So how about General Conference? haha. That was so awesome. I really loved President Uchtdorf's talk. That was hilarious, and helpful. Another one of my favorite talks was the one by Elder Andersen. I think that it is a really important talk because it shows what we need to do to not become less active. This time I actually got to watch it in English, which was 100 times better. If they spoke in Italian, I would watch it in Italian, but since the speakers speak English, it makes sense to me that it is better in English.
We also went to a Special Zone Meeting in Taranto this week. I really enjoyed seeing Anziano Garcia and Anziano Rowland. On the way to the meeting I met a girl that lives in the Basilicata. Unfortunately, the church isn't there and she lives hours away from any missionaries.
Bari has been great since I've been here. One thing that I noticed is that crazy people seem to be drawn to me because I always meet lots of them. At first it seemed a little weird, but I actually really enjoyed it. The weird thing now is that they are all becoming a lot more calm and normal. For example, the How do do do do?! guy has been really sad lately because he lost his job, and so the last time I talked to him he wasn't even excited to see me. He didn't even say anything in English to me! I miss the more hyper somewhat crazy version of him.
English Course is going pretty great. We have a lot of people interested in the Gospel, and next time we're going to teach a bunch of students 1/2 an hour before English Course. After we do this a couple times we're hoping we can start meeting with more people individually.
Saverio, one student we started teaching, came to the baptism on Saturday and then we taught him last night. He asked us what would happen if he got baptized. We're hoping to set a baptismal date with him tomorrow. He's pretty awesome. His wife came with him to the baptism, and we're hoping to start teaching her as well.
The conference got me thinking a lot about consecrating your life. Hopefully you know which talk I'm referring to. Basically what it comes down to is we need to put enough faith in the Lord to obey the commandments. For example, Elder Ballard came here to Italy, and although I didn't see him I saw a recording of his talk. He told us to start doing something. He told us that each day we should talk to ten people in situations other than planned proselyting. In other words, talking to people going to and from appointments and such. We already did some of that, but since we've started going out of our way to do it, we've started seeing blessings.
I think that some people need to understand and know more of the commandments. I think that once you do know them, you just need to have the trust in the Lord that He will bless you for following them. It's hard sometimes because it means looking at everything in more of an eternal perspective. It's already hard enough to look at things in the long run sometimes, so moving to an eternal perspective can be especially difficult.
www.lds.org if you missed some of the talks.
Have you all heard of the new mormon.org facebook-type thing? I was thinking maybe you guys could look into it for me. It sounds interesting.
Anyway, have a great week! If you need anything let me know. I'm praying for you.
Love,
Anziano Banks
P.S. This week we went with some of the sisters to Matera, and as you can see it was sweet!
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