[Insert generic Italian greeting and blip about how time fast goes... err... how fast time goes].
Day 24601,
Italy is still beautiful, missionary work continues, the sky never ceases to mercilessly open the acquaducts of heaven upon Earth's helpless inhabitants, I continue down a steep slope of exhaustion punctuated by brief eight-hour periods of respite, and I still love my mission! That's the missionary spirit. Things that would've bothered me a lot before my mission just don't seem to have as much effect as they do now. Patience really is a virtue.
Now that things have settled down after transfer week (always a strange week, even if neither of us are getting transferred) it's back to the old grind, a.k.a. the street and peoples front doors! Actually we don't usually make it to the front door. Most houses in Italy are apartments. Even though they're all packed together, each one is gated and locked. So, to get into the apartment you have to ring the intercom outside. A missionary door approach is way less effective over the intercom, so usually we hope that someone is nice enough to let us in to actually knock on the front doors. It's like Seinfeld. Remember how Jerry always had to press the button next to his front door whenever people wanted to come in? George and Elaine always rang, but Kramer somehow always just made it in by himself. Just think of missionaries as Kramer. Although, if we used his door approach we'd probably get deported.
I've still seen some miracles ringing intercoms though! The week before I got here, they were ringing intercoms and someone let them in. He opened the front door and they were just soaked, so he had enough pity to invite them in for a minute. He invited them to come back to his house to explain a bit more to his family. Those are like the magic words in missionary work: "Come back and teach my family." Well, transfers happened and I came here. We went over to his house on the day we planned and they were a beautiful Italian family. They fed us a great dinner, with foods straight from Lombardia (which is the region we're in) and they let us teach them too. In the end they were practicing Catholics and were happy to stay that way, but the mere act of them listening made all the difference. They were happy with their beliefs and their way of life, but they opened their door anyway and gave us so much love. That's true Christianity.
Our investigators are doing pretty well. Our friend Johnathan (it's hard to remember these names I make up) is progressing very nicely. He came to church again and he's loving it. He is an interesting character. He's in his early twenties, but he's some sort of preacher. People call him from all over the world so that he can preach to them and give them advice over the phone. It's kind of neat. Most of the time he does it in Twi, so I haven't really understood anything he preaches over the phone, but it looks pretty interesting! Every person we teach has such an interesting story and I love being a part of all of them.
Well that's it for now. Keep on keeping on everyone. Love, Anziano Simcox.
No comments:
Post a Comment