So . . . Antonio was baptized! But everything must come in proper order so you all will hear about that later.
So after I wrote Wednesday all of our plans fell through so we went and did street until the end of the day. It was how it normally is. We met some really cool people but have not heard from them despite our efforts to call. We also bought a picture frame to put a picture of the Rome temple for Antonio :) we put together a bunch of things for his baptism! He's gonna be so stoked! We also received portable DVD players from the church office. Every companionship of missionaries in the whole world now has a DVD player that we cannot take out of our apartments and they are to be used for companionship study. So that night we watched all of the "District 1" and "District 2" videos :) I'm lame, but I want a copy of them to take home so that I can watch them after my mission haha. I am SUCH a missionary. Oh well, that's good right?
Giovedì mattinq we had a bunch of plans and only one worked out. We went to visit Sorella Barbara Lassandro. She is the only member of her family and we ended practice teaching her and her husband the Restoration. He has heard the lessons a bazilion times but cannot quit smoking so he is not baptized. Sad! I hope one day he will quit so they can be together forever! He is super nice and comes to church every now and then. But even if he does not come he always drops her off and picks her up after :) After that we ran past a ex-investigator, Franca Catalano, from 15 years ago. She was not there, but her daughter who was only a couple of months old at the time when she took the lessons answered. Her name is also Barbara (it is a really common/popular name in Italy) and she invited us up and said we could stop by the next day at 4.30 so that she could hear the gospel too! Awesome! We were singing praises of "Hallelujah, Hallelujah" after. We often do that now. If you have seen "The Testaments" you know that when Christ comes to the people at the temple they have the hallelujah chorus in the background. So when miracles happen (which they occur everyday in our lives) Sorella Ashman and I sing HALLELUJAH! a few times :) Again, we are missionaries. We can't help it *shrug*. That afternoon we finished the program for Antonio's baptism and then we got them all printed off. After we had a lesson with Michele Sciacovelli and Fratello Curci came to help us. Gotta love Curci. He is very matter of fact and nothing ever surprises him. The lesson with Michele went really well and he accepted everything so while Curci was monologuing, he randomly says " . . . because you are an elect of God . . . " without even a hitch or voice inflection or anything. He said it as if it is a phrase we use in everyday conversation. Va be. He's Curci. There is honestly no other way to describe our ward mission leader. And Michele loved it and wants to be baptized even though he is terrified he will end up in the hospital afterwards. Speriamo di no . . . English course was after the lesson and we read a poem about how ridiculous English is with phrases like "if foot becomes feet, how come boot is never beet?" so the class learned a SACK full of new words. Infatto, the board was full of it. My favorite was describing the difference between
base: Military base
bass: a big mouth bass (fish)
bass: a male singer
Tomasso was rather disgruntled that the first and third are pronounced the same while the second and third are spelled the same. It through his head into a spin. But I didn't feel too bad. I have to learn Italian and talk with random people on the streets who make fun of my accent and the things we say. He does not have it that bad hahah.
