I love the people!

This week was totally awesome. But where to start?

We had Zone Conference last Thursday with our new mission president. He's great, and his wife is too. He seems to know a lot of quotes and stories by modern day prophets, and he's just a really nice guy. His wife doesn't speak any Italian, but she's learning.

I found out that all the Zone Conferences in the Rome mission are done in English! (Ours are done in Italian. It makes sense because we're in Italy)So Sorella Kelly said that she was impressed that we did it all in Italian.

Besides that, the conference was great because I had the chance to see a lot of my old friends. Anziano Garvin was there, Anziano Garcia (both were in my MTC district), and then there were tons of other missionaries that I've met here on the mission.

  

The weather has been crazy hot here. It got up to 109 degrees one day! Needless to say our motivation for getting appointments with people has really gone up. I've also started carrying a water bottle around with me.

On Sunday we had an awesome lesson. We taught one of our investigators named Silvia. She's been an investigator for more than two years! Her boyfriend is a member, and he teaches gospel principles. Anyway, when we visited her we wanted to set a date for her to be baptized. So after we talked about the restoration and her testimony, we asked her when she would like to be baptized. She didn't feel comfortable setting an actual date, so then bishop chimed in. hahaha. I can't remember everything he said, but I know he said this, "I want to see you two get married in the temple." Instead of baptism he kept talking about marriage. haha. It was way funny. Anyway, she's going to pray this week about getting baptized in a month, because it's already been way too long (she comes to church every Sunday, reads the book of mormon daily, knows the doctrine, etc).

We've started meeting with the members more, and I love it. We have some awesome members here. Last Friday we did splits and Anziano Gilbert and I visited the Grieco family. We taught them about family councils. I'm not sure if you've heard of them, but I realized we've actually done them for a long time. It's just where you discuss decisions or problems as a family. I think we would would do it usually before family prayer. We also did it when we planned for trips. Anyway, we taught them about it, but then we found out that Fratello Grieco is already way into it!! We're teaching all the members in the ward this message because we want them to do a family council to figure out how we can have more reverence in Sacrament meeting. They have a cute little girl, but she crys too much. haha.

Anyway, then we did FHE with the Corvino family on Monday and taught them the same message. Sorella Corvino is totally awesome. We're going to go help their neighbor with some yard work tomorrow.

Oh! I almost forgot another really cool thing. On Monday we went and visited a less active member from Florence and she gave us 3 referrals!! Two of them turned out to be difficult because they're too stubborn, but one is going to be a new investigator. One of them (a stubborn guy who lived 30 years in Canada) had some crazy views on the Bible. He told us that he believes in the Bible, but I'm not sure if he's ever read any of it at all!! He told us that Jesus was never resurrected!!

Last P-day we went to Barletta. It's right next to Trani. It was a pretty sweet trip. Italy's starting to all look the same to me, but it all looks pretty sweet compared to America. hahaha.

 

Speaking of the Bible, I've really gotten into it lately. I have about 50 scriptures tabbed for lessons, and now I'm going through and listing my own cross-references for them. It's pretty awesome. I've also still been studying the Book of Mormon. I'm in 3rd Nephi, and I'm about to hit a really good part. (When Jesus appeared in America)

So everything's great here. Transfers are next week! Odds are that my companion goes, but you never know!

Love,

Anziano Banks

P.S. I forgot to tell you all a crazy story.  We have a member here that is named Constance. She's from Nigeria. We had been trying to get her membership records for a couple weeks, and then she told me that when she was baptized she had a different name! She's really interesting because she has a lot of views that go in line with church doctrine, and she told us that she had heard of Joseph Smith, but not the Book of Mormon! She also told me that when she was baptized she was immersed in water, but that it was done three times! Anyway, so we had all been really interested in what the story was on her, and now we finally got her records! It turns out that she was baptized, but she was never confirmed! So now the Bishop is going to have to do an interview with her and get everything worked out, but I just thought it was all pretty funny and interesting.