January 27, 2010

Ciao!
Another adventurous week in the life of a missionary! It’s never a dull moment around here. We started a new service opportunity- teaching English to a super cute girl named Genni. She’s great! She’s the friend of a member in the branch. We’re hoping to also start talking to her about the Gospel soon.
We brought Bruce to a couple of appointments this week. Bruce is a recent convert from Nigeria. He has such a crazy story. He’s been in Italy for about a year and a half and is here as a refugee. He comes from a mainly Muslim part of Nigeria where they are very violent towards Christians. Bruce’s house was burned down and his life was threatened many times and was forced to leave his wife and baby to come to Italy to protect his life and that of his family. He took a raft to get here, along with some other refugees. And yet, he has such an incredible faith in his Heavenly Father. He never once even considered denouncing his faith, even in the face of serious danger. He knows God is in control and he never doubts that. He is such an amazing example to me.
Church here is always an adventure. Between chasing Susan’s kids around the chapel, trying to convince stubborn investigators to turn their cell phones on silent during sacrament meeting, Susan making all sorts of baptismal plans with our knowledge and then telling all the members, Area Authorities visiting and all sorts of interesting debates in Sunday School, Church is guaranteed to never be boring here.
Dennis is doing so well! He is as enthusiastic as ever! He is excited about his "baptisment" as he calls it. He had some doubts about the Book of Mormon, as a lot of Nigerians do. He was talking to us about it, and before we could really say anything, he said, "But I’ve prayed about the Church and I know it’s true. I know The Book of Mormon is true, so I just need to trust the answer that God gave me." He’s amazing. We also found out that Dennis is married and has two kids in Nigeria. He’s hoping to reunite with them soon. We taught him the law of chastity last time, and he loved it. He started talking about in the Bible where it says that if your eye offends you, you need to pluck it out, etc. and how the law of chastity starts with your thoughts and intents of your heart. Then he said that if he ever had a problem with looking at other women besides his wife, he would literally pluck his eye out. He goes all out when it comes to obeying the commandments. We love Dennis!
Susan is doing fine. We’re not sure exactly when her baptism will be. She’s been standing us up a lot lately and doesn’t listen to anything we say in either of the languages that we both speak. I’m pretty sure Gizmo listens better than Susan does. We’re hoping that working also with her husband will help a lot. Other than that, we’re running out of ideas to help her. You gotta love free-agency though, right?
Nothing else too noteworthy around here. Monday all of us missionaries did service for one of our favourite family’s in the branch who own a bakery. Each year they have their annual spring cleaning and the missionaries always help for a few hours. It was actually a lot of fun. And of course, we never leave their place empty-handed. They made us pizza for lunch and we left with a huge sack full of delicious bread! I’m definitely going to miss Italian food.
I’ve recently been reading again through the talks from the most recent conference. One thing that really stuck out to me was Elder Bednar’s talk. He talks about things that we can do in our families to be "more diligent and concerned at home." But what really stuck out to me was how he talked so much about putting into practice that which we already know. He said, two times, the exact same thing:
"What we know is not always reflected in what we do…As disciples of the Savior, we are not merely striving to know more; rather, we need to consistently do more of what we know is right and become better."
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between knowing and doing. It’s not enough just to know. We have to constantly put into practice the things that we know we need to do.
I’m so grateful to be serving a mission. I love my Savior so much. I know His Atonement is so real, so personal, and so powerful. He loves us so much. He lives and is always when we need Him.
Vi voglio tanto bene!
Sorella Hawkey