Friday morning we went to Carbonara and practice taught the first lesson to Sorella Avantario. Her only suggestion was that we shouldn't be so mechanical. I guess we have taught the Restoration so many times that the words just sort of spill out of our mouths. We need to ask my more questions and change it up depending on who the person is. Good to know :) We then found Beatrice at her house. She had told us that her house was destroyed and it had no walls. Lies. Her house is BEAUTIFUL. Literally. It is ancient, with the original stone steps and everything. I loved it! But she kept apologizing the whole time. Yeah right. And we met her daughter too. She seemed really curious about us, and not just because we are both blondes. We did not have a lot of time because we had spent an hour trying to find her house. But we had a few minutes to talk a little bit. WE hope to see them again soon. We passed by Franca Catalano and her daughter Barbara again but they were not home. Darn it. Meno male we have their address so we can stop by and ambush them. They can ignore our calls if they want, but if we just happen to stop by they can't really do anything. But that's if they DON'T want to see us. But I don't think that that is the case. We then had a lesson with Antonio :) We watched "How Rare a Possession" which is the story of Vincenzo di Francesca, the Sicilian man who found a Book of Mormon when he was living in New York and never knew the title but read the promise in Moroni and knew it to be true. He basically lost everything trying to find the truth but eventually towards the end of his life he was baptized and went to the temple. Antonio loved it and the spirit was perfect for a blessing of peace and comfort for the next day. We also gave him the picture of the temple, a picture of Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove by Simon Dewey, a tie, Orzo (coffee replacer), and a bag for his church books. He was excited :) We then did street for the rest of the night. It needed with a man named Francesco. We talked to him for 45 minutes and Sorella Ashman was getting rather frustrated with him. He kept saying he did not want more information because he was content to only say memorized prayers instead of talking to his Heavenly Father. Literally, he said that. Sorella Ashman then said "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!" I was not too happy with him either and told him he had only one problem. Uno. And that problem was that he did not care about learning and that he did not want to expand his mind. I told him that we were dangling 100€ in front of him and he was saying no. He then started talking to Sorella Ashman again about the same things and it is always rather hard to interrupt when she gets going because I do not speak well like her. So instead I just raised my hand and waited. Francesco thought I was funny so he turned to me and said "Please dear sister, my time is yours." with a grin on his face. I dunno what it is, maybe because I look like I'm 16 or because I am blonde . . . maybe because I cannot speak Italian really well. Boh. But he was ready and gave his full attention to me so I then explained that for the rest of his life he would ALWAYS remember us. I promised him that everyday he would think of the things we told him and say to himself: "why didn't I listen to them?" another 20 minutes after he eventually agreed to at least pray to the Lord with is own words and read the Restoration Pamphlet. I do not know why we spent so much time talking to him but Sorella Ashman said the spirit told her to talk to him so he was worth our time. Va be.
Saturday we had to do weekly planning but also prepare everything for the baptism. So we left the house after companionship study to go to the church with just about all of our worldly possessions. The Anziani met us there to help us clean the baptismal font and then we ate lunch together because Sorella Ashman had made homemade gnocchi. We then planned up until 4.00 when I remembered that Fratello Cassano had told us it took 4-5 hours to fill the font. The baptism was at 6.30 . . . 2 and a half hours does not equal 4-5. So we jumped up and ran down stairs to get it started. Needless to say it does not fill even close to fast enough, especially not when you are only using hot water. So we used both hot and cold (which equaled out to be JUST cold) and still it had only filled about 5 inches in a half hour. We were in trouble. So we grabbed buckets, which were dirty, and began filling the font by hand from a spicket below the sink in one of the bathrooms. We did that for almost two hours AFTER we had changed into our nicer clothes for the baptism, had done our hair, make up . . . And it was hot and humid and we had sweat our make up off, our hair was wet, we had sweat stains on our clothes . . . But the font was getting full enough. The moment we stopped and had mopped up all the water we had spilled Antonio came down the stairs with a big smile on his face. He was super nervous though, but ready to go. We read a bit from the Book of Mormon with him and Fratello Carlucci and then left them to get ready, and us to repair the damage we had done to ourselves. Fratello Curci had then arrived and told us to stop the water when there still was not enough in the font. We checked and the water was dirty and cold and only went just past my hips. I am short, Antonio is not. Therefore it was not enough. But Fratello Curci turned it off. Oh well. We took pictures and then went upstairs for the program. It went really well and the spirit was there. I gave the talk on baptism and read and explained the lyrics from the primary song "When I am Baptized". Then Vescovo Mongelli gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Sorella Ashman played and sang "When I am Baptized" and then we went down to the font. Okay, this was not that spiritual, but the Anziani sempre joke that Vescovo Mongelli and Fratello Carlucci are Mafia Bosses. Which is kind of true. Especially Fratello Pietro Carlucci. He could pretty much be the God Father. He's 85 years old and shorter than me. So with this picture in mind, he was the one who baptized Antonio. So they are standing in the cold, dirty, not enough water and he says the prayer and then shoves him under the water. But he did not go all the way under and hit his head on the side of the font. So they had to do it again. This time it worked, but only because Fratello Carlucci kept pushing him down and held him under until the Anziani (who were the witnesses) said he was under. We learned from the Anziani after that he was whispering in his "Godfather voice", "Vaigiù!" which means "Go down!" Let's hope he did not have a lot of practice with this before his membership in the church . . . just kidding. He is a wonderful man but the whole experience made me laugh :D. We then went back upstairs and had a mini testimony meeting while we waited for them to get dressed. All of them were really sweet :) Fratello Valetini shared his experience in a lesson with Antonio where he truly witnessed a change in his countenance and heart. Then Sorella Ashman recounted the story of how we met Antonio. That whole experience truly was a miracle a testament to me that we were put into each others' paths by the hand of God. When the two men returned, Antonio gave his testimony and he is so cute! Despite his near death in the font, he shared a beautiful testimony and the spirit was very strong. Especially for Tomasso and Frank from English course. Anziano Kafel told us after the they were both "destroyed" by the spirit :) I sure hope so! After we, the missionaries, had to wait and empty and clean the font. But because it takes ages (not as long to fill it thank goodness) to drain, we sat and played games with the anziani, Angela Cafagno, Andrea Scisci, and an investigator of the Anziani named Giuseppe. It was fun :) I rather enjoyed the day despite the set backs :) But what is a baptism without the trials along the way?
