Buon Giorno tutti!
Wow! What a week! It has been great here in Rimini! The weather has been amazing! Except for the thunderstorm that is going on right now...I am soaked, haha. But it has been so amazing! Our investigators are doing so well! But I have a lot of miracles to share so I better get started!
Miracle: We have been experiencing so many wonderful miracles this past week it is hard to single out just one to share. But the most wonderful that comes to mind is what happened just this past Monday. I decided to name that name Miracle Monday! The miracles of that day started off with a toally unexpected "accident". We were riding our bikes through centro, weaving in and out of all the walking and biking people and dogs as usual, when we came to a blind corner, which we passed without problems every day. For some reason though, this time was different. Just as I was riding up to the corner, the front wheel of a woman's bike shot out from the corner. I slammed on the brakes but not in time, and we crashed practically full-speed into each other. Amazingly, however, neither of us were hurt at all, or even moved. Our bikes' forces had seemed to counter-act each other, and so we both had even remained upright on our seats during and after the crash. The only result was that her front wheel, which I had hit with the front of my wheel, was slightly...and by slightly I mean VERY bent. Like a 60 degree angle. After making sure that each other was okay, we learned that she was on her way to work and would be busy that night, working until midnight. So we proposed to her that we would exchange bikes and that night she would just use my bike, and the next day we would bring her bike back to her house. She agreed. And so we carried the bike home. The next day we surprised her by fixing the tire (even recieved a very kind discount from the bike shop owner), and brought it to her address she had given us. After just a minute or so of talking, she asked us what it was we actually do, and said that she had always wondered what the boys on bikes with helmets (NOONE around here wears helmets on bikes, but it is a rule and so we do :) ) were doing always around Rimini. We told her and bore our testimonies to her about what we did, and taught her about the Restoration. We then invited her to pray with us. We prayed for her children by name, and after the prayer she was in tears and said to us "What a great way to pray. I hope we meet again someday. You boys do good things." As much as we tried, she said she was just too busy to meet with us right now, but gave us her number to call her in a few weeks. We plan on following up with that! There were many more miracles that day to follow!
After that wonderful experience, we were out finding investigators to teach in the park, when we decided to speak with a man named Francesco sitting alone on a bench, smoking a cigar. (To be completely honest, he looked a little scary.) haha. But we talked with him for quite some time about religion and life, and learned that he had quite the background! He had recently turned to God after a life of drugs and alcohol and crime in Rome where he is from. He told us that God had saved his life, that he was just finishing up a rehabilitation program, and that he knew that he had major changes to make in his life. We bore our testimonies to him about the Savior's love, and how the Atonement literally changes lives. I could feel so powerfully the Lord's love for him as we spoke. We said a prayer with him at the end of our discussion, praying for him and those he loves by name. As we ended to prayer his whole demeanor changed. He thanked us so much for the prayer, and expressed to us that that is the first time he has ever been prayed for in his life. We gave him a card with a website to go on and he said he will search for the church closest to where he lives and go as soon as he is home! Rome has a wonderfully referral coming.
Later that night, after a few lessons, we were walking around centro (the center mall area of town) for the little time we had left before it was time to head home. We met a large man named Sarvio, sitting on a bench. He was from Kalambria (Southern Italy), here visiting his wife, who is in the cancer center for an advanced stage of pancreatic cancer. She has only a short time to live. He expressed to us his sorrow for her, that she had always been a woman of great kindness and compassion and was dying at the young age of 70. He then expressed how he himself had been in a diving accident years ago, which resulted in him being in a coma for 2 weeks. How he was scarred with a form of Parkinson's from it. How his brother died in a motorcycle crash at the age of 28, and how he feels useless in helping her. He even said sometimes he wished that he had never woken up from the coma. We bore testimony to him of our Heavenly Father's love for him, that he has eternal worth, and shared the glorious message of the Plan of Salvation with him. We expressed that he will see his wife again. That this life is only a small step in our Eternal Father's great a glorious Plan for us. That he was saved for a reason, and the Lord has great things in store for him. He burst into tears, and expressed to us all that was going on in his life. We ended up speaking with him for over an hour and a half, talking, but mostly just listening. At the end he insisted on taking us to a nearby pastry shop, buying us a pastry, ( Southern Italians are so nice!) and then he gratefully went on his way. We left him a pamphlet explaining the Plan of Happiness, and he said he will be calling us again soon when he is in need of someone to talk to. What a privilege and blessing it is to be an instrument in the Lord's hands, to do good in other's lives. To help and listen and comfort as the Savior did when he was on the earth.
So you may be thinking "wow. What a wonderful day!" or "wow...that's a lot of miracles!"... But Wait! There's more! After our conversation with him, we decided to talk to one more person before heading home. We saw a man on a nearby bench, and went over to talk with him. His name is Sharrif, and came to Italy years ago from Romania. We spoke with him for a long time about him beliefs in the gospel, and learned that he has been reading the bible for over 8 years every day. He assured us that he already knew everything, quoting us scripture after scripture. We told him that we were sure we had a message that he had never heard before. Intrigued, he listened as we explained the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ though the prophet Joseph Smith, and as we reccounted the miracle of the First Vision to him. We explained to him the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, and how he could pray for himself to know the truth of all things. We invited him to pray, right there on the bench, to ask his Father in Heaven if this was the path that he should take. He prayed in Romanian, and though we couldn't understand a single word, the Spirit flooded our hearts. As we remained silent to ponder after the prayer, he turned to us, and accepted the baptismal invite we had extended him before the prayer...for March 14th! We have since met with him once, and he is such a wonderful guy with great faith. The Lord has great plans for him.
It is such a blessing to be a missionary! I can't even believe the kind of miracles we see. It is so amazing to be here in Italy, spreading the peace and hope that comes from the gospel!
The Lord has a plan for everything. Even when things seem to be going wrong, it could simply be a miracle in disguise. What a great life it is being a missionary!
Everything here is going so well, thank you all so much for your prayers in my behalf, and for the good that you all do every day! I love you all!
Love,
Anziano Wilson
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