Week 69

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing quite fantastic. This week has definitely had its ups and down like usual, but that's normal and all good.

To start off, we finally saw our one investigator last Friday. He's a cool guy. He's from Ghana and seems relatively interested. He doesn't come to church just yet which is really holding him back but we're working on that with him. We've offered many times to ride our bikes with him, but he always finds an excuse, which is sad.

Holy Sunday... Longest Sunday I have ever had. We were at church for 7 hours... We started the day with correlation for the American Ward at 8, then the Italian Ward starts at 9 and the American Ward at 9:30, so we switch between stuff until 12:30, with a 30 minute break until 1:00 when the Italian Ward council started... Which lasted until about 3:00... We were so dead tired after that. I've never been to so much church in one day before that... And I'd rather avoid doing that again hahaha. It's really tiring.

So the past few days, I've been in Trieste. We have been doing a scambio with them and it just ended happening with appointments and stuff in our various areas that we started the scambio Monday afternoon and we met back up this morning. But I love Trieste. It's so cool getting to come back here after having been gone for a year. Next transfer I'll probably do a scambio in Gorizia where I actually served and I'll hopefully get to see everyone I met when I was there.

A cool little miracle happened plus another cool experience. So Tuesday morning while we were finding, we started talking to this guy holding a baby and he ended up having lots of questions about the Church that he wanted answered. Long story short, he's evangelical and is interested in the Church but has a hard time believing in prophets because he hasn't read anywhere in the Bible that there would be prophets after Christ. But the Anziani here in Trieste will show him that it most definitely does next time the see him. But he was really awesome, really Christlike, and he is totally ready to accept the Gospel.

Then this member walked into the church tonight right before English class. Turns out he is crazy amazing at piano and organ and has been playing for 60 years and has tons of friends in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and actually played with them many times... So yeah, that happened.

Well I came across this really cool verse I wanted to talk about in 2 Corinthians, which reads,

"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." 

I really love this idea. We as Christians become an epistle of Christ. Our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our desires, all compose this epistle. We stand as witnesses, as testaments to the world of Jesus Christ. Through the Spirit of God, we write this epistle into our hearts. We change who we are because of Christ, through Christ. Everything is possible because of Him and it is our job to let everyone know that and do so through our own epistle, the effects of the Spirit and teachings and Atonement of Jesus Christ. When they see that, the sincerity and love we have for Christ and for them, they will see something different and something they want. I know without a doubt this is true because it happened to me that way. I saw an unexplainable joy in many people that I wanted too. I saw the epistles of those around me. The source had been right in front of me the whole time, I just missed it for so many years of my life. I am so very grateful for the people I've met in my life and God's Plan of Salvation. He truly knows us individually and perfectly and He is forever doing all He can to get us home.

I love you all and wish you an amazing week!
Do great things today!
Anziano Benjamin Guthrie