Face of an Angel

Ciao, ciao, ciao, everyone!

First off I'd like to start the traditional way of starting my letters by saying thanks so much for all the letters.  I love Wednesdays, being able to hear from you guys.  You crack me up, haha.

Okay, so let's start off the letter with our starting line up!  Okay, so Francesca is still doing amazing.  She ended up missing church because she had stayed up late the night before with her friends and her alarm didn't go off in the morning.  Usually I'd cash this in as an excuse but coming from Francesca I believe that she is sincere.  She is on page 500 in the Book of Mormon . . . man, she amazes me.  She's read more than I have [since I have been in Italy]!  She is starting to like the Book of Mormon more and more as, when she first started reading she just kept saying . . . there're too many names it's so confusing.  But now we can see the excitement in her eyes when we ask her about her reading.  It has been an amazing experience to see the change in Francesca.  When we first taught her she was still way cool but to see more light come into her life has been amazing.  She is sooo happy now.  She told us the other day that when she opened the door for the first time and saw us, she felt like there was something different about us and she should let us in.  She also said that I have the face of an angel or cherubim, haha. I'm not quite sure why; she's very poetic though, I give her that.  Then we gave her the conference dvd's and highlighted on the index the 3 talks we most loved, and she was like.... can't I just watch them all??  With kind of a like... hey, gimme, gimme voice; it was funny. She really has a desire to learn and grow.  She told us she wanted to become more like Christ.  So I know I said this last week, but we are going to invite her to be baptized this week.  We think she is ready to commit to baptism.  So keep her in your prayers would ya?  Thankssss.

Okay... starting at center is our boy KOFFI!!!  Wow, he continues to amaze me!!  Okay lots to say about Koffi.   First off, we are now teaching his cousin, Dodi, as well who is also a stud.  Koffi is from Togo, he is married and has children.  He is in Italy for work, so that he can send money to his family.  Italy actually has a lot of Africans here that are searching for work.  Many of them sadly have been here for months with no work.  A man we're teaching has been here a year with no work.  It is very hard for them to get jobs when they don't speak Italian.  So Koffi and Dodi came here together from Togo, they are both married, and they both work in the same warehouse.  They don't make a whole ton but compared to the work in Togo they are making lots.  So the big news is that they came to church on Sunday!!! Wow I was sooo happy they came.  The hard thing is that they live about 30 minutes outside the city in a part where no members live so they take the bus.  These two guys are such studs.  They roll into church sportin suit pants, with a button down Keith Urban like shirt, only buttoned up half way.  We had a very nice man translate for them and they loved church!! Bless their hearts, they both pulled out their Book of Mormons and had a scrap piece of paper and were taking notes!!  Taking notes!!  Wow, oh wow, they are studs.  I sat next to them and they kept being like . . . oh yeah, that's good, I like that.  We taught them two days ago and followed up on church and they were like, we loved it.  They didn't have any questions about what happened in church until halfway through our lesson Dodi was like . . .  oh yeah, I DO have a question.  And he pulled out his notes and was like . . . in the front of the room there were 4 numbers written on the wall, 34, 4, 126, and 67.  What do these numbers mean!?   He asked with the curiosity of a little boy it was so funny.  I wanted to go into how they were part of the Dharma theory but i explained that they were the hymns that we sung.

So we taught they the Word of Wisdom in this lesson and at first they were kinda like . . . that's crazy.  When we said tea was bad, Koffi ran into the kitchen and brought back a jug of Lipton ice tea and was like . . . "Diz tea is bad?!?"  So when we committed them to live the Word of Wisdom they were like . . .  okay, we're fine with drugs and alcohol, but we have to drink coffee and tea or we'll fall asleep in work and get fired.  So we just bore testimony about how God would help them and at the end they were like . . . okay, we will do it. So we're teaching them today at 3 and we're gonna follow up.  It'll be awesome.

