January 10, 2012

Family,


Like your email there is not much to report this week. Just another week as a missionary in Mantova Italy. Hmmm....

1.) We had an AreaBook miracle this last week, I was looking through a gigantic trashed AreaBook that we have here in Mantova and reading the teaching history and comments of other missionaries for former investigators here. I found a few numbers that I wanted to call and decided to give it a shot. I called one and had a short conversation with a man who lived a lil bit out of the city but not too far and long story short set up an appointment for this last Saturday. We went and found this man, who we thought was just a single guy, with a wife and 2 small children. His name is D++++++, And we found a family to teach! Something that all missionaries are ask and are searching for. We sat down with him and his 2 kids, his wife was in the other room doing something and we gave him the Restoration lesson. Once we saw that he had a family we wondered if we should teach the Plan of Salvation but once we got going the Restortion felt right. In short we had a great, powerful lesson together. It was a little rougher than I'm used to in the sense that Anz. Strong and I haven't had much practice together teaching but I think he understood well and he accepted the invite to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. He and his family are great and really open to talk, we will see where things go with him.

2) Yesterday Anz. Strong and I were invited to a "Specialized Training" in Milano. So we had to wake up at 5:30am and get ourselves to Milano. The training was amazing and very informative. I took so much from it that I've been looking for, you could say... President
really is amazing. He started out telling us why we were there in Milano at this training because it was a mixed up group of Missionaries. We were in a group of about 40. He told us "I felt impressed to invite you here, that's why you are here"... It kinda set the mood for the whole training. He then went on to talk about the Book of Mormon, more specifically answering difficult questions using the Book of Mormon. Not that we don't have the answer but saying simply "We don't have all the answers, but I know you can know through a testimony in the Book of Mormon". He ended with "There are some things you could say but don't Need to say". I really like that. He then went on to talk about what real success as a missionary is and then Anz. Strong and I had a part in the conference as well, 10 minute presentation on Personal Study... 

I got Dani's Package too. I loved the Family DVD, It was awesome. I didn't realize before all the Italian Names we have in the Family!

Bella- Beautiful
Stella- Star
Siena- A beautiful city in the south of Tuscany.

That was funny to see now. Knowing Italian.

Well I dont have a ton of Time. Love you!

Anz. Mendel