January 19

Hey guys!

   Well, first off, thank you for the E-mails.  It is really sooo good to hear from you!  Haha, I love hearing what's happening in your lives!  I'll try my best to fill you in on mine.  Hehe  :)

   This week I received a call from the office saying that I needed to go pick up my Permesso di Soggiorno in Pescara, sooo guess where we went this week?  Haha, that's why I pulled out more money... I'm sorry!  Gosh, I really feel horrible about it.  But it was cool to see some old friends and to see how they are doing.  Everything went well and now we are back safe and sound.  :)  ALSO, we received transfer calls and I am staying here with Anziano Pope!  Woo-hoo!  We are in a threesome right now because Anziano Turner left this morning to go home.  He finished!  Crazy!  He is a cool guy and I really enjoyed serving here with him.  Great missionary. 

    Pietro is doing well and has accepted to read the Book of Mormon and to pray.  I know that he will see a difference in his life and in his perspective on life.  I am really excited to see him this week and to hear how it went.  I talked with him on Saturday and it sounded like he was doing well.

   Francesco is also doing really well!  We re-established a baptism date with him and this time he seems like he is really trying to reach it.  We committed him to follow the law of chastity and he agreed.  He also came to church yesterday!  I am so excited to see the work start picking up!  It is happening.

   Other than that, we did some finding and we were able to find a couple people that were really cool and hopefully will want to meet with us!  We had a cool experience as we were doing so Wednesday night. We were about to go to Pozzuoli when the thought came to me to go to another area that we don't go to very often called Pianura.  The bus was literally pulling up to the stop for Pozzuoli so I said a quick prayer and told Anziano Pope what I was thinking.  He agreed and we didn't get on. Instead we grabbed the bus for Pianura and when we got there we just started talking with people.  We met some cool people and some not so nice people.  Towards the end of our night we stopped this man named Alfonso.  He was really nice and really open. We talked with him for over half an hour. He said he just came from the church where he had been praying for help.  He said that he is fighting a battle that he can't win.  He said he was losing his faith.  For the last year, slowly he had felt as a void started growing in his life.  He said that something was missing but he couldn't figure out what it was.  And then he said something really cool.  He said, "As I was praying, a voice came to me in my head that said, 'walk out of the church. There is someone here to help you.' so I walked out and now here I am."  I bore testimony of the truth that God loves each of us and that he had sent us to him.  We were his answer, or rather the message that we bring was the answer.  We Challenged him to pray at his house that night for a confirmation and for peace.  He said he would do so and we got his number so we could call him the next day.  He wouldn't take a book of Mormon or even a pamphlet because his wife apparently gets pretty crazy if he brings stuff home from other churches.... The sad part to the story, however, is that when I called him he said that he wanted us to keep praying for him because we need to save him.  He also said we could meet later when he wasn't so busy with work. Like in a couple weeks.  It breaks my heart when they say that!  It doesn't work like that!  I CAN'T save you.  Not even if I want to, ...I can't.  I can help them, but ultimately they have to work that out with themselves and Christ.  But it was still a big help for me to see that repercussion from following the spirit. 

   I know this work is real.  And I know that Christ is my Savior and that this is His church.

  I love you all and I hope that this week has been good for you.  Take care and I will talk to you soon!  :)

   Love, Anziano Skyler Rigby