Week 99: May 29 (Roma)

TERNI AGAINNN

Hey everyone! It has been a great and really full Pday; unfortunately I do not have a lot of time, so I will be hitting on the highlights from this past week. Know that I am doing great though,  my testimony is growing, and I love serving here in Italy. For this upcoming week I am going to have the opportunity to do three different exchanges with anziani in Rome, Ostia, and some of the elders in our own apartment. It’s going to be really great and I am excited to learn from them. It does mean that this week is going to go really fast. After those exchanges I have just next week and then I will be home. How it is going to work is not this Friday but the next, Anziani Draghi's new companion will come to Rome and so I will be in a trio with Anziani Houseman and Melling in the Institute center. It’s going to be super fun to finish where I had been working before I got transfered here.

This past week was awesome. I had the opportunity to go to Terni and do an exchange with Anziano Farinotti. It was so cool to go back to my first city and walk the same streets and do some finding there. Something that I thought was really cool is a lot of old contacts and investigators came back to my mind while we were there and I was able to remember where they all lived to show the missionaries so that they can try to make contact with them.  One of them, when we stopped by, opened the door and was super suprised and happy which I was as well. Especially when I was there almost two years ago she was very obese and so we bought her water and things because she couldn’t walk very far to the store. When she opened the door she was like a fourth her size, and so happy to see us. It was a really cool reunion. An exciting lesson that we had was with this self-referal from a city called Viterbo that we traveled to. This man that wants to be baptized is from India and is here for his safety right now. He told us his story, which was really special, and all of the sudden this really large British man walked in and looked at us (because we were sitting in a bar teaching) and just yelled some very interesting words (including some swear words) along the lines of, “It's the Mormons!" He then started to laugh and I responded he was right, we were…  

He then sat down right at our table and so for the next bit of the lesson I spent the time trying to distract him and pull him away from the lesson so that our friend wouldn’t go away or get annoyed. It was interesting hahah, especially when he started saying some pretty uncomfortable comments like that he liked [was attracted to] me.... Man.. It literally never ends hahaha. So that part I am trying to block out of my mind from Terni but everything else was great. Especially because I was able to see my great friend from two years ago. When he found out that I was in Terni he came and met us and we were able to talk and hopefully he will start to return to church. I love that guy; he is awesome and I enjoyed being able to see him.

I was also able to do a scambio with Anziano Melling at the Institute center this past Saturday as well. It was great. We made some goals at the very beginning of our scambio and then went out and did finding literally the entire day. We had a lot of great success and found some awesome people. He is a really fun guy to work with and is a great leader, so I am excited to see what he will do for the mission in the future. It was also great going back to the Institute center and seeing some of the GANS there. We were able to give out four Books of Mormon to people and find some really solid contacts. We also met with this lady who called us that morning and so as we met she explained that she is a member from Ghana but has been living in Italy for around 8 years. She told us that she has two boys and she wants to go back to church but she can’t find it. We put her into contact with the right missionaries for her area and it was super special to see how happy and grateful she was to talk to the sister missionaries and plan to go to church the next day.

I hope you all have a great last week of school!

I implore you all to ball the freak out. [Editor’s reminder that this phrase means to “give it your all”!] 

Vi voglio bene,

Anziano Spencer

Beautiful Terni!

Reconnecting with friend from Terni mentioned above.

Pday today...does he know when he gets back to the states, he'll be expected to share?
#personalpizza