Fouri Di Testa

Hello again from still rainy or overcast Piacenza!

 

I hope everyone is well and feeling happy and wonderful! This week has been a really wonderful week and I am feeling bleesings from God every day. The sun is trying to make more appearances but the clouds and rain always have the stage. It will be on soon enough.

 

Well let's see if there is anything to tell you about my week.

 

Thursday and Friday were normal days.

 

On Saturday, we went to Cremona for a lesson with Priscilla. It was really good. We set a baptismal date for her son, May 18. Nicolò he and Priscilla are fouri di testa (an idiomatc expression that means estatic and literally means "out of head"). After our lesson, they took us out for dinner in a family style Italian restaurant. If there is one thing that you need to know about the Italian eating lifestyle it is simply to believe the stereotypes. At that restaurant, You had to buy the steak by the kilo and Prscilla's husband ordered 2 kilos and pizza. As well as a bunch of roasted vegetables and bread. It was good and Anziano Iacovelli and I were quite well filled afterwards. Please pray for Priscilla. She wants to com e to Church really bad, but she live about an hour away and depends on her husband for transport and he isn't always disponibile. He seems supportive but a bit apprehensive and I hope that we can help him understand that his family is making a good choice.

 

On Sunday we had church which one of the French speaking investigators came to! The Relief Society totally took her under their wing! We have auxilliaries and then Sunday School and Sacrament meeting at the end. By the time that sacrament meeting came around, She had a bunch of friends talking to her and asking her questions. We taught her the Plan of Salvation lesson yesterday and she kept saying "I know that this is true. It's so clear!" After church we had lunch (the chili I was talking about making which ended up pretty good. Anziano Iacovelli wants me to make it next week). Then we went to have a lesson with a less active member named Peter, from Nigeria. I wrote down incomplete directions and we got totally lost... in the rain. We went in circles for 45 minutes and then... remembered that we had a map on our phone. It's new so we don't still know all of the features! Ugh! I felt so dumb and wet. But the lesson was good and Peter's son Nosa wants to meet and learn more about the church! He has so much faith in God! We met with Yvonne and Sorella Libé as usaual. Sorella Noda and her mom Sorella Caratoni were also visiting Sorella Libé when we came by. Sorella Caratoni is a few years older than Sorella Libé and is one of the cutest old ladies in the world. We taught them how to play nose goes to decide who would say the prayer at the end and Sorella Caratoni lost and told us all it wasn't fair because we moved to fast. And then she laughed her cute little old lady laugh and Anziano Iacovelli just busted up laughing which made Sorella Caratoni laugh even harder which got everyone else laughing. That was really fun!

 

On Monday, We had our district meeting in Reggio Emilia which was good and interesting because all of the companionships except our has changed. Modena now has two people that I was in the MTC with one in the group above me and the other in the Group below. Reggio has Anziano Miller's trainer (Anziano Miller is training now), And Reggio Sorelle Have Sorella Harward who was in the group above us in the MTC and Sorella Stevens who just arrived last week form the MTC. After district meeting we went home and did finding. It was pretty rough but we were trying to remember that often trying times come right before blessings. We got yelled at by a Muslim woman who said that every day religious people are coming to her house and pestering her and her family and she has had enough "Leave the People in peace. If they want to find out they can find out for themselves! Just go and tell the peole from your church to stop coming" The door was slammed and a few doors later we got "Why do Jehovah's Witnesses like this street so much? You are the third people to come by this week!"  In both cases, we tried to explain that we werent the ones who had been there previously. So things were pretty hard that week but then we turned the coner and knocked on a door that a thin old man answered who was so extremely prepared for our message. He gladly took a Book of Mormon and promised to start reading from the beginning without us even getting the chance to ask him to read any of it.

 

Yesterday, I picked up my Permesso di Soggiorno, which officially ensures my status as a legal immigrant to the republic of Italy. We wet with Massimiliano who agreed to start living the Word of Wisdom and is getting excited for his baptism next month! We also met with Sorella Saquing we gave her a lesson on faith instead of beating the dean horse of Church attendance which is the approach of most missionaries when it comes to less actives. There was a point in the lesson where she said "I do have faith. I hope you know. I know I need to show it and come to church and I want to but I just don't know what to do about it. I am always so busy and so exhausted but I need you Elders to know that I still have faith!" That was really Powerful. We assured her that we knew she had faith and that the Lord would bless her for making the effort.

 

Our plans for today are to do some grocery shopping and then catch up on letters (of which I have many to write please forgive my slowness of writing!) and then teach English.

 

I love you all and I hope that you are aware of God's blessings in your life!

 

Anziano John Colin Cook