Verona! May 2011

VERONA!

Verona is SO cool! This is probably the prettiest city I have been in, it is so awesome! We have had an awesome week as well,so I'm doing great! First off, my companion is Anziano Anderson from Lubbock, Texas. He's a stud! He's only in the group ahead of me, so we knew each other for a little bit in the MTC but he's awesome! I love him! Zone Leader life is crazy, there is so much stuff we have to do! This week we have a scambio (exchange) just about every single day. Monday we were in Mantova, yesterday we were in Modena and Piacenza, tonight we are doing a blitz with Padova, tomorrow we have a leadership training conference thing, Friday we are exchanging with the assistants: its just crazy ha! I barely even get to be with my comp the whole first week- ha it's nuts. It's super fun tho we have some awesome missionaries that I have never even met before ha so i'ts way cool getting to know them all!

We have had a lot going on the past week. There was stake conference and a member from the area 70 came to speak, President and sorella Wolfgramm also spoke, it was great! and I got to see some members from Bergamo, too, which was way weird! I can't believe it's been over a year since I was there! Crazy! Then we taught a ton of lessons and have been having a lot of success, too. We had the coolest thing happen to us the other day too which is probably one of the coolest and most fun experiences of my mission- ha its an awesome miracle...

So Friday night we have an appointment with this guy named Jeffery, and then we're supposed to have an activity thing in the church at 7 o'clock. We're in the lesson and as we're closing we realize that it's currently 7:02. We are about 20 to 25 minutes away from the church on bike, and needed to be there 2 minutes ago. So as we finish with the lesson, we start booking it over to the church, on the bikes, we were soaring through the historic streets, avoiding traffic and obstacles from all around, and make it to the church in about 10 minutes or so. The activity turned out to be kind of a waste of time for us, and it was a little discouraging.

So here we are, in the other part of our city, about 20 minutes outside of our working area, and it's about 8 o'clock. We really wanted to do some more finding work and get some new people but we were still pretty far from the areas we had planned, but we started our journey back nonetheless. We were looking forward with hope that we would find someone. So as we're riding our bikes down by the river just pass this famous bridge, this kind of crazy guy starts yelling "Anziani Anziani!" so we stop and at first I thought he was just not a normal person. But as we're talking he starts explaining how he used to meet with the missionaries about 10 years ago, and was about to be baptized, that they had the font filled up and everything but then at the last second he couldn't do it and backed out. He said he loved the book of Mormon and that Joseph Smith was on his heart, but he said that from that point that he made that choice, his life just got horrible, He was showing us how he got involved with Satan years ago and had all these cuts on his wrists and chest and everything and how he feels like Christ had just abandoned him and he felt like he was just completely alone and lost.He told us that because of everything that had happened in his life he feels like God doesn't love him and that he has no purpose and will never receive forgiveness, and that at that very instant, was walking to the bridge mentioned early, to jump off and end it all.

As we talked with him, we sat him down and helped him out. He was 100% set on doing it at first, because he wanted to just commit suicide and end it all. We talked and shared some scriptures and he turns out to just be this absolutely amazing and hilarious guy named Lorenzo. He's a prince of somewhere (he is Italian although) and he is an heir the the Romanov family. We talked with him on a bench for about an hour or so and it was just amazing to see how much his attitude and everything changed, we read some scriptures that struck so powerfully in his heart that it made him cry. He said he knew the church was true and wants to take all the lessons again, get his life back in line, and to be baptized! It was absolutely incredible, if we had left even a minute later he would have been dead, but we were placed right in his path and actually saved a life. And he wants to get baptized as well! How cool is that! Plus he is the funniest man I have ever met in my life! It was so awesome!

Well that's definitely the highlight of the week! I have to get going now tho but I will write more for next week! I'm sure there will be much more to write! ha. I hope you all have a great week! I love you all! ciao ciao!

Anziano Bolnick