June 13, 2012. "I Miri election Orono la Mia voce..."

That little snippet comes from Doctrine and Covenants 29:7: Mine elect hear my voice, and they harden not their hearts." Let's talk about Francesco. AKA the most elect young man you ever did meet. Remember when I talked about him about 2 weeks ago? The boy in the park with the long hair who LOVED the Book of Mormon? Oh, he's just going to get baptized in a month. Crazy! So we were finally able to meet with him on Saturday. He rode his bike to the church all the way from Cordenons! We asked him how his reading was going in the Book of Mormon. He's read to 1 Nephi 16. His words:"I always wondered why there wasn't a record of people in the other parts of the world, and just the Bible, so it's all very fascinating." Um, have you ever wondered that?! I sure hadn't. We talked about the Restoration. And he just gets everything. Everything clicks in his mind and he just repeats "Yeah that makes sense." So we gave him the soft baptismal invite. He said "Yeah of course! If this is the right thing of course!" So we felt prompted to present him with a date. He accepted July 7th. Next question he asks: "So how will that work? Will there be a lot of people? Or what is it like?" So we explained a bit to him, showed him the baptismal font, gave him a tour of the rest of the church, and he was just asking questions and really trying to learn about everything. And he just accepts everything so easily! It's so amazing! That scripture says that the elect hear the Lord's voice, and harden not their hearts. His heart is so open and he is ready for and accepting the gospel! Sunday we had our stake conference, broadcast from Salt Lake City. He was so excited to come to hear an apostle speak! The ward was so friendly and accepting of him and I think he really enjoyed it. We have another appointment with him tonight. Did I tell you he's 17?! And he's a PRACTICING Catholic, seriously. Like, he reads the Gospels in Catholic Mass every Sunday. We asked him if that would be something he'd want to still do after baptism and he just said "I know that it's a decision I'll have to make." He gets it! It's so refreshing and amazing. He's a miracle. We love Francesco. We're hoping to meet his family this week too.  Another miracle: last p-day we had a scheduled appointment in the morning because this woman was working every other day, so we rode our bikes out to Cordenons and were a bit early so just sat down and were hangin out. This lady walks by so we start talking to her. She says she's not interested, but that she's got this friend that would be... That's fine. So she spit out a bunch of information. All we had was: Via Nogaredo, elementary school, Via Stradelle, Big blue antenna, third on the left, le tende, de Piero.... Okay. So Friday we had a cancellation and decided to try to find this referral. We got off the bus on Via Nogaredo. No elementary school to be found. So we walked to Via Stradelle and look down, about a .5 mile away there is this really tall blue antenna looking thing. So we start walking towards it. We see a sign that points to an elementary school. We walk to the school. we can't figure out what the third on the left would be. ha. So there's this old lady out in her yard. We ask her if she knows anything about le tende de piero, and she says "Oh yeah! there's these people that make tents around this corner! Go go go before they close!" Ha. So we run around the corner. There is a citofono that says "De Piero." We found it! We ring the citofono, she comes out, says she's Jehovah's Witness and not interested, we try to keep her talking by asking questions so we could figure out why we were referred to her. Come to learn, she actually isn't JW, just studying with them. She doesn't agree with the Catholic church and knows it is missing many things. We asked her what she would do after finishing studying with the JWs, and she says she's not convinced. We bore testimony and tried to leave her a Book of Mormon, she wouldn't take it for now but she gave us her information to contact her in a little while. But that was a miracle. She didn't even know this woman that had referred us to her. Angel? Maybe? I think we left a strong impression on her, so we'll be hoping to go back. And oh my goodness! We met a man yesterday from Afghanistan doing casa! He is amazing! 24 years old. At the age of 12 his family, 6 brothers 1 sister and 2 parents, were killed by the Taliban. So he escaped and after 8 years or so ended up in Italy. We didn't have time to teach him because he just told us a bit of his story, which is absolutely CRAZY! It sounded like a story from a movie. I thought a lot of Slumdog Millionaire as he was telling us. ha. I hope maybe I'll have time to tell you about that later. But he is amazing. We talked a bit at the end about how we teach about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he said he was Muslim when he was younger but not any more and he knows Jesus Christ suffered for him. We had to run to catch a bus after that, but Sorella Walton and I just felt so amazed. We really have a good feeling that he is prepared and ready to accept the Gospel. We'll be going back to visit him hopefully tomorrow. He's so awesome. It's been rainy and stormy on and off here. The rain storms are crazy here! The lightening and thunder are so bright and loud! There was a night a while ago that there was continuous lightening flashing outside for about 2 hours with a constant rumble of thunder. Sorella Lloyd and I had both woken up. I was just about to fall asleep when there was a the LOUDEST thunder ever. I sat up and yelled "mommy!" haha. Sorella Lloyd laughed at me. Whatevs. I'm tough... Last night we went to an American's family for dinner in Polcenigo (which, btw dad, you would LOVE!) It's up in the mountains and so gorgeous. Anyway, their neighbors were curious about the Book of Mormon. They had been babysitting for this family and Adrian had seen it and started reading it. He told the family he wanted to learn more. So we went last night and had a nice American dinner, the first cheeseburger I've had in 6 months... and talked about the Book of Mormon. It went really well. We're hoping we'll get to teach them again because they have lots of questions.  Anyway, it's been a great week! Lots of miracles. Sorella Walton and I are calling this "The Transfer of Miracles!" and we have a calendar on our wall that we made and we write a miracle every day. It's filling up! We are being so blessed and seeing so many amazing things. We're really excited about how things are going here. We have found a lot of great people with a lot of great potential. The Lord is blessing us! Love you family! Hope you are all well in your travels and everything else you're doing! Enjoy every minute of it! Vi voglio bene!
 Sorella Forbes