Okay, so we have a new recruit to the dream team.  Introducingggggg Alice!!!  Pronounced ( Al-eech-ay )  She is soo cool.  So a couple weeks back we did a power lesson with the Saquing family, the new convert family here, and we talked about missionary work for 5 minutes and asked them to pray about a street that we could go knock doors on.  So they prayed and it was amazing.  The wife prayed and at the end she was all teary eyed and told us to go to Via Boselli.  So we went there and it happened to be like one of the main interstates going through piacenza.  So at first we were like... this thinggg is huge.  So we started knock and the 4th person we talked to stuck her head out the window and was like what do you want?  We told her our schpeal and she was like where is your church?  So we told her.... she didn't have time for us to talk to her and she told us if we wanted to we could try back later sometime which we hear a lot.  So we were like.. okay whatever... 2 weeks later we were back in the area, and we were like... lets go stop by that brazilian lady (She's like black brazilian mix, but speaks italian perfectly because she has been here for 20 years.)  We go back and she lets us right in without any questions.  There were some random other people in the house.. one i think was her sister and maybe some friends or something,  so we taught her the first lesson, and it turns out her cousin is on a mission right now and her sister lives in boston!  So we gave her the Book of Mormon and left.  We came back for our appointment 3 days later, and she had read 30 pages and loved it.  She said she felt peaceful and happy when she read.  it was amazing!  So we talked about the spirit and how it testifies.  We then kind of recovered joseph smith, watched the restoration movie with her, which at the end just kept talking about how beautful it was.  Oh yeah... our first lesson, like 4 minutes into the lesson asked if her 1 year old daughter could be baptized and we had a sweet experience in teaching her about how her daughter was pure and sweet and she really liked that.  Alice is 39 and a single mom with 1, 1 year old child named katherine.   So we invite her to come to church and she is like... i will come!  Before we even asked her she talked about how she had went into town and looked for the church so she could make sure to fund it on sunday.  Wow amazing.  So we invited her and she said she would come.  Lo and behold she came on sunday, even to gospel docterines which she even commented in the class about the spirit and the influence it's had on her life.  I think she wowed everyone in the class it was awesome.  Then after sacramant she pulled my companion aside and was like... during the meeting i felt a very odd sense of joy that i've never felt.  What is this feeling?!  And Anziano Ransom responded very well with a scripture of how the fruit of the spirit is joy and how it was the spirit testifying that this is what she needs to do.  So she was like... oh that makes sense.  We called her this morning and were seeing her at 2 today and were going to ask her to be baptized!!  So it should go very well.  Alice is amazing though.  So those are our 3 power starters.  The rest are doing well too but just not dreem team well yet.  We hope to recruit many more members to the team.

 This last week was another amazing week.  We were blessed to teach 22 lessons and get 11 people in church.  Getting 11 people in church is like un heard of.  We got very lucky, it was quite funny.  Mission President said that anyone not a member that is in church counts for you.  So we had alice, koffi and dodi, some evanglisit dude that has been coming for a couple weeks, this mom and her two sons that have been being taught for a while, this other mom and her son that also have been taught for a while, then there was someones 2 random friends there.  End of the story is that there were a lot of people there that we didn't plan on being there.  It was awesome.  So sorry i don't have much time today since were kind busy today.  So this will have to be a bit short.  Josh congrats on making the NBA.  Mom and dad told me about it. That's wayy cool.  From bishop to the NBA.. wowsers.  Buck I was sorry to hear that you got called into the bishopric... no i'm just kidding, i'm sure you'll love it.  You'll be great!  Ed and Beth sound like they are amazing! That is soo cool.  Dad thanks for updating me on the box haha.  One request if i could make it.  Could you look online to see if you can order harry potter in italian?  I see all the kids reading it here.  I want to read it in italian when i get home to keep my italian up so if you could look into that.  If they are pricy don't worry about it its fine but i was just thinking that would be fun.  Mom and Dad your trip sounds way fun.  Sounds like you'll be nice and busy this week!  Hope all goes well and i'll talk to you next week!!

Love ya All!!!

Anziano Perkes