July 21, 2010 - Verona, Italy

[Email 11] Is that right? number 11? I am kind of loosing count; I might switch counting methods if I do lose count. Wwoops! =)

First and foremost: baptism!!! Woohoo!! Antonella is officially a baptised and confirmed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! What an incredible feeling! At the baptism, she changed into her white dress, and when I walked back into the chapel she was sitting there in a white dress and the organ was softly playing in the background, and all the members, her friends, were there and everyone was just sitting quietly and reverently. It really felt like the temple, and thinking of Antonella in the temple was awesome. I want to go with her someday, somehow. Maybe I will come back to Italy for the Rome temple dedication when it happens, and I can see her again then. How cool is that? Antonella has the Holy Ghost! She is so cool. I am so happy for her! And she was so happy. And the baptism was beautiful. One sister, who has come to lessons with Antonella, gave the talk about baptism, and another sister, our member in the hospital, gave the talk on the holy ghost! I was so proud of her for getting up in front of everyone to give a talk! Antonella has come with us to visit this sister in the hospital, and they have quickly become friends. This sister speaks Italian, but not super well, so they can't even communicate humongously, but they are still friends and Antonella was so excited that this sister would give a talk at her baptism. She spoke in English, so I was at the pulpit with her translating into Italian what she was saying. I was nervous. It went well though. And it was beautiful!

We had another investigator attend the baptism. She is very interesting. She really doesn't speak Italian. Teaching her is completely insane. We met her on the street, and understood each other enough to set up an appointment. So we brought her a Book of Mormon in Romanian (we met in the church), and had her read the introduction. She speaks pretty much all in Romanian, so it is difficult to communicate. I finally just kneeled down to make us say a closing prayer because we had to go! Then we met her again with a member and watched the restoration video (which doesn't come in Romanian, which was frustrating, and makes me wonder what on earth the Romanian missionaries do!) with a member. Again, we could not communicate. Then she shows up randomly in church! How surprising! She brought her Book of Mormon with her, and kept saying, it is all true, it is all true over and over again. It was super cool. She felt the spirit super strongly, and actually had to sit down during the intermediate hymn because she was so overcome and crying. Crazy! Afterwards the bishop came up and introduced himself, and we stepped off to help Antonella, and when we came back she was gone. So Sorella Rossi called and set up an appointment and we saw her again the next day in the church building again. I was praying so hard to be able to understand her, and I actually did understand a good portion of what she was saying! (thank goodness Italian and Romanian are as similar as they are.) She was telling us about her husband, who died a year ago, and her commitment to follow God, and about all the churches she has been to and about how they all talk about the word of God. Then we find out she gave her Book of Mormon to the bishop, who knows why, we really couldn't understand that part. Then we had a prayer and sang a song (we were just going to read from the Book of Mormon, but she didn't have it anymore, and we can't talk effectively), and she felt the Spirit I believe. Then she stands up and starts crying and just puts her chair away and leaves. And we kept saying, wait! Wait! and are following after her locking up the church building as we go. She was so distraught, and telling us about how she is really at a point of survival financially right now, no food, no water, nothing. We convinced her to meet us again the next day at the church so we could give her another Book of Mormon and read from it together. So we go the next day to the church and she is there already, so we start unlocking the gate to go up together and I handed her a new Book of Mormon, and she just refuses to take it. She was super angry and gave it back to me and just kept asking for money and saying how the bishop wouldn't give her money, and how is a book supposed to help her when she needs food and water? And she was really angry and kind of yelling at us and finally just yelled 'arrivederci!' and stalked off down the hill. I was so befuddled and had no idea where this came from when just two days before in church she was telling us how the whole Book of Mormon was true! We saw her again randomly later that day, and talked, but then she got mad at us again. I told her that she is of course always welcome in church, but she was really mad and I didn't think we would ever see her again. Then she shows up at Antonella's baptism on Saturday! We were able to give her a Book of Mormon in Romanian again, and even a pamphlet of the plan of salvation in her language we had found. She stayed for the whole baptism, and at the end I talked to her a bit and she kept pointing at the plan and saying something (she was reading it during the baptism), I think about wanting to endure to the end, but honestly it is all such guess work because she only speaks to us in Romanian. Then she leaves again very suddenly. She does that a lot, in the middle of talking, but she can't understand what we are saying and we can't understand her so it is crazy! Then we saw her again on Monday, and she gave her Book of Mormon to some other random person again. We talked and she was complaining about the bishop not giving her money again. She just kept saying, 'lultima volta' which is 'last time' that she is ever coming to the church to see us again. And then she left. And then we ran into her on the street today. And she started talking, and wouldn't stop, but we had to go to interviews, so we finally just had to interrupt her and tell her we had to go. It is insane! I have no clue if we will ever see her again! But even if we do, who knows if she will love us or hate us, and there is no way we will understand her anyway! How crazy is this?

We did have a really amazing experience this week with these three American girls. On Sunday, two Americans show up in church, turns out they are here for a three week opera thingy in Verona. One was a member, the other was her roommate for the program whom she had invited to come to church. We went to go visit them, and the non-member friend had invited another non-member to come listen to us with them, so then we are teaching two girls with their member friend. It was so incredible! Teaching in English, real English, not pigeon English, was really a cool feeling. We sang I am a Child of God to them, and everyone started crying, the Spirit was really strong. The one of them kept telling us she hasn't cried in 18 years. The other is super prepared, and really wants to keep meeting with us and hear our message. I love seeing the powerful testimony of members, and how incredibly important it is to bring members to lessons. They bring a very strong spirit and are an important step for the investigator to have friends in the church.