Sunday was basically one big miracle. Titta was there and talked to me throughout Relief Society, but half way through Fratello Cassano waved to us to come out. And there was ANDREA! He was our new golden investigator from 3 or 4 weeks ago that basically dropped off the planet because we do not have his phone number or address and his friend Paolo won't answer our calls. We have be praying that he would come find us and there he was in church with a hair cut and a smile on his face. We were very pleased :) During testimony meeting Antonio received the Gift of the Holy Ghost and in Sorella Ashman's own words "the Spirit was so thick we could have cut it with a knife!" At the end of the prayer I looked up and smiled at Titta but she had tears running down her face. She looked at me and asked "so he is going to have the spirit of God with him for the REST of his life?!" When I said yes she began to bawl. Aw, Titta! She's crazy, but I gotta love her. Then a second highlight of the meeting was Andrès Juan. He is 8 years old and up until that point had not wanted to get baptized. I do not know why, but he's 8 and boys his age usually have strange ideas in their heads. But during the meeting he got up to the podium with his mom who was feeding him the words to say and he says "I want to be baptized . . . " then he pauses and waits to listen to what his mom says but before she can finish he blurts into the microphone "by my mom!" Oh, there was a reverent laugh from the congregation :) That afternoon we ate lunch with the family Palermo. They have a sister and her family who are not members. So we asked them to "become" them and we would practice teach them so that they could receive inspiration for how to help them receive the gospel. It went well and I think it really opened up their minds to how their sister feels. We then had to go to the church for a practice for the concert Sorella Ashman is going to sing for. I was so exhausted I fell asleep in the chairs on the stand. Hard to do I know, but it was done. The brother of Sorella Palermo thought it was pretty funny and called me "la Sorellina". We then ran to the park near our house to see the famiglia Costanzo and Fratello Carlucci. We did have a ton of time because we wanted to go to Centro to do Mostra (I do not know what it is called in English but you have a big poster and you run people down and try to talk to them) so we were walking to a bench to share a short message when I got tapped on the shoulder. I turned around and there were two teenage girls who asked if we were Mormon. When we said yes they grinned and said they have a project for school where they have to write a paper on different religions. We agreed to answer their questions but had to smile to ourselves as well because school had not started yet . . . yeah? School project? Uh huh . . . But they really seemed interested and took our number and gave us theirs. We will have to call them. The Costanzo's gave us some Indian figs and then we took off to Centro for Mostra. We usually do it separatly so we could cover more people. But I noticed that Sorella Ashman had pretty much talked to the same person the whole time and was curious as to who it was she was talking to. At the end she told me it was a member named Fratello Mesto. We had eaten at his brother's house when we had gone to Bitonto and that he is inactive. We had been trying to tract him down for a while because we had seen on the ward list that he did not come to church and there he was at the mostra outside our zone! Sorella AShman was grinning from ear to ear :)
Monday morning we had consiglio di distretto and we had the training. It was completely on Companionship love and understanding. We had taken chapter 10 from Preach my Gospel and had retitled it "How can I better understand my Companion?" And applied all the headings to our relationships to our companions instead of our investigators. It went really well and the Anziani really seemed to listen and learn something. I had also made cinnamon rolls and they were really happy to eat them at the end. That afternoon we had a lesson with Andrea, our little miracle from Sunday. Turns out he lives in the other ward, so we had a group lesson with the Anziani from that Ward. They were pretty much blown away when they realized that we had handed them a baptism all wrapped up with shiny paper with a cute little bow on it. Thank goodness it does not matter who teaches them so long