Buona sera famiglia e amichi,
This week has been really, really great! I forgot to take notes about
what happened this week to write home in the email this week, so excuse me
if this is all over the place haha.
San Remo is a really wonderful place, I love it a lot! The people are so
kind, and just great people who are searching for the gospel. I wanted to
talk about our branch here! (since I don't think I have yet...haha) We
have around 35-40? members or so, and they are really great! Especially
our ward mission leader...he is really a great guy, and super excited about
missionary work. And he has only been a member for one year! i couldn't
believe that. We are really trying to focus on finding and baptizing more
priesthood holders for the branch, since they are pretty low with around 10
or 15 each week....but we are working on it! The ward council is really
great, and we are all working together to bring the elect to this branch,
so that we can grow it into a ward! There are only a few young men and
young women...in fact only one really active young man. He is a champion
though. We ate at his house the other night with his parents and Uche, and
he tried to convince me that when I liked the food I should say ''Questo
cibo is veramente un grande porcherilla.'' Which is NOT correct, and
actually means, ''this food is really really disgusting.'' haha, but
luckily I caught him in the act, because porquerilla means the same thing
in Spanish, and my roommate in college had told me what it meant...so I was
like ''aha! nice try!'' Haha thanks Connor :D But anyways...plus he gets
to be the only boy in sunday school with all the 5 young women every
week...no wonder he comes to church! ;) haha jk! but we are also trying
to organize activities for the young people, to help them find ways to
invite their friends to come and have a fun time.
In our last zone meeting we were told that President Monson had asked every
branch/ward under the direction of missionaries...I don't know if just in
Italy or what...to have a ward/branch activity! And this Friday we will be
having a Talent Night for the ward! I will be playing the nose flute and
interpretive dancing....not! Haha that will be my companion. Scherzando!
(kidding!) But we are all really excited, and we have 12 members signed up
to show their talents...and my companion (don't ask me how) lined up a
''professional'' Zumba instructer to come and do zumba with everyone
after...and by after I mean after we leave to go home of course haha...but
we are excited! Anziano Walden and I are going to karaoke sing ''Part of
this world'' from the Little Mermaid...in Italian. So that will
be...something, haha. No, it will be a good time slaughtering all the
pronunciations of Italian words in front of the branch..haha!
But yeah, everything is going so great here. There are hard days
and...harder days, but if this work were easy it wouldn't be worth it! We
have been doing a lot of strada, and actually have been having a lot of
success finding people! Little by little we have been seeing people become
more receptive to us as missionaries, and we are searching for ways to do
service for people in any way we can.
For example, we teach an English class for free every Thurday night here at
the church. I LOVE English class! Especially when I can teach the advanced
course, because we pretty much just have a conversation in English for an
hour...it's great! But we incorporate prayers and a brief spiritual
message at the end, so it really is a pretty good way to find investigators!
So something funny here is that apparently there was a movie in Italy about
the Amish people, but the title was translated badly from English to
Italian, so it said something like ''Mormoni''. And so one of our favorite
ways to start conversations now is to ask people if they have ever heard of
the mormons, and if they think that they all have long beards and don't use
electricity! And then we tell them, well, look at us. We have a cell
phone and no beards! And they look so shocked haha. It's a great
conversation starter!
Our investigators are coming along well! We are still teaching
Uche and Manuel and preparing them for their baptismal dates, and we also
have found a few more investigators along the way! We are really working
hard and praying hard for the Lord's help. One thing that I have really
learned this week is how important the Spirit is in everything that we do.
My Italian is really coming along, but I still only understand about 50%
of what people say (they talk SO fast haha...if it weren't for the hand
motions I'd be struggling even more)...so I have really had no other choice
than to try my very best to be in tune with the Spirit, to know what to say
to help them. I truly have seen miracles in our daily work, and we have
been teaching a lesson and the Lord has given me ''...in the very hour what
(I) should say.'' It is such a blessing, truly, to be a missionary.
I want to leave you all with a miracle that we experienced this
week! So a few days ago while we were out doing strada...we weren't
having a ton of success. We had been walking around for about 2 hours,
talking to anyone we could find that would listen, but noone seemed super
interested. So we had just finished talking to a man for about 5 minutes,
who agreed with everything we said, and was kind and nice, but just didn't
want to set up an appointment for a lesson. So we gave him our number on a
pass-along card, and went on our way. It was about 9:15, so we decided to
start walking home for the night, because we need to be home by 9:30 unless
we are teaching a lesson. We turned away from the man and his car, and
started walking on the sidewalk when, out of nowhere it seemed, a young
Russian man, here for work, started walking right beside us. I turned to
him and we started a conversation by asking him what he thought about
families and testifying that they can be together forever. We started
talking more, and began teaching him about the Restoration, about which he
was listening actively. We sat down on a bench and taught him the entire
first lesson, and he seemed genuinely excited about it! He told us that he
had met with the missionaries here in San Remo several months ago, who had
spoken with him and invited him to church, but for whatever reason he just
didn't end up going. So we invited him to our branch activity on Friday,
and to church on Sunday, and he seemed excited about it, apologizing for
not coming earlier with the other missionaries. We asked him if we could
set up another appointment with him to speak some more, and he readily
agreed, and gave us his phone number and asked if we could meet him
Thursday! as we walked away he excitedly said ''Ciao! Ci vediamo
Giovedì!'' So we will be teaching him again tomorrow! That was such a
testimony to me that the Lord truly puts people in our path that He has
prepared to receive the gospel. And also a reminder to me to never give
up, because you never know when these wonderful people are going to be
placed in your path. It truly is such a blessing to be a missionary; to be
trying to do the things that the Lord would do if He were on the earth. I
am so blessed.
I love you all, thanks for all you do! Love,
Anziano Wilson
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