Luke's Missionary Blog: When Freddy Mercury Comes to You in a Dream

Wonderful family we are teaching

Zone Conference

Wearing companion ties...

Hey family!!

I hope you all had a great week! For me, it was interesting and BUSY.

So - jumping right to the beginning: In preparation for zone conference, we had Malta come up and do an exchange with us. It went pretty well, and I got the chance to serve with Anziano Bowers. While together, we taught a lesson to a lady and it was COMPLETELY STRANGE. She kept trying to tell us about her book that she wrote, and finally we gave in and let her explain it for a bit. While defacing Italian, she explained how Freddy Mercury came to her in a dream. He told her to go to Michael Jackson. She went and met him 2 times, but it wasn't until she met him the third time that they talked. After Michael's death, which has a conspiracy theory about it, she has been instructed to spread Michael Jackson's message to the world. And Freddy Mercury is the heavenly messenger chosen to tell her this. Yeah...fun stuff. :)

Then Anziano Boscán and I put on zone conference with President and Sister Pickerd on Wednesday. Although the doctrine and inspiration of the conference was clear and well-executed, the missionaries attending had trouble paying attention and participating. That is probably due to the fact that they all had heat exhaustion…the church didn't have working AC and the inside of the church was like an oven. I don't blame our poor zone, but they are all doing amazing.

And now, because I am kinda getting lazy and don't want to format the rest of this in a good way, I'll throw some bullet points of interesting things this week:

CM, our Nigerian new convert here, sang and praised God for 10 minutes at the end of elders quorum. I liked it, but I don't think the Italians had any idea of what was going on.
Anziano Boscán and I got a great compliment that I wanna boast about this week. Our less active return missionary friend told us if we merged into one person we would be the best missionary ever.
We walked into our church to find a ton of the leaders in Rome proofreading the translation of the Bible in Italian so they can publish it on Gospel Library. So that should be coming out soon.
There was a guy who was a self-referral in church yesterday. His name is AN and his wife is Paraguayan. The sisters will be working with them, but I sat with him in church and I could tell he was golden and an amazing guy. I can't wait to see him change through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Also a shout-out to one of the 3 Nephites who fed us lunch on Sunday. (Thanks, Martin).

Okay, and now a thought about the work:

OL- Our testimonies of the life-changing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ keeps growing as OL surprises us all the time. With a big desire to be baptized, and preferably in a river, OL is progressing. A noticeable change was the fact he came to church wearing a white shirt and tie after telling us that it wasn't necessary, because Jesus never wore a tie.
CS- This father, hard worker, and soon to be convert is on track to be interviewed for baptism next Sunday. He is faithful to the T. And, of course, preparations for his marriage and baptism are under way.
MZ- Started from the bottom and now he is here. WITH his wife MN. We ate a great dinner with them and President and Sister Pickerd while we discussed the first lesson. Progress to come.
RC- This brand spankin’ new investigator had great potential. He has a friend who he has kept in contact with for 30 years who is Mormon. Because of his friend, he knows that Mormons are all-around great people. Go be an example to someone.
Not SV and SN- sadly, they might fall off the radar for a bit. SV has a temporary job with which he works on Sundays. They are still bravi, but we can't see him for a bit. Baptism is likely to occur in the future.
RB- He is still as smart as ever. Although he did not make an appearance in church, he is reading the Book of Mormon and loving learning about the gospel. Due to the fact that he is a development psychologist, we can't wait to teach him the plan of salvation this week.
We get to do a scambio with the Assistants next week and I am pumped for it.

Anyways, that's how it rolled this week. I can't wait for this next one. The Zone is on fire.

Love y'all,

Anziano Ridd

PS - Please go do some missionary work; don't leave all the joy to the missionaries, because then you miss out on some and they miss out on more. PMG says: "The ideal situation is when members invite others to be taught and are present for the teaching. When members do this, more people are baptized and remain active in the Church."