as they are prepared to make and keep covenants with their Lord Jesus Christ :) After that lesson we left them to go to the family Valerio for a family night. They are the older couple that live in Japigia. They also welcome us with open arms at their house and fill us with cookies and juice. No fail, it happened that night as well. I did not think it was possible to be bloated from wafer cookies and fruit juice, but they succeeded in doing it to me. Oh well, I love them and they were as pleased as punch that I ate all they gave me. We had to walk the 45 minutes home and we were both so tired that we were a bit slap happy. I began singing the Hokey Pokey but again, we're missionaries. So I said all manner of stupid lyrics such as: You put your Book of Mormon in, you put your Book of Mormon out. You put your Book of Mormon in and you give it to someone else . . . I am lame. Thanks for the reminder :) But we enjoyed ourselves because we think we're funny. That's all the really matters in the end, so long as other people do not have to witness it as well.
Yesterday was fun because there was a sciopero! AKA a strike for the public transportation system! I love them :) can you tell!? So we went to Loseto and saw Sorella Sera Puglisi finally. I love her and we had a great conversation about her life and then the Book of Mormon and how it can give us our faith. She is really open and told us that she has been inactive on and off ever since she was baptized and that she does not believe she will come back this time. She said she does not believe in God or Christ. That I do not believe. She is so sweet and is ALWAYS touched by the spirit that we bring. She is in denial and we, with her husband, will help her come back if it is the LAST thing I do! And we gave her a brownie recipe so she owes us! That afternoon we had the first lesson with FRATELLO ANTONIO VISCANTI! That's right! He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! We had him write a letter to himself on the computer and it was great :) At the end he told himself he wants to become an elder in the priesthood! I want a copy of his letter! We are making him a little book for his baptism with the program in color, the photos, the lyrics to the songs we sang, we videotaped his testimony so we are going to write it up and then we are going to put in the letter from himself and letters from us as well. He'll love it! But the best part was everything about him was different. He had a lot more confidence in himself, even the way he spoke. Before he always seemed to be apologetic, but now he speaks with confidence because he does have a say. I love the Holy Ghost. We then had a late lunch with Titta because today is the birthday di Sorella Ashman. We had to placate her so we went to get a little bit of food and then an ice cream cone. It was a little difficult due to the sciopero so it ended up taking way more time than we had anticipated and we pretty much missed correlation but Fratello Curci did not care. He laughed in fact. Then we had English course, but again, kind of. We were asked to go to ward council to talk about the ward activity this Friday. But we were there for the last ten minutes and Sorella Ashman asked them all to do something special for her birthday. You know what it was? To read the Book of Mormon. She gave them all one and they all said that they would read it. Tomasso had it opened almost immediately and started looking through it. He is going to just SOAK it up! We are excited to see how he takes it :)
So This week went really well! I got to experience the changed life of a man who excepted the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what it is all about. Watching others make the same choices we have when they find the joy in life when we know the purpose of life. Who we are changes everything. We are truly sons and daughters of a God and we are entitled to everything He has if we only choose to follow Him and His Son Jesus Christ. We are so blessed and it is worth doing ANYTHING to bring others unto Him.
Everyday I love my mission more and more and I cannot wait to see what else the Lord has for me to learn and who else I can help.
Love you all! Muah! Vi voglio un SACCO di bene!
Sorella LeCates
In July 2010 I was called to serve an 18 month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Italy Rome mission. I've always wanted to see Italy and I can't believe I'm lucky enough to spread the gospel there!
