Buongiorno!!!! :)
Oh, Italy! What a special place! The very first thing on my mind today is the opportunity of a lifetime that we just experienced today!! So last week, we were invited to a dinner at one of our investigator's (Pietro) house (which was SO wonderful! They are so nice and sincere!). And as we were talking, his mother, who works at the public library in Rimini (the third oldest library in all of Italy), invited us to come today and she would give us a personal tour of ALL of it! Even the "restricted" rooms with all of the ancient books from the 1600s!! It turns out she is like the "boss" of the whole place, and so we were just walking past all of this security and staff and stuff, and she just showed us the coolest things! AND she let us take pictures of it!! And we even got to open up the old books and read through them! (they are all in Latin, so we couldn't really read them, but still!) There were old maps and old globes and old bibles in multiple languages...and everything! It was a bookworm's paradise! ....Don't worry, I took pictures!
But she just kept saying "Do you want to see this old room that's not open to the public..." and mid sentence we were like YES! We even found an old Bible in Latin from 1559!! I took a picture of the page that has Joshua 1:9 on it. :) She was so funny while we were looking it up, she was like " You know where that is, even in Latin...so you have memorized the entire Bible??" I wish!
It turns out that the library was the old library of a really rich old famous Italian guy, who in his will left all of his books and house to the government; so they made it into a library! One of the coolest things is that in one of the rooms, there is a secret passage way behind some of the "books" (classic, right?), which "books" were actually just carved into the wooden wall and painted to look like books. She even opened it up for us! It was incredible. The passage way in the attic leads to this awesome spiral concrete staircase which leads to the bottom floor. I felt like I was in some kind of a movie. Italy is awesome! :)
Well, there's not much to top that! ...I got a flat tire also....so I guess that was exciting too... But the work here is going so wonderfully! We recently met with a man named Claudio, who has been inactive for about 20 years...and actually stopped us on the street saying that he wants to start again on the road to Jesus! He asked us to give him a Book of Mormon, and if we could come to his house and teach him again, and help him come back to church! Twist my arm! It was a special experience to go over to his home with one of the members of the District Presidency, and welcome him back to the ward! He has already read over 115 pages of the Book of Mormon...in like 3 days! What a blessing! He is a really smart guy, and really sociable and just awesome! President Asioli basically just said "Claudio...we need you in the branch!" He has a great work to do in the Lord's kingdom.
Miracle: We have been seeing some wonderful miracles here in Rimini. The one I wanted to mention in particular happened on Monday while finding. We were out doing some work in the morning, and decided to be a little bolder, and invite people to be baptized right there on the street! As we were out doing that, we met an awesome guy, about 25 years old, named Nicola. He just returned to Italy recently from working for a year at DISNEYWORLD! We heard that and automatically he started smiling really big and saying "yeah, it's a pretty cool job, right?" Yes it is! He has the biggest smile ever, which he must have developed while on the job! But we started talking to him about religion, and about some of the basic beliefs of our church and the Restoration...and then we invited him to be baptized after he received an answer that it is true! And he accepted! He said that he had been spending the past few months on a "percorso spirituale" searching for the truth, and asking a whole lot of questions and not getting a whole lot of answers, and that of course he would follow Jesus's example and be baptized if he received an answer that it was true! We said a prayer right there and then to invite the spirit, and it was a wonderful experience! We set up an appointment to meet with him on Thursday! He would be such an awesome member here in Rimini!
Everything else is going great! We have been working hard and I know that the Lord is making big things happen here; I'm ecstatic to be a part of it! The Lord blesses His missionaries so much, and I have felt so much support and strength from Him; and I know that, in great part, because of all of your prayers in my behalf. Thank you so much for those! I always remember you all in mine, and wish you a wonderful week! In boca al lupo! :)
-Anziano Wilson
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