My beloved brothers and sisters;
Good week. Main difference is there's 3 of us now, which I inititially thought some problems could arise like splitting up space in a small apartment or finding work and stopping and talking with 3 huge guys in suits, but so far all it's been is FUN! If anything, it's the opposite. Merate is small enough that we approach somebody and they say "There's usually only two of you,right?" and it's a great way to start up a conversation. So got a shwack tonne of potentials this past week (I'm allowed to use bad english, I'm trying to learn Italian).
One cool story, it's about time to head back to the house for lunch, nobody is around, so we say "one last person before heading back" keep on walking, end up meeting this girl sitting in the grass that we sat down in the grass with her and taught the whole restoration. She lives in another zone, but it was a great referral.
Another huge miracle, got in and taught an amazing restoration lesson doing casa [house to house] for the first time ever! We didn't do a lot before, but try to do just a little bit every couple of days to use a bunch of different finding techniques. But it's hard because it's all apartments, and it's easier to hang up when you don't even see them, but usually wait until someone rings the door open without checking who it is and then going door to door. But got into the apartment and this young couple are interested and already know a member (who happens to be the son of a 70, that doesn't hurt) and he's working a bunch so we can't meet just with her, but we'll get them baptized eventually. They want us to come again, so super miracle.
Big push by Pres Dibb to use more scriptures in lessons, so we've been preparing and have taught some super spiritual lessons using lots of scriptures, like a scripture for every single point we talk about. Our fist lesson with tonnes of scriptures was a Plan of Salvation lesson with a less active and his girlfriend, and they asked amazing questions that our scriptures we had chosen in personal and companion study answered perfectly. We only didn't use scriptures for the creation and the atonement, and that's only because we forgot them during the lesson, so I guess the spirit was telling us that they weren't as important to these specific people. Still used 7 or more relatively long scriptures in the lesson though, and it was great.
Another cool anouncement, get on your local missonaries' cases for all those reading this to have a ward activity of some kind in this transfer, straight from President Monson. And then invite everybody you can think of to a non threatening atmosphere just to see and meet the missionaries. In our mission we just learned 69% of baptisms are referrals. That's a fairly high percentage. But the activity will be a perfect opportunity to introduce to the church.
So change of topic, planned on visiting some less actives in a little town 20 minutes away, the map didn't show elevation but looked like a fairly easy bike ride, turns out to be the highest point within very realistically 20 km. Y'all (ha, voi form) know the Nauvoo temple in some of the pictures I sent home? Right there we walked all the way up, didn't time it, but roughly 45 min, one super cool experience where she had turned Catholic and got her and her husband to commit to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, super spritiual experience. And then a whole 3 minutes and 18 seconds down on bikes.
Learned again (I have to keep on learning this) is that you can really choose your attitude. Had a blast walking a bike up a hill for 45 minutes. Pouring rain and stepped in a puddle past my ankle, we just laughed, nothing you can do afterwards. Once just sitting down on a bench taking a break we all started laughing for no reason and couldn't stop. Possibly due to lack of sleep, but also we just choose to have lots of fun and we do.
Other fun 3 people stories- a woman was walking her puppy and walking and stopping with the dog, and she wasn't really interested in our message, but she wasn't turning us away either, so all three of us kind of shuffle-stepped after her and kept on talking. I've said before you can choose to be awkward about a situation and if you're not awkward they won't feel awkward, but it was pretty bad. Gave her a pass-along card and it turns out we shuffled the equivalent of 30 steps from where we initially met her. Couldn't stop laughing about that one too.
Another example of choosing attitude, visited a member family, but they're on a corner and they saw us biking past into a farmer's field where we proceeded to get lost and follow a mud path for 20 minutes. And it was pouring rain. But it was so much fun! Even with the pouring rain we've had a blast and working hard and expect miracles.
Ummmm... that's it for this week I think
vi voglio bene (might not translate, I wish y'all well)
Anziano Berg
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