happiness

Date: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 4:21 AM

Subject: happiness

Dear Family of mine,

I love getting emails from you. they make me very happy. thank you. This week has been a good one, more or less. I've decided to take a different approach to my work than I have previously. I've decided to focus more on the things I can control, like what time I wake up, whether I read the book of Mormon at night, what I study, how I study, doing the dishes, writing in my journal. It makes me much more peaceful about everything that happens, and I seem to have more energy and drive to do our work when I do. I've been apparently very stressed, or at least my body seems to think so, because every so often I have these weird spasms of weird muscles I didn't even know existed. So I talked to the mission mom, and she told me to relax a little more. I've decided that approaching life more towards things I can control is a better approach. so... yeah. good times.

Last wednesday, we acquired Anziano Jones's bike from a nigerian man who possibly stole it. we're not sure. but... we bought it anyways. after a few days of use, one of the pedals fell off because the screw that holds it was totally stripped. oops! oh well. We'll have to fix that, I guess. Thursday morning, we acquired a pump and an adapter for said pump so that we could fill the tires of aforementioned bike. That afternoon, we taught a man named Luigi again. He seemed to like what we were teaching, but at the end he said come back in a month. I pushed for early the next week, and he accepted, but when I called to confirm, he said that we shouldn't come back. (being too pushy with 90 yo men... maybe a bad idea). That night, we taught English (we moved it at the request of our YSAs to thursday) where we had a new student in our basic class, and our conversational class seems to be interested in the gospel. They may become investigators soon. (success!)

Friday, we did our weekly planning, talking about how we want the area to be at the end of the transfer, or when Anziano Jones goes home (I think I'll send him home... maybe). We decided that 3 of our investigators could be baptized at the end of that period, along with fulfilling a dream of Anziano Jones's which is to find a family and baptize them. So.. inside of 3 months, we want to see 5 baptisms. I think it's definitely possible. We just need to find the family. That afternoon, we taught Daniele, reading with him out of the Book of Mormon, and commiting him to read it from the beginning to the end. He seems excited to do it. The rest of the right, we did finding work.

Saturday, we helped one of our members get into church and gave him an albanian Book of Mormon for his wife's friend. (investigator?) We then did some more finding work, followed by lunch, followed by going to Novara to teach Edwin again. We taught him about the Law of Chastity. I knew we'd find a kink somewhere along the line. He says it's VERY difficult to follow. So we challenged him to follow it, he said he'd try. é duro, famiglia. duro. We then went out to Candide's where we taught him a short refresher of the 2nd lesson, followed by eating african style with him. Fish in hot sauce, plus Yams flour prepared as a gooey thing the consistency of playdoh, sorta. It was pretty darn good.

Sunday, Maria and Paolo came to church! (we weren't expecting Maria because she was kind of angry with us last week.) In Gospel principles we talked about the Law of Chastity, and the coolest part was seeing Paolo and Eleonora, his wife, just look at each other with this look of love and a knowledge they were keeping it. that was awesome. That evening, we taught Alessandro and his family with Fratello Simoncini (who is awesome). We talked about the restoration again, and the dad commited to read the Book of Mormon for 5 minutes every morning. That was really good. We'll see if they do it. (preghiamo). Monday, we had a good district meeting, where we were more or less called to repentence as a district, because we're really struggling. we talked about baptism and practiced giving the baptismal invite. The rest of the day, we did finding work until the end of the day, when we taught our less active Sonia, inviting her to read the book of Mormon again all the way. and then pray. and pray the whole time she does. She said she would, then she called a member friend of hers telling her she'd do it. (after she left that happened). That's way good, because she needs the strength to her testimony.

Yesterday, we did finding work the whole day, talking to really interesting people, one of which gave us his info to come back. He has a bible with 72 gospels in it, apparently. that's interesting. He said some other interesting (possibly false) stuff too. like the fact that in Cuneo, a small town in our zone, there's a museum with Mormon stuff from 2000 years ago (I think that one is false). We then went to Paolo's house, and taught the rest of the Plan of Salvation, and pulled out our well practiced baptismal invite, and he accepted to be baptized the 27th of november... if he feels ready. Pray that he will, please.

This morning, I had a good day. We did shopping, checked train times, and I'm having a generally happy day. We're going to Verbania again today. It's really pretty. I'm quite excited.
--
Vi Amo!
Anziano Benjamin Jolley

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