The Plague

This week could very well be named "The Plague!" due to the fact that almost everyone (including me) got super sick this week. It was so bad that we had to cancel district meeting! Sister S has been out for the count since last Thursday and the Elders have been gone since the Friday before last! Hopefully we can pull out of this is the next few coming days to get right back on track.As far as good things go. We got two platinum contacts on Thursday who accepted the invite for baptism and everything! So we are really looking forward to working with them and helping them join the Church. They would actually be a huge booster to us all here. Other investigators just keep on going fine and we see them every so often. This past week just wasn't very good.
Went up to Milano yesterday for a district leader training. We got to take a FrecciaRossa (fastest trains in Italy) to get up there. Instead of the usual 6 hour train ride it was 1.5 hours.Got some really awesome things to share with the district, learned a lot, and am really looking forward to this next transfer now. Only thing is.... I didn't get any letters from anyone! I thought you sent some out a while ago. All I got was one letter back that I sent about 2 months ago! Oh well, we have leadership training in two weeks if you want to send anything.
Glad  to hear that the funeral went all right. I also am super thankful for the Plan of Salvation. It really just makes a lot of sense.
Have fun in all your various things to do. I'll look forward to reading it all next week.
Thanks for the pics as well!
Love,
Anziano Rockwood
PS, I'm resending that letter out mom and it is for Jason. So I'm sending it to our house and then it will for sure make it there.

District Leader

Well, Transfer calls are in. We actually got ours on Monday because President is changing things around. The district is more or less staying the same. Mina and Smith will be in Siena. Winward stays as district leader in Pistoia with a new guy, Reusch. And Cleveland is staying here with me in Prato. However the reason we got our call on Monday is because I am being bumped on up to district leader as well. The district bounderies are changing and I will have to be the DL of the zone leaders and the Firenze sisters. Not sure if I am quite ready for that. The ZLs and the sisters stay the same from last transfer though so we will see how that goes (3 transfers all of them have been together). The other Firenze copia will be taking our place in the Pistoia/Siena district.
So yeah. Those are the transfers. Any tips on what I can do to strengthen these people in the district? We have to go to Milan next week for a training so that will help. Overall though I'm a bit nervous.
Other than that. There really hasn't been a lot that happened this week. We have just been seening the same people, found two newer investigators, and have been visiting a lot with members. Cleveland and I have actually pretty much been called as the Ward Mission Leader here because there is no one to take the spot. We'll see what happens.
Have fun in California. I'll send you a talk I found in another email about why I'm not too worried about what happens at death or in the Spirit World anymore. Grandma Johnson is in a way better place than ever now.
We do some district activies on P-Day but not a whole lot. Zone activities are rare since some cities are two or three hours away. Congrats to Tori for graduating. Next step is college!
The earthquakes haven't been too bad (or at least we haven't felt them). I think about 7 or 8 people have died. We don't really get that much news here.

Well, here we go to another week. Talk to you all next week!
Anziano Rockwood

The baptism that didn't really work out

Well sounds like it hasn't been a very good week all around for anyone.
Sad to hear that Grandma Johnson died. but she should be doing fine right now. I found a really cool talk about the Spirit World and it honestly sounds like a beautiful place. No worries there then.
Sad to hear you were sick all week mom. I've always been pretty sick lately. Had to stay in the past few days due to huge upset stomachs and lots of bathroom.
As for the baptism...... yeah. Didn't really work out. Long story short, some members called us an hour before the baptism to say that A had smoked (and we knew they were telling the truth because there were 3 witnesses and she smoked inside one of their homes). So we called the members cancelling the baptism. We were going to see A in 20 minutes anyway, so we thought to talk to her face to face. She came with some of her friends. Us and the Branch President took her aside really quick and asked if she smoked. She said no at first and that God wanted her to get baptized. But then we said some members said she smoked inside their home. She fought back a little, admitted to smoking about 5 cigerettes a day, drinking wine everyday, and doing 2 canes (we still don't want to know what those are). So we talked to her about how she needed to be following all the commandments and how it was inappropriate of her to lie to us. She kept claiming revelation that God was telling her to get baptized anyway. We explained worthiness and what God has told us through His authorized servants about baptism. She got mad at that and started to say that prophets were dumb and not needed anymore, that they were good back then when people didn't listen to God but that they are unnecessary now. We told her sorry but she couldn't be baptized. She then told us she would get baptized herself whether or not we were there. We didn't know what to do. So Cleveland, I, and President Ioanna just left the room, explained things to her friends (who were against the baptism anyway since they say her doing these things), and eventually A came around to it. However, the next day she didn't come to Church, called and said she was mad with us and didn't want to see us anymore. Then yesterday she called and said we were right and how she wanted to try again.
Needless to say, I am exhausted and never thought I would have such scary experiences like this on the mission. But I've grown a lot from it and hope that I can take the things I have learned and apply them in my life from now on.
Other than that, I am studying the scriptures a lot more. Loving that. The more and more I think about it, the more and more theology sounds pretty sweet (especially ancient scripture). But again, I'll just wait till I get home to see what I want to do.
Hope everything else is going well. Just send me Tori's essay over email and I'll print it out. I have another package to send out to you all with some things that I can't take with me during transfers. I have money to send that with so don't worry about it. Transfers are next week so we will see if I spend another 6 weeks here or move on to greater things. In many ways I want to try a big city with a big ward since I have only gotten to do small cities (on the bright side of that though, I have seen exactly how the leadership side of the church works. I hope that doesn't mean I get too big of a calling when I go home).
Well, onward to another week. Should be good. Are you all ready for summer?

