May 27, 2009

Ciao!
Another great week in Prato! Neytil's doing great. He's getting so excited for his baptism! He loves learning, and always asks tons of questions. We had a great lesson with him Saturday and anytime he talks about the church he says “our church.” He told us the other day that he knows that commandments are for our own good. God doesn't just give us commandments to be strict, but as a way to help us become more like Him. He's read all of True to the Faith and loves it! He is seriously amazing. Dielle is doing good. She is understanding a lot more now. Mary is also doing well. We had a great first lesson with her last week! She understands it and is sincerely interested. She came to branch night on Friday and made tons of friends. We have 5 new investigators from the past week! 3 of them are former investigators. One is Diletta. She's 10, and she took the lessons when she was 8. Her grandma is a member, and her mom is a less-active member. She's so cute! Her brother was there, too, who's 8. They are such cute kids! Diletta wants to take the lessons again to know whether she should get baptized. We're also going to start teaching the kids english.Sabrina is also a former investigator. She's in her early 40s and lived in NYC for a few years, and England for a few years, so she is fluent in english. She is adorable! She's a very energetic, slightly eccentric woman with a bunch of cats. We're really excited for her.Elsa is also a former investigator. She's 84 years old, but Italian old people age very well. She seems like she's in her 60s! She came to church on Sunday and really liked it and is very sincere in her desire to take the lesson again. She made lots of friends at church and even asked us if we could bring one of the member with us to our next lesson!Angela is a really cute girl that we met last week when we did district singing in centro. She's American and is here doing research for her thesis. She's getting ready to graduate from Duke. She used to go to our church when she was little with her mom, but then they moved and she hadn't been since. But she came to branch night on Friday and church on Sunday and we have another appointment with her tomorrow. She's so cute!Opeka is a girl from Sri Lanka that we met a couple weeks ago doing house. She takes care of an old lady. She was raised Buddhist but went to the Catholic church when she moved here and felt really strongly that Jesus is the Christ. She has a strong testimony of Christ and wants to find the truth. We gave her a Book of Mormon a couple weeks ago when we met her, and she has already read most of 1 Nephi. She's awesome! She asked some amazing questions and is very sincere.Yesterday we had lunch with Franco, the man who works for the Catholic church who gave us the rosary beads. We gave him a Book of Mormon, which he LOVED! He asked us tons of questions about our church, and he loved that we worship a living Christ instead of using the cross. He also loved that we don't get baptized until we're at least 8. We're hoping to make him an investigator soon. He has a lot of faith and will be a great member!I love you all and hope you're all doing well!Vi voglio tanto bene!
Sorella Hawkey