Transfer calls...
Sciacca for another golden transfer with Anziano Brown. I
am super excited.
This week was a real test of faith though. Because we
dropped all of our old investigators last week we have been doing street
finding all week long. Needless to say, Sciacca is maybe one of the harder
cities to do that because you pass the same people 5 times a day and half of
them are ex-investigators. But it’s what we have to do. It’s rough. And this
week a huge African Storm came in for 3 days which made us do Casa in Casa.
Surprisingly, the storm makes people less likely to let you in. HOWEVER! We found
this sweet 30-year old who was reading the Bible right before we knocked on his
door. Too good to be true? Maybe. I don’t really know yet. We still need to
pass by him again. But that is the miracle of the week.
Hmmm. There are not many stories from this week other
than a lot of hilarious finding stories. But maybe those are for after the
mission.
We had the branch president over for a lesson with our
investigator, Marianna. She has been trying to understand tithing for the past
3 months I have been here, so we had to have Branch President over so they
could fight it out. IT WAS SWEET! I have never heard so much Siciliano and seen
so many Italian hand gestures! The glass on the windows almost busted out from
yelling and me and Anziano Brown just sat back and started taking notes! IT WAS
AWESOME. Needless to say. No progress was made with the tithing issue and the
real problem, we all concluded, was a lack of faith and trust in the lord that
he will provide for her needs. :(
I also have been reading the New Testament as of late and
came across a gem that is often overlooked. The story essentially goes that
Jesus and people had to pay a tax for the temple. Peter argued that the Temple
was the House of the Lord and Jesus did not need to pay taxes like this. Jesus
took the opportunity to teach that it is best to avoid all forms of conflict
and told Peter to go to the sea, catch a fish, and the money for the tax would
be inside the fish.
I really like that story and it made me, especially
during this rough week of finding, realize the importance of avoiding conflict.
Italians, at times, especially on the subject of religion, just want to fight.
But, we learn to love them anyways.
Ciao Ciao Ciao.
