Week 23 - Battipaglia, 5/18/2015

Well... This week was pretty great! We went on a scambio and Sorella Argyle left me here in Battipaglia by myself! AHH. Well i mean i got my other companion but I had to run Battipaglia because she didn't know this area! i was scared but we managed to make it through unscathed. :) Then okay we have this male investigator. He is AWESOME. He's in his 70s and comes to English Course every week because he lived in London for 20 years and so he likes talking to us because it helps him maintain his english. so we picked him up about 2 months ago. He had been taught by the Sorelle about a year ago but through a series of unfortunate circumstances stopped being interested in the Church. So we became good friends with him and then im not really sure like when we started legitamately teaching him but we did. It has been amazing to see him grow. (He is one of the few Italians that actually listens and thinks about what we have to say... most of them do not.) We found out that a year ago he didn't even believe in God he was literally atheist and now he says the most beautiful prayers and prays every day. He's also reading the Book of Mormon and has such a sincere desire to find the truth.However it is coming piece by piece. I tried to teach an atheist English course student that there is a God and that the Book of Mormon is true. This was haha pretty interesting. I am good friends with this student and so I felt like i should ask him there other night if he felt like the Book of Mormon could be scripture after we talked about the Book of Mormon in English Course. So we start talking and I start testifying and trying to teach more about the Restoration and then he's like I don't believe in God and I was like oh... okay. Well why? and he was like there's no need. So I testified to him that there is a God and that that knowledge changes our lives for ever and has blessed me in so many ways and he essentially told me that praying and receiving answers is all a psychological effect and that I only think there is a God because others have told me it and because I want to believe it and so I feel that it is true. I didn't really have a way to respond to that so in the End I just told him that I knew that God was real and that he could know it to and that i'm not here to convince him that there is a God but because I am his friend and God is important to me so I want to share my knowledge with him. Haha it was a very interesting conversation and if anything it made me so grateful for my knowledge of the Savior and of our Heavenly Father. I could not imagine living without believing that there was something bigger out there. One last really cool story. So our friends who are a couple call themselves our Italian parents and so because the woman doesn't have any kids I thought it would be cool to do something for her for Mothers Day. So Sorella argyle came up with idea to Heart Attack her so we wrote out a big note and 20 characteristics of her and then walked out to their house and heart attacked their door. We were super nervous because we were pretty sure they were home while we did it and we didn't want them to come out or to hear us. So we sneakily did it and then ran haha. About 2 hours later during one of our lessons we got this text from her that said she had walked outside to go to work and had stopped and saw the door and started to cry. She LOVED it. She was just dying over it. And they had been home the whole time but we were so sneaky they didn't even hear us! :) So we went to the yogurt shop later cuz she was working and she saw us and just lovingly shook her head and then hugged us super big and just kept talking about how amazing and how happy it made her and how she will never ever forget us. It was seriously one of the best feelings I have had on the mission. I think that she really needed that and that it will be something she remembers for the rest of forever. Its really cool to see that you can share God's love for people not necessarily by preaching but by just loving them on a person to person level. I think Heavenly Father knew that would be really neat for her and so he helped us figure out what to do for her.