Awesome Week

Well My 4th transfer is rapidly approaching an end and I am in total disbelief. I feel like I just barely picked up Anziano Horrocks for Milano, Cimiano. I feel like I just barely got picked up myself from Milano Cimiano.

This week has been one of those really awesome weeks. We have felt a lot of help and a huge turn around in our work. It's been amazing.

On Thursday, our zone and the Firenze zone met together in Modena for a conference with President. It was really awesome and I feel like what we learned in that conference will help us to be better missionaries. It was super uplifting and I walked out of the conference feeling liberated in some way. It was also really awesome because I got to reunite with some mission buddies. I was a joyful time. I also sang Israel, Israel, God is calling, by myself for them. I trembled the whole time, but I felt like I did a decent job.

On Friday there was an international soccer game in Bologna (Italian National Team and The republic of Sam Marino's Team) (San Marino is one of the 3 city-coutnries that we have here in Italy and I am told that I could go there if I wanted to.) The busses were still going, but they were completely useless, and it was rough especially since our church is right next to Bologna's stadium. We walked everywhere an got to experience Italian soccer culture a little bit. Our ward showed "Courageous" in Italian which the members liked a lot and they got a huge kick out of the parts that I find mildly amusing in the movie. On sister laughed so hard she cried at the part where The Police Sargent accidently said "I love you bye" to his police chief. That was really funny to see those reactions.

On Saturday, we got to go to the Park and do an informational display. We had a lot of really good conversations and a few people gave us their information so that we could contact them. We got to meet with Samir again and he is beginning to understand everything. We also found out that he taught himself English! The way that he speaks, I thought he studied it in School and University but he just learned it from reading and watching BBC...wow. I wish I could teach myself stuff that well.

Sunday was a really good day! After church, we had a lesson with a man that we had met in a Park earlier in the week and he was really attentive, I felt the Spirit a lot. We will be seeing him again this week. We went to the park again after that and had two on the spot lessons with some people. One of the lessons was with 2 Pakistani brothers who were really nice. The lesson was in English and as we were saying the closing prayer, an Italian man came up and said "You speak really good English!" and then went on for the next 10 minutes about how clearly he understood our English and how he found it hard to understand Americans normally. It was kind of weird. That's what you get for teaching lessons in a park. The next lesson was right after that with an older man who had been having a really bad day. He said that we were able to cheer him up and that he was interested to hear more of our message.

We taught three lessons on Monday which really rocked. One was with Antonio and the other with Samir and the third was an on the spot lesson in the park. That was a really good day.

Yesterday, we met some less actives in our ward whose son lives in Finland and if I understood correctly, lives in one of the Wards Caleb Anderton served in (Helsinki Espoo...?)! Small world! We planned to have a lesson later with one of the people from the display we did in the park with a member, but the person didn't show up, so the member took us to his nonmember friend's house and we taught him about the Restoration of the gospel. So that was really fun. After, the member bought us gelato which was delicious!

Today has been fun and tomorrow, I will go to Rimini and we will have a zone meeting there. No burger king this time!

I love you! I hope all is well,

Anziano John Colin Cook