Tender Mercies

Dear Family and Friends,

Right now I am writing this on the Lungo Mare, a sidewalk running along side the Pozzuoli coast. It's the perfect day. Cool and cloudy, feeling the great sea breeze while we play frisbee. As I think on this past week, I really can testify that the Lord knows each and everyone one of us, and loves us.

First off, it rained this week!!  Normally this would have been awesome since it is still very hot during the day (luckily we have 3 fans now at home).  But it began to rain, basically pour in some places, right as we were trying to catch the bus to see James. It was insane.  We were soaked even with my umbrella when we arrived only to find that the bus had already left. Then the rain stopped after 10 minutes and only made it more humid! But the great part of that day was that we met Ritta Botte and her family. She is a newer convert from 3 years ago and is very strong in her testimony. She wants her son Alleasandro to get baptized and serve mission so we are going to help him the best we can. It was also cool to see that her kids went to FSY (EFY in Italy).

Second, we moved the church!  Finally, the church is finished being renovated so we helped move some stuff in the Napoli church building to the one in Pozzuoli. This was definitely cool because we finally got to see our church building after hearing how beautiful the view is. It really is absolutely gorgeous. It makes Sunday even more special!  You take the sacrament and can look out the windows and see the ocean and the islands in the distance. And we also finally got to see who really is in our ward and make appointments for the week.

Our District is super awesome and dedicated to the work. To get all the members involved in the work, we are hosting an church open house/barbecue. I might even get to play a violin duet with one of the members which would be awesome. We want everyone to bring a dish and invite a friend.

And this week we got a senior couple in our area. The Hydes are amazing and just served a mission in Milan. We now have 9 missionaries serving in one area. This is crazy! To really welcome them to missionary service here in Pozzuoli, we did a Gesso on the Lungo Mare, talking to people about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I decided to play my violin near the end to help bring the Spirit to the event which I hope it did.

But the coolest things were the spiritual experiences.

This week the sister missionaries passed us an investigator, Raffaele, who is an MMA fighter and has won the Eurocup in that field so that's very cool. In our second lesson we gave a church tour which he liked a lot and we hope we can meet with him and see if he really wants to progress. But because we had this unexpected church tour we missed the bus to go to James again and had no phone to see if he would still be there if we were late. So after debating about what to do, we decided to pray at the bus stop. And we both felt we needed to go tonight to see James. And so we did and he was there!  We finally got to really teach the Restoration of the Gospel and in the middle of the lesson, a friend of his named Queen decided to sit and in her words, "hear the word of God."  We taught about the First Vision and explained how we can receive our own answers through prayer and reading the Book of Mormon. It was great! We even challenged her to baptism too and she said yes! The hard part is that it is difficult for them to be able to come to church. But this is what I am praying for the most this week! Our mission president has challenged the mission to get one baptism per companionship per transfer and I am exercising faith in this.

After one really hard day, searching for less actives and only finding 1 of the 4 we planned to find (who we are meeting this week), lots of walking, and listening to Jehovah Witness tell us why our church was wrong, I was frustrated.  As we were a block away from home, there was someone walking next to us who I thought I should talk to. So I invited him to come to English Course. He said no thanks and moved on. And instead of feeling worse, I felt better. Because in that small moment I felt my Heavenly Father communicate to me through the Holy Ghost that this is what I am called to do. To just do my best and invite. Even when the days are bad and it seems nothing is well, to remember to just do your best!

This week I felt the tender mercies of the Lord. I heard recently that even our trials can be tender mercies from the Lord because tender mercies are blessings specifically designed to help us in our circumstances. I love my time here in Italy and while right now two years seems forever away, I can already tell the time will fly by and all the blessings and trials I feel will mix into one joyous memory.

It's very cliché but I can't help but repeat this: That missionary work is hard, but it is also probably one of the best things we can do as children of God. And it is also super fun!  I'll probably never ever experience the things I do now again in my life. I love sharing the gospel because it makes me happy! And I want others to be happy too! I know God watches over all of us and wants to bless us. I love you and hope the best for you. Feel free to keep me updated!

Vi voglio bene!

Anziano Price