I am sending my love and Easter grettings from finally sunny Piacenza! I am so glad to finally see the sun here I believe that I may be seeing the last of winter here in Italy.
The week has been really awesome and I hope the same for everyone else besides the deterioration of my English, I have been relatively normal and happy and sempre nell'amore di Dio. Our Easter was really good. It went by very quickly. So I am not totally sure about the rest of the world, but we had our time change on Easter morning. In the States, our phones update automatically when there is daylight savings so we don't have to exert to much effort to make sure you wake up on time. But here in Italy, that is not the case. Anziano Iacovelli and I woke up on that day at 06.30 and went about our showers and preparation and studies like any other normal day.
At about 8.30 (when we normally leave for church) we got a call from F.llo Noda asking "Anziani, Dove siete? (Elders, where are you?)".
I responded casually that we are at home getting ready to come to church.
"Oh" he said in an even tone "Then I suppose that you didn't know that the time changed this morning"
"So you mean it's actually 9.30 right now and we are un mezz'ora in ritardo?"
"That would be correct"
After hanging up Anziano Iacovelli and I rushed aroud everywhere trying to get ready for church and head out the door and we arrived in time for the last 15 minutes of the combined Priesthood, Relief Society Easter message. Everybody made a lot of fun of us for the rest of the church block saying things like "Its such a blessing that the Lord sent us such puctual Elders" or "You look well rested today Anziano" or simply pointing at their watches with raised eyebrows and an Albanian member fixed the clock in our phone for us. I was emarrassing.
After church, President Taina took us to his house for lunch and he kept us there for 4 hours. What was good about that was that he invited his friend form English class who ttok a lesson from usso that was good.
From Taina's house, we visited Yvonne who seemed kind of down so we gave her a message about Jesus Christ and His Atonemet and a rose and some chocolate that President Taina had with him already.
We visted Fred, one of the 3 people that were baptised last transfer. He was watching wrestling on TV. Which I had never seen and lost interest almost immediately. One of his friends asked if it was real or fake and I said that I imagine most of the things on TV are fake and moved on to the lesson.
After Fred we saw Sorella Libè who dressed up really nicely for Easter. She is a sweetheart. She kept trying to make sure that we had something to eat for Easter. "Are you sure you've had your Easter meal?"
I didn't really realize that I was going to take half your lives describing my Easter. I'll move on now to the rest of my week...
On Thursday, we had a lesson with Regina from our English class who has been coming to English for about six months after praying to God to find the true church and finding the advertisement for English class the next day. She asked us to meet with her after trying to grow the courage to ask us the whole time. The whole lesson, she kept saying "This is true, I know it is! This is the word of God!" She is really busy but wants to meet with us and accepted a baptismal invite.
Friday was a pretty average day. We had a bunch of different lessons. Nothing in particular comes to mind to describe it to you, except for that the Sister who is responsible for all of the travel coordination including visas and other travel documents for missionaries is in our branch. She told me to call her a s soon as I got my permesso talling her the date I had to renew it. That day she was in Germany so i had to wait. When I did call her I decided to get her heart rate up and play a little joke.
I said "Sorella, I forgot to go to my appoinment, what should I do?"
"Anziano" she said after a long silence "That is very grave indeed. There actually is not a lot you can do"
I told her I was joking and she breathed a huge sigh of relief, telling me that if I had actually missed that appointment, then I would be deported and my mission would be over and that if I had told her that joke in person she would have hit me. At church on Sunday I showed her the permesso and said "Il scherzo è finito (the joke is over)"
Saturday was average.
On Monday, we had district meeting in Reggio again.
Yesterday, We had an appointment with Marina, our French speaking investigator. She was so excited about the message. She said "I will do anything to serve the Lord. I am so excited to forsake my sins and follow him. You need to teach this to my family. I hope my husband will listen". After, we called her friend, Kadi who we had met with Marina earlier and it seemed that she was losing interest.
But on the phone she said "I have been so busy lately, I am so sorry. But in my spare time I am always reading the Book of Mormon and I love it! I hope we can meet later this week!"
So that has been my week! Full of miracles and the experience of God's love. One more thing before I go. Lately, we have had a lot of successful finding. When I say that I mean that instead of stopping people and inviting them to hear our message, people have stopped us and asked to hear our message. It started a couple of weeks ago with Regina from English and most recently, a Rabbi whose father is LDS asked when we had services and how he could do Geneological research though our church. It has been amazing to see the tender mercies of the Lord here in Piacenza.
I send my love and greetings with utmost sincerity and hope to hear from all of you soon!
Love,
Anziano John Colin Cook
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