Anziano Rockwood

"We came all the way from America because we know this message would benefit you."

Hey everybody!

So yeah. Zone Conference was yesterday. It was actually really good. We learned how to overcome problems with baptismal invites for a specific date. We are also learning how to budget our time more efficiently. I guess the hardest thing me and Cleveland have doing is finding work. We are going to try new things out to hopefully see new results. Things like saying to people "We came all the way from America because we know this message would benefit you." "Why do you think we are here doing this work voluntarily?" Things like that to try and get the Italian people moving.

Didn't get the letters yesterday. Not sure when I will get them now since we might not even have Conference or Training next transfer. Might be a while before I get them in that sense. Oh well. Still get emails and stuff.

As far as our investigators are doing. Well...... maybe I'll start by explaining what happened yesterday.

After Conference, President Wolfgramm came to Prato to interview A to see if she was finally ready for baptism. He passed her since she has kept all the invites for this past week. So then we went to consiglio (branch council) to tell them about it. Our Branch President was super concerned still because there have been a lot of members baptized who before had a huge dependency on things then afterward got back into their problems again. He is worried that she will just end up like that and it will all be for not. He is also just super upset with the branch because they do nothing in terms of missionary work or callings (sounds like the same problem you are having in our ward). He made a good point on how we as missionaries should not have to do finding work. When we do finding work, we only find those with problems because they are the only ones walking around on the street, at home during the day, etc. Then we baptize one of these problem people, and their social status is with those of other problem people. So these new converts only bring in more problem people and so on and so forth until the branch has more problems than it can handle. (Yes, this is a bit brutal but it is true) He wants the members to do missionary work because they are able to reach families and those that us as missionaries can't reach. Unfortunately he can't explain it the way he did to us last night (I have given the nice, short, clean version) because some of the members might take it wrong. I imagine it to be very hard as Branch President. All in all, BP wants more members to do work and accept callings, and to just understand why President Wolfgramm passed A. We still need to hear from him on what President Wolfgramm says to know if we go forward with the baptism or not. Really big problems I guess you could say. If there was a baptism, I'll tell you on Sunday.

Other than that, we have a few new investigators that are doing ok but no one really progressing as much as we would like.

D is making good progress I suppose. She accepted the Word of Wisdom and likes everything we say but won't set a date for baptism with us. We're going to try out the new techniques we learned on Wednesday to fissare qualcosa.

G just had another surgery so she is out of the count for a while unfortunately. She just has all these bad things happen to her but she pushes onward anyways. Great example of faith.

S and X have actually disappeared. Wondering where they are now.

Our member missionary work has made some progress though. A lot of members are taking the challenge to give out a Book of Mormon to a friend. Our second counselor in the branch presidency and his wife are preparing for a mission. So we are trying to do a lot of work with them. They have given us tons of legit referrals.

Other than that, we are sitting in Florence again today. Going on another adventure to find some church we always see from Piazza Michelangelo but never have gone to.

For the callings, I'll see if we can go earlier or not. Because Cleveland's dad has to talk in church. That really messes with the time. We'll just have to see when we get on. I tried emailing Jason but got no reply from him, so if you could call and invite him over too.

Onward to another week and in a way another year here in Italy.

Talk to you all on Sunday!

Anziano Rockwood