Modena, Italy - January 18, 2011

Elder Kopishcke, a member of the Europe Area presidency, is coming to the mission so we are having a special zone conference of half the mission tomorrow, our normal p-day. Sorella Snodgrass and I are excited!

In fact, we had a really awesome miracle, which for some reason was super extra exciting for both of us, on the day we were coming back from Milano with her luggage. We got off the train in Modena, and went to the elevator. It was extremely slow in arriving, and we were worried because we did not know how we were going to manage all the very heavy bags down the stairs, but then it came. We got ourselves all loaded in, and pushed the button to go down, and it would not go! Nothing was happening. We were concerned. So Sorella Snodgrass said, 'well, in Bergamo, we prayed once to make the elevator work and then it did.' So we started praying. Really hard. Many times. Then we asked a random person going down the stairs to push the button downstairs and try calling it from down there. And we prayed some more, trying to be very faithful that it would work. We literally stood in the elevator praying for about five solid minutes. Finally, we were about to step out and try to figure something else out, and right as I was about to take a step, the door closed on us! We got very excited! So now we were in the elevator, but it would not move. So we pushed the button, and faithed it some more, and then it very slowly moved to the bottom, and opened up! It was so awesome! The scriptures say that even a grain of mustard seed of faith can move a mountain. We moved an elevator! Hooray!

And then two days later, our long lost friend (investigator) finally came back from her Christmas holidays in Bulgaria! And we got to see her at last, with Sorella Bergamini, a member here, who came with us to the lesson. It was awesome. And the investigator came to church the next day too, which was a particular act of faith because she brought back her aged and infirm mother from Bulgaria and was very afraid to leave her at home for the three hours of church, but we told her it was an act of faith and that God would protect her mother if she came, and then she came! And now she is praying really hard about getting baptized next month, in February. We are so excited! Woo hoo! I really admire that woman's faith. I already told you about how she came to know this church was true, right, about how she kept hearing the voice over and over that told her she knows already where the truth is, and then how after that she talked herself into baptism during our lesson? Well, yesterday, she said that after she agreed to baptism with us (this is all still before she left for Christmas, but we hadn't been able to see her in the interim, so we just found it out yesterday), when she was alone she started freaking out because she is not at all perfect and still makes mistakes and so she can't be baptized yet because she is not ready. I was totally ready to jump in and start telling her that no one is perfect and you do not have to be perfect to be baptized and I just really wanted to correct these false notions right away, but she talks louder than I do, so I had to wait and listen to the end of the story (good thing). She said she started praying to tell God that, that she couldn't get baptized yet because she wasn't perfect and didn't feel ready, and she said she felt the same voice (the one that said, 'tu lo sai dove la verita' about knowing where the truth is), say to her 'don't worry, you can get baptized anyway.' So now she knows that she can get baptized! She fixed her own doctrinal issue and concern through prayer! SHE IS SO AWESOME! Prayer is so powerful. I really know that anyone who prays with faith and is willing to accept and act on the answer will receive.

Also, we got this new training booklet when they introduced the new training program to the mission all about the eight mini-lessons that goes with preach my gospel. It is super awesome. There is an additional section about finding in it, with some fun finding ideas, and one idea is to carry around a whiteboard with a yes-no question of the soul written on it. (Actually, at first that confused me, because normally we don't like to ask yes-no questions so we can get people talking, but then it explained that if it is a yes-no question people are usually more willing to stop and add their answer, and then you can ask a follow up question to start talking to them.) And then underneath you have a yes and a no section where people can tally mark their answers. We brainstormed questions like, 'Is there life after death?' 'Can a belief in Jesus Christ affect my every day life?' 'I wish there were a prophet like the ones in the Bible on the earth today.' and 'I prayed last week.' We ended up writing out 'I prayed last week' (ho pregato l'altra settimana) and just walked around asking people to tally in their answer. we did it for about two hours, and by the end of the time had about four new follow-up appointments with people, many of them actual Italians! It was remarkable! When someone tallied their answer, we would follow it up with something like, 'how do you pray?' (i.e., memorized prayers, to God in the name of Jesus, stuff like that.) And bear testimony of prayer and ask to see them again with our message and it was so super cool! We had a ton of fun doing it.

I really love teaching people about the gospel, and am so grateful for the restored truths we have thanks to God's love for us in calling the prophet Joseph Smith to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yay!