Anziano Jonathan Bushman: Ups and Downs! May 4, 2011

Well, we'll start off with the good news stuff. I confirmed Azayra (Ahd-sigh-ear-uh) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Sunday, in front of the entire congregation (100-150ppl), in Italian, and didn't choke!

Claudio- the not-so-good news... So, Claudio hasn't been keeping his commitments.... and whether or not it was due to a physical capacity to remember, we knew we were going to have to drop him. He just wouldn't let go of his wine. He's loving the orzo (coffee substitute) but it's been 2 months... And then, to cap it all off, at about 19:00 on Sunday, we were in his neighborhood to see a different investigator. Now Claudio has been seeing us twice a week, for 2 months, and has been to a baptism, general conference, and church 5 times. And when we were in his neighborhood on Sunday, we saw him walking out of the catholic church, all dressed up still, 7 hrs after our church ended. So I went over to talk to find out what was going on, but under the pretense of just saying hi. I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was doing good, and I asked why he was still all dressed up (Italians are always blunt like that, so it was allowed) and he just told us because it was Sunday, and didn't mention the whole <<I'm still going to catholic mass>> part. SO we saw him yesterday. Talked about his reading in the Book of Mormon, and then we asked him what he expects from us, what he wants from us, each time we come over. He responded saying that he likes to talk with us because we're his friends, which isn't BAD, but after 2 months he should have a better motive... We then talked about 2 Nephi 32. And about how this is the only way, and there is no other way. We then asked him if he wanted to be a member of this church, of the Church of Jesus Christ. He said no, and that it wasn't for him, and that he was good how he is. So my first thought was that he just didn't understand what it meant to be a member, maybe he thought being a member meant being a missionary, or something else, so I explained it more, I reminded him of him telling us he wanted to be baptized, and all the stuff we had talked about. He then told us that he has thought about it since then, and has decided that it's not for him. So we told him that we wouldn't be able to keep coming twice a week, but that we would still call him each week, and remind him about church each week. So, claudio is done. Turns out he was only having us come over because he's a lonely 67 yr old Italian man. Which, it isn't bad, but it was deceitful nonetheless... Bahhh idk. I'm trying to learn from this. He was the first person I met in Italy that let us into his house, and it didn't work out. Hopefully somewhere down the road he'll see the importance in everything we taught him...

Carlo- Has a baptismal date for May 21°! He's progressing great! AND I know it should be a fairly tragic thing, but his compagna (girlfriend) and him are not getting married anymore, so that can no longer be a motivation for him to get baptized, and yet he's still wanting to get baptized! Now my only worry is sometimes I think he's more worried about us helping him and his financial needs than his spiritual needs (he's about to get kicked out of his house, and he needs to find a place to stay, and he's been asking us to help him pack boxes, which we don't mind, that's just service, and now he's asking us to find boxes for him, because he doesn't have anymore, which is a little less like service, and a little more like running errands, and he has even asked us for money twice now. Apparently he even begged Anziano VanAuker on the phone Monday for money.).... and we aren't necessarily qualified, or called, to help people in their physical/temporal needs, so this should be interesting....

Sunday night we got <<biddoned>> (si dice <<fare il biddone>> to mean that someone ditched us at an appt and that sort of thing, but missionaries just use <<biddone>> as a verb, and say <<they biddoned us>>, so yeah. There's your little Italian lesson of the week!). We were heading home to meet up with a member to go to another appointment, but we had some extra time. So we stopped at the church to pick up some bread that one of our members had given us during the church services so we could drop it off at our apartment. When we got there we ran into a couple from our ward that was desperately trying to get into the church, because she had left her laptop there from teaching a lesson to the young women. They had gotten a hold of one member that had the keys, but that member only gave them the keys to get into the parking lot, and we got there just in time to let them in so she could get her laptop. It doesn't seem like a very big deal, but the timing that went into that had to have been very precise to have worked out like it did, because we were only going to the church for 60 seconds to pick up a bag and then we would leave and lock everything up again, and she might have not been able to get her laptop for work the next day. I don't know, it just really touched me that we were able to be so plainly an answer to someone's prayers, and so simply too, and by no doing of our own. Soooo, yeah!

But, ya! We are finding a lot of people lately. We found 3 new investigators yesterday! And things are looking up! We just really need to focus on meeting with people 2-3 times a week, and get them to come to church. Ummmmm yeah. That's all I got.

Pace!

vi voglio bene!

Anziano Bushman

Marco at the grigliata (sp?) he's one of our investigators, and he's great! He's totally ready and wanting to be baptized, they've just been waiting on documents to come in from their home land (ecuador) as evidence that he hasn't been married before, so he can then get married to Jessica (Jessica was a less-active member, and then started coming to church again about 7months ago). Their family is great though, and they have two awesome kids, and come to church every week even though they live pretty far away!

S.lla Amer is our superstar member. She's from Peru, and she's a super awesome member-missionary! She's helped a ton with investigators in the past, and we're hoping to enroll her help here again soon. She has 3 daughters, and since I came to Italy she has had us come over 3-4 times to teach their family and prepare their 8 yr old for baptism.

Mattia, Marco and Jessica's youngest child, who is also a monster. Everytime we have a lesson with Marco, they have to bring the whole family to the church because they live fairly far away, and because it's just good to have the whole family there, but every lesson that little child makes it his duty to be as loud as physically possible! He'll do something that causes a lot of noise, and then turn to us to see if we react, and then he'll just keep doing it and looking back at us to see what we do. He's a monster. And then at the grigliatta I was kicking the soccerball around with Marco (his dad) and Mattia kept coming up to us and taking the ball and saying <<Mio!>> (mine) and then he'd just walk away with it and set it down. So me and his dad would just keep kicking it around him untill Mattia would get so upset that he would run to his mom complaining, but his mom would just be there laughing at the situation and then Mattia would get even more frustrated lol. It was great.