week I also went on splits with Anziano Cox! He is related to my friend Dallin Cox from High School. We had an amazing day together. He is in his 3rd transfer, and I'm in my 4th. We talked to more people in one day than I think I've ever talked to in a week with other missionaries. Both of us just don't have any problem talking to everyone, and so it made for some very effective proselyting.

We also had a really cool experience. We went to a nice, big park that they have in Foggia, and we started talking to everyone that was sitting on the benches. We ended up teaching a couple guys that were both foreigners. One from Ghana, and the other from Afghanistan. The man from Ghana spoke English and we gave him a Book of Mormon in English (after we taught him). Then we kept going through the park, taught a couple nice Italian families, met some more people, and next thing we knew it was 1:10 p.m.! (We are supposed to be home for lunch at 1:30 and we were far from the house). So we started going back and we passed the man from Ghana. He was sitting on a different bench with his friend, reading the Book of Mormon!

He saw us and said "This is a very good book."

As we were walking away I told him, "That's right. It's the best book. .. Have a nice day!"

It was so cool to see him sitting there reading the Book of Mormon. Earlier when we taught him we told him a little about the Plan of Salvation and he told us "I hope to see you in Paradise." He also told us about how we were the first people that had come to tell him about Jesus Christ. He was just a great guy. It's crazy the sacrifices and struggles that people go through, and it's great to see there humility and how open they are.

Anyway, so things are all still going great. The weather is beautiful, the experiences are great. I know that we're receiving tons of blessings here.

Have a great week!

Love,

Anziano Banks!