Oh man, this week had been intense. Right after last wednesday we had a scambio with the traveling assisstants (two missionaries assigned by Pres Wolfgramm to just go around and do scambi with nearly all the missionaries in our misison). I was with Anz Duersch, who actually used to be the Bologna Zone Leader last transfer, so everyone in our zone knows him pretty well. Our scambio was way awesome. He's a way good missionary! We talked to a bunch of people, and really helped out a lot of people.
One of the things we had planned was to see some less active members. So we found the addresses of about 5 less active members that lived over by where we were planning on working for the day, and planned to just pass by them to break up knocking on doors and what not. When it got to be about 7pm, we realized that we did not write down the address of the less active member that we planned on for that time of the day, and we were on foot, at least 45 min from home. After some difficulty, we got the address from our first counselor in the branch here, and went over to see this less active member. When we got there, we rang the doorbell-thing at the entrance of the building, and said we were the missionaries, and he immediately opened the doors and told us what floor he was on. So, not quite used to such a welcoming environment from people we don't know, we went inside and found out which room was his. When we got there we quickly learned that he was a relatively troubled man. He told us that he was in need several years ago (financial need) and so he asked the church (more specifically the members in our branch) for help. They told him that there was nothing that they could do, and then because he couldn't provide for his family, his wife left him, and they all fell away from the church. So we talked a little bit about 2 Nephi 4, and about how much God has done for him, and continues to do for him. But, he wasn't entirely paying attention to anything we were saying. He said that his girlfriend from peru is coming in september, and they're going to get married, and since she's a member of the church, he want to get married in an LDS church [weddings are a little different in Italy, temple marriages aren't recognized under the law yet, so members have to get married in a church or somewhere first, and then in the temple in Switzerland] so for this reason he wants to start coming to church again. He didn't say anything about him knowing it was the true church or anything, so we're going to be meeting with him at least once a week.
But yeah, my reason for recounting this experience, is just because we planned literally about 30 different places to go/people to see/things to do that day. And we didn't even get to 5 of them. But, one of them was to visit the less active member, and that one went through. There were plenty other less active members that we could have planned to go see, but I can't say that any of the others would be this willing to listen to us, or would have even been at home. Idk, it was just a nice little reminder that God is in control here. That God was able to guide us in our planning the night before, so that we could start to help this man. Idk, it was cool.
Let's see... anything else.... Sunday, we went to go see a member family that Anz Bona and his last companion had been trying to see for months (the trick was asking the wife, not the husband) so that was fun. Oh, and on the way there, Anz Bona bifffed it bad. [he crashed] I don't know exactly what happened, but some old lady was riding her bike towards us, and for some reason he swerved, and since his bike already sucks, that swerve was just enough to jerk the tire sideways and have him go head over the handlebars. I had to slam on the brakes to prevent running over him right after that, but yeah, it was pretty bad. Messed up his shin, hand, and ankle a little bit, and even got a nice scratch on his head. But we were super close to this member family, so they helped him wash up and what not, and he's feeling a lot better now.
Monaday and tuesday I was on a scambio with Anz Duque, one of our zone leaders who's actually from the phillipines and he's way awesome! He's an amazing cook (already graduated from culinary school in rome) and is a recent convert of 3 yrs. So we had a way good time. One of the first things we did after lunch, was we decided to walk around and look for people in the park, and the very first people we went to ended up being pretty cool. They were two ladies from cameroon, that spoke french, and we immediately got their attention by the fact that Anz Duque was catholic 3 yrs ago, and so we talked about the difference of our church from the catholic church, and talked about prophets and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was way good, and they were way excited when we gave them each a copy of the book of mormon. So, yeah. It was a pretty good week. Well, not much else to say. The other anziani here are wanting to go eat, so I'm gonna finish the email there.
vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!
anziano bushman
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| Our last church activity - that man on my left is Luca, and his son Marco is right in front of me, and in front of him Luca's daughter Ana |
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| A cool-ish statue in San Marino. |
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| P-Day in San Marino. |
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