Rome 5 | week 9

6.2.2014

This past week was full of interesting experiences. That is partly because the week started of with a 3 day exchange in Terni because the Zone Leaders needed to borrow our car. For the first night of the exchange I wanted to stay here in Passo to work with Anziano Morgan. However, he convinced me to go to Terni in the evening to spend the night. It ended up being one of the best decisions anyone has ever made. We show up to the end of their english course and one of their students invited the 4 of us out to dinner with her at her friends restraunt. At first we thought it was just going to be like a random pizzeria or something. It ended up being the nicest place I have ever eaten in my entire life and easily one of the most memorable nights of my mission. No joke, the dinner was 10 courses. We were a little late getting home, but it was totally a one time thing that will never happen again. It was Anziano Blairs first time eating out at an Italian Restaraunt, and this place set the bar pretty high. I dont think either of us will eat better than that the rest of our missions...maybe lives. 

2 days later I had a cool experience with Anziano Morgan again. His grandmas cousin lives in a city really close to Terni, and we went over to her house to have lunch and just talk about the family. She told us straight up when we got there that she wasnt interested in our church, and on the way out she made sure none of her neighbors were out cause she didnt want them to know the Mormon missionaries were at her house, haha. President has been emphasized that we use family history to find people to teach and that lunch appointment really helped me understand why. This lady and her husband were great and they loved their family a lot, but they didnt want anything to do with our message. 

Given that, we decided to shake things up a little bit this weekend. We met a lady on the street last week from Ethiopia, and she invited us to some sort of intergation festival where they would celebrate all the different nationalities of Passo and Sunday at the Catholic Church in the middle of town. We showed up right before it was about to start and some people were looking at us really wierd. Anziano Blair and I were kind of hesitating on the choice to go, and then I was just like Why not? It ended up being so awesome. There were kids from about 8 countries who dances and sang songs that represented their country. It was kind of cool just being with the community in a normal atmosphere. We saw quite few people there who we have talked to on the street. Anyways, we met up with this woman from Ethiopia right afterwards and she said we had to come to the Mass and afterwards we would all eat dinner with food from every country. It was really awesome to have someone of another faith be so welcoming to us and invite us to their stuff. At the same time it was a bit awkward standing in the back of Mass with our white shirts, ties, and missionary tags, and everyone in there knew who we were. It was a really neat experience nonetheless. Afterwards, the priest came up and talked to us for a minute thanking us for coming, and then on our way out we got to talk to two more guys who were studying to become priests. We told them about the church we would get in Passo in about 5 months, and they told us they would come visit when it opened. Cool stuff. I wish our church was tighter with the community here like it is an America. We are totally trying to make that happen from now on.

So Anziano Blair and I have been talking the past 2 weeks about how we want to go on a hike one pday, but we knew nothing about trails nearby. We were about to take a bus and tell it to stop and a random mountain and just hike it. On Friday we ran into a nature reserve park out of nowhere with like 7 different hiking trails. We went today and it was the sweetest hike of my life. We decided we will do that for pday at least every other week for the rest of our time together cause we saw some sweet stuff. This country is seriously beautiful and the people rock if I can just show them that they are important to me and I compliment their food. The trick is just figuring out how to do these two things.

I cant believe it is already summer again. Watermelon and cherry season just started, and I am going hard because this is officially my last season of everything. Im doing my best to make the most of everyday cause I know that the mission is short and this time is really special. I decided that everytime a door opens, Im just going to take it and hope things work out, just like yesterday with that festival thing. It helped me realize that the Lord opens doors, I just have to realize it and have courage to walk into them. 

Anziano Smith