Rome 5 | week 7 {new companion, Ostia, training}

Queresima and Sorgiacamo

The missionaries in their district! 

Their super fly car! 

Driving by the Coliseum

Regan's new companion Anziano Blair! Regan already loves him 

5.19.2014

This past week has been incredible and a bit crazy at the same time. It started off by seeing a lot of people who Anziano Gemmell wanted to say bye too. We got to eat dinner with the Criscone family and also Flavio and Francesca. Both dinners were delicious and a lot of fun. We all miss Anziano Gemmell. He really is a great missionary, and Im sure he is doing great work in the Sard land. His travel plans to get there made me laugh really hard. He had to take two trains to get to the coast, a 20 hour boat ride, and then another train and lastly a bus. Haha, I hope he made it alright. I had no idea Sardania was so far away.

I had two days from when he left to when my new companion got here, so I got to choose any companionship in the Rome Zone to work with for two days. It was a no brainer. I went to stay in Ostia with Anziano Baggaley and Anziano Zemp. It was in awesome two days. I have to tell one funny story from my time in Ostia. There is a family there who has an 8 year old son who was a little scared to get baptized for some reason. His mom asked the elders to come over and teach him the lessons to help him get ready for his baptism. Anyways, they have been trying to set a date with him withing the next month or so. He turns 9 in July, but he keeps saying that he wants to get baptized in August. If he gets baptized in August, it is a convert baptism on the records of the church. Anziano Baggaley was like, "Come on man, you do really want to be a convert do you?" It was hysterical. I will never forget it. On a more serious note, I learned so much from that lesson. Anziano Baggaley taught so simply and so clearly, and it was one of the most spiritual lessons I have witnessed on my mission. It made me want to teach everyone like I was teaching a child. Another cool part of going to Ostia was going to their correlation meeting. They had an awesome ward missionary and 5 ward missionaries who all came. They were so awesome and really inspired me. It was funny because their ward mission leader works in tourism and hasnt been able to come to church the past 5 weeks or so, so they wrote his name on the progress record, hahaha. Anyways, they are doing awesome missionary work in Ostia and their members are incredible. After correlation we all went out and got gelato together by the beach which was fun. 

Friday morning at 7 I went to pick up my greenie from Roma Termini. His name is Anziano Blair, and he is the coolest kid ever! He has taught me so much. In the MTC he  got to hear from 5 apostles! He is so ready and excited to do missionary work that is has increased my faith a lot. Our first night together, we got to teach Lorenzo a lesson with Fratello Calabrese on the plan of salvation and then Lorenzo made us dinner. It was a really good first lesson for Anziano Blair. He is definitely better at the language than I was as a greenie, so I was really impressed. He also did an awesome job introducing himself and sharing his testimony in church for his first Sunday. Also, the first lady he stopped on the street was Philippino. She spoke English and he got her number, no big deal. We are really excited to work together for at least the next 6 weeks and hopefully more. I am also excited because for the first 12 weeks of the mission their is in extra hour of comp study where we do this program to go over the basics of missionary work. I feel like I need it for myself just as much as Anziano Blair does. It will be really nice for me to be able to review and improve a lot of things. Other than that, we didnt have a lot of time to see people this week cause we were all over the place/getting adjusted. However, we are good to go now, and it should be an awesome summer!

Anziano Smith