Letter to President

The missionaries in the Italy Rome Mission are so inspiring!


This new week was a great opportunity for my companion and I to re-evaluate our companionship, our work, and where we want to go in the next six weeks. One of the things we noticed while we were talking about the ward and how their attitude towards missionary work has changed, was that we started to see more excitement in them when we started asking them to be in lessons or get involved with our investigators. I think a lot of times we as missionaries think that we are helpless to change people's attitudes and if certain people aren't really into missionary work, then that's just the way they are. But I have come to realize that if we are really doing everything we can to serve members and ask them for help when we need it, they will feel invested in the outcome of our work and these small things can help to change their attitude. We are excited to have six more weeks to work with the members in this ward and get as many of them as possible involved in missionary work.

To close, I wanted to share a story with you of a miracle we saw this week.  My companion and I have been writing in our planners one miracle that we see every day, and this was the miracle from yesterday.

After church we had a lunch appointment with some members who live a ways outside. The mom of this family served a mission and told us that she had lots of missionary work to be done in her town. After lunch, we did a spiritual thought and challenged each member of the family--the mother and her two daughters--to take seriously anz. Ballard's challenge to invite someone to know more about the gospel by Christmas. Immediately after, the Mom invited us to go for a walk with her and her friend to whom she had given a book of mormon. We went, and while we were on our walk we talked to her about why we chose to come to Italy and bore our testimonies to her. She told us that her husband had been reading the book of mormon, and that maybe sometime she and her daughter could come to our english course.

By the time we came back to the house to grab our things and go, the two daughters had already talked to two of their friends and invited them to meet with the missionaries. They both said yes, and had been to ward activities before. This was just such a testimony builder to me that when we take the counsel of the apostles and prophets to heart and act IMMEDIATELY on the promptings, we will see success. This family inspires me to be a better missionary and also a better member when I get home.