Another baptismal date!

Oops!!! I totally forgot to forward this letter from August 4th! Sorry!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 5:07 AM
Subject: Another baptismal date!

So... I have exciting news. Sunday accepted a baptismal date for the 21st of August. So... we'll be having a double baptism that day, assuming all goes well. We'll see. I'm very impressed with Sunday. I'll say why later.

My week this week is as follows. On wednesday night Anz. Zippro said goodbye to our english class and we ate pizza with them at the pizzeria below our house. Thursday morning at 6 AM we headed to Torino, where I waited for my companion till 3 PM. During that time, I did some finding work with our Zone Leader, Anz. Van Kan. We found a family to teach as we did casa, then we ate some ice cream, wandered Torino, and just talked. Apparently the Zone Leaders had an insane week last week. They taught 55 lessons and had 10 people in church. For perspective, a good week here is 20 lessons and 3 people in church. The 55 lessons was a mission record. Anyways, I picked up Anziano Jones at the train station, and we headed home to Vercelli. There, I made some banana bread, we did shopping for the week, and he unpacked. Around 7, we went out to do some finding work. We did casa, which apparently is just not done in the Rome mission. so... he was amazed when I got into a palazzo on the first citofono I rang. (Palazzo=apartment building, Citofono=the phone thingy at the entrance of a palazzo.) We then got someone's phone number and he was more amazed. Since then, we've done a good bit of casa, but we still haven't gotten in and taught a lesson. oh well. we will eventually.

Starting Thursday, I have had to make all the phone calls to set up our appointments. It's been hard, but I set up a good day for friday.

Friday, we taught a homeless guy named Davide, who we had met on the train the week before. He doesn't have a cell phone though, so we haven't seen him since. We planned, and went home for lunch. I made a delicious tortilla/rice/vegetable thing, and then we went out again. We taught Stefano, who I may or may not have mentioned before. He's an ex-Jehovah's Witness, who really likes the bible, and was really excited to get a companion book, the Book of Mormon. He's about 30, and lives with his mom. he's a good guy. Likes the madonna a lot. He may end up getting baptised, because he thinks we're angels from God. Which... in a sense, we are. Anyways, then we went to Candide's, and taught him about a way to make prayer a little more effective, that is, fasting. He was excited to fast on Sunday. We had two more appointments that fell through, then we taught Sunday. Sunday, as I said, now has a baptismal date. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and read 2 Nephi 31 with him. He had read it 2 times, and understood the doctrine of it very well. When I asked him if he would be baptized, he got a little upset and said, Baptism's not just something I wake up and decide to do. It's a serious decision. After a bit more explaining and two more tries of inviting him, he explained, I'm not going to get baptized until I've repented. Every man knows how he offends God. I smoke, I drink, I know those are wrong. I've tried quitting many times, and haven't had success. I then assured him we'd have him ready to accept baptism by the 21st, and he said, certainly I'll get baptised that day if I'm ready. So... we haven't taught him the Word of Wisdom yet. and yet he already accepts the two most difficult parts, and he's already trying to quit. We'll need to work with him towards quitting fully by that day, but I think he'll be ready.

Saturday, we taught Candide the Word of Wisdom, which he accepted wholeheartedly, and commited to keep. We had other appointments, but they all fell through. So we did a lot of Park contacting, with little success.

Sunday, Candide came to church, and Sunday tried to, but wasn't able to for various reasons. We then taught a man named Yusuf about prophets and the first lesson, and then our other appointments fell through. So we did some more park, with equally unsuccessful results. We met a drunk guy who gave us his number, and was somewhat interested, and we met a guy who apparently investigated the church like 30 years ago, who was albanian, named Illyrian. He didn't give us his number, and he was going on vacation that week, so... oh well. Speaking of vacation, here in Italy, we are in the time of year called Ferie. Which means EVERYONE is on vacation, or going next week, and so an invite to hear the gospel is answered with a "when I'm back from vacation 2 months." grr. oh well. I'm happy.

Monday, we had district meeting, sort of. Alessandria didn't show up, so we had correlation with our Ward Mission Leader, Matteo. We then had a pretty open day, so we went out to Novara, and taught Kingsley, a contact from a week or two ago. He introduced us to about 5 other people, and they all seemed moderately interested. We set a return appointment for this saturday, and then we did casa nearby. We came back for our FHE, and Candide came, because he's awesome. We taught a lesson about prayer.

Tuesday, we taught Roberto about the apostasy and restoration. It was a really interesting lesson. He's a very logical character, so when I said "important religious questions were settled by councils, rather than by Apostles with revelation, and doctrines were changed," he asked for an example, so I said baptism. This led to a 10 minute discussion of baptism and what it means and why it's important, and then I brought it back to apostasy, and I THINK he understood the concept and the importance of the restoration. He then asked us if the next time we could read the Book of Mormon together, which is precisely what I wanted. also, he has a great respect for the book of mormon. This appointment took 2 and a half hours. He's a talker, and so is our high councilman, Fratello Simoncini. Later that day, we taught Candide about how his baptism will be, why it's important, why we'll be teaching commandments, and how to repent. It was a real good lesson. I love Candide.

Our appointments then fell through, and we did some casa and strada and such, with a little bit more success.

In other news, I feel like a real missionary now. I speak Italian well enough to talk to anyone, I'm confident enough to just start talking to anyone, and I'm practically (still working on it) always inviting people to hear about the gospel. I think that if I can continue this way, we'll see a lot of success.
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Vi Amo!
Anziano Benjamin Jolley

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