June 30, 2010 - Verona, Italy

Cara famiglia,

Everybody was surprised to hear from me a day early! It is nice to know how much your week revolves around my emails. Nice to know that I really am the center of y'alls' virtual universe. (Scherzo!)

So, you know already we had zone conference last week, since that is why I wrote early. Sorella Rossi, my companion now, loves watermelons. Absolutely loves them. There is a fruit stand place near our apartment that has really good prices, so last p-day, the day before zone conference, we went and bought two watermelons, one for her, and one for her old companion before me, who is now companions with my trainer in Modena, Sorella Ranieri. And then we took that watermelon all the way to Mestre with us (right outside Venezia, where we have zone conference), and gave it to them as a happy surprise gift. How random is that? So we took the watermelon (anguria in Italian) on our two hour train ride to get there, along with a bag of stuff Sorella Harper had forgotten to take with them. We met an Israeli woman on the train, and had a really good conversation with her about faith and what we believe. She spoke English very well, not Italian, and I actually ended up giving her my very tiny Book of Mormon because she needed to be given one! Who knows if she will ever have another chance to get a Book of Mormon? So now I don't have my tiny one that I bought at the temple. How sad. But hey, what does it matter to have a Book of Mormon if you aren't sharing it anyway, right?

Zone conference was really cool, because Sorella Harper and Sorella Ranieri were there, so I got to see my old companion and Sorella Rossi got to see hers, and then also Sorella Shuel was there! It was very very exciting to get to see and talk to Sorella Shuel. And her companion now, Sorella Jacobson, was another of Sorella Rossi's old companions, so each of us got to see an old companion and all of our old companions seem to be companions with each other! How funny. Sorella Shuel is doing well. Her bike got stolen, she said. I also got to see Anziano Lesa, from our MTC district, because it was a bigger zone conference with three zones and he was in the one that is not usually with us, and that was really good too. We had a great district in the MTC.

One of our investigators is getting baptized on Luglio 17 (July 17th)!!! Woo hoo! I am very excited for her, this will be such a blessing to have the gift of the Holy Ghost in her life. So here is what happened. She had not come to church for two weeks and also had not been at home for our appointments, but all for bizarrely legitimate reasons, like she had a problem with her teeth one week, then her legs, and then a friend in the hospital she had to go visit, and stuff like that, but I was still pretty stressed out about how we hadn't seen her in a while. So one night we had an appointment in the zone with another investigator, who gave us a bedone, so we were about to go to a less active in the zone and visit her, when we stopped and said, “is this really the right thing for us to do right now?” We didn't feel like it was right, so we stopped. And then we saw another less active family walking down the street with tons of groceries instead, so we helped them take them home on our bikes for them, and then felt like we should go pass by our investigator’s house because we had not seen her in a couple of weeks. We went, and she came to the door, but did not look well at all, and in fact was not well. So we talked with her at a door for a few minutes, and she told us about her health that was going on. We had planned that the next time we taught her we would invite her to baptism, but then I started worrying we wouldn't be able to because we were just at the door, but then Sorella Rossi asked if we could come in and promised her that if she would talk to us for just five minutes she would not feel the pain anymore. She let us in, and we went into another room, and sang her a song (“Where can I turn for peace”) that my companion and I had practiced earlier, and it really brought in the spirit. Then, we of course had prayed already, we talked and read 3 Nephi 27:20, about the commandment to get baptized. I told our investigator how I have seen her life change and her become happier as she has been reading the Book of Mormon and letting the spirit into her life, and then she said, 'yes, a little example,' and launches into this story about a blessing that has come from her living the word of wisdom. I love that about her, she is really cool about stories like that. And then I invited her to be baptized, and she said yes. Actually, she said alright, and then asked what time it was at. Which is funny. So Sorella Rossi just picked a time (which is the most insignificant random detail; why did she ask about that before anything else in the whole world?), and talked to her about what baptism is, what it means, and the promises of it. She seemed so happy and peaceful by the time we left, it felt wonderful! Then my companion explained to me that I had, instead of saying to our investigator, 'Will you be baptized on the 17th of July' I had said in Italian 'You will be baptized on the 17th of July', so thank goodness I have got a companion who speaks Italian and can help fix it when I say things wrong! But we are so excited for her! She is amazing. She reads the Book of Mormon every day, loves it, knows it is true, and is now meeting with us three times a week so that we can help her prepare for baptism. It is wonderful.