July 7, 2010 - Verona, Italy

Ciao famiglia,

One thing that makes riding a bike more difficult is to have a very heavy bag of groceries on one handlebar with absolutely nothing on the other. Another thing is strapping a watermelon to the platform above the rear wheel. Another thing is sitting yourself on that platform while your companion drives your bike, so that your new convert can ride your companion's bike, so that you can escort her safely home from an appointment in a slightly sketchy neighborhood.

This week I actually just want to describe in great detail Saturday night, rather than many stories, because it was both so awesome and also having some crazy stuff like always.

It started off with us trying to find these new contacts, but the address they gave us turned out to be not right so then we were hot and very tired. It is very hot here. And humid. And the sun beats down on you and the only saving grace is that when you are on the bike there is wind, meno male. So then we went and passed by one of our super interested awesome new investigators, who is from Bolivia. She loves visual aids, and seeing her understand stuff when we use them is so cool. Sorella Rossi is super incredible at using visual aids, and I am learning a lot from her about teaching. So we did this fun paper folding visual aid about the story of the Book of Mormon to introduce it to her, and then gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she would come to church on Sunday. The next time we see her we are planning on inviting her to be baptized, we have taught her pretty thoroughly about authority and the restoration idea, so she understands that if this church is true she will need to be baptized, and she has definitely felt the Spirit. It's really cool when she tells us how she feels, because she sees that there is something different, she feels goose bumps and wants to cry and just feels very emotional when we are teaching her. It is fascinating to see how people feel the Spirit and what incredible power the simple truths of the gospel have.

[Editor Note: I will use letters to distinguish the people in the following story.] Then we met A at Porta Vescovo (the big bus stop) and walked up to the church for a baptism of one of the anziani's investigators. That was way cool. A wanted to see how a baptism works, and she loved it. She felt the spirit really strongly and was so excited, and kept telling everyone she met how in two weeks it would be her turn (now only one week from Saturday!!), and kept saying how she wanted her program to go, and asking who will perform her baptism, and was just so excited. Afterwards we were teaching her a little lesson when S, our super awesome new convert from Nigeria who therefore speaks English and is learning Italian came in, so she taught with us and even in Italian, which makes her nervous and I was so proud of her. Then we found out that A was heading directly over to B's house, who is the investigator in the hospital who wants to be baptized. (She was home for a day and a half from the hospital to rest, then went back in on Sunday night, but we didn't know so how lucky it is that A told us?!) S had gone with us to the hospital to teach B, so they have met, so we all three decided to go with A to teach B a lesson, but we had the bikes. So we sent A and S off on their own on the bus, and we took off on the bikes. It is so important for investigators to form friendships with members, so I was excited for them to get to know each other on the bus. We are biking along, when suddenly my bike chain just falls off! We didn't know what to do but really needed to get to B's. So we bought a screwdriver for one euro at this random store that happened to be right there and start trying to take apart and fix the bike on the sidewalk in our skirts on our own. We couldn't do it, and were just feeling very much at a loss, when right then this married couple from the Philippines walks up and the she says, 'We walked past and my husband told me that he wished he had stopped to help you, so I told him we should go back and here we are. My husband repairs bikes for a living.' And he takes over and totally fixes my bike for us. We got their address and phone number and plan to see them soon! What a miraculously random finding opportunity. Then we got back on the bikes and finally get to B's. B and S are hanging out on the balcony while A is cleaning B's kitchen, and we go in and are talking with everyone and it is super fun. We all gather together on the balcony and start teaching B about the restoration again. Let me tell you, it is so cool to see your soon-to-be-baptized investigator bearing testimony of how she knows the Book of Mormon is true, how B doesn't need to study a ton or know everything to know enough to be baptized. S doing missionary work in Italian, and saying her first prayer in Italian, B interrupting S's prayer to make sure she tells God to make the words of our message enter into her heart so that she can know they are true because she wants to be baptized (which to me says she has already felt their truth), feeling the spirit testifying so strongly, was just such a cool experience. It was really a night of amazing sisterhood in the gospel and growing together spiritually, I absolutely loved it. I realized how much I love these people and how we are actually friends, and how I have friends that only speak to me in Italian and I am happy to realize I have relationships in a foreign language now, thanks very much to the help of God. He really does bless His missionaries to be able to preach the gospel in a foreign language. It was so cool. And then we did our lovely bike procedure previously described to get S home. It was beautiful. The whole evening.

I do have one crazy story, though. On Monday we went to go see our investigator who is a follower of Diksha, named T. She was pretty cool and interesting when we met her before, so I was excited to see her and for Sorella Rossi to meet her. We get there and she talks non-stop, we try to teach, but she really isn't listening. We say something about the Holy Ghost, and then she suddenly stops my companion. She holds out her hands in a cupped shape together, like you are going to splash your face with water, and looks at Sorella Rossi and says, 'would you like more? I have more Holy Ghost to offer you. It will only take a minute.' My companion handled it so so well, and just told her that she felt like that would be mocking her beliefs to accept something she knows does not come from the authority of God (but she said it really well). So Tatiana started talked to her about being closed and goes on with a smile constantly about how she lets us into her home and listens to us (which she didn't, because she talked the whole time) and only wants to offer us a gift, but if we say no then so be it. It was crazy, and so we just tried to smooth things over and get out of there. It was such a weird feeling and way creepy in a lot of ways, so we went and bought some plum cakes and ate them.