This week was actually way long looking back. Elder Dunoskovic, in the other companionship in our apartment, finished his mission. He was replaced by Elder Hidalgo, who is from Costa Rica and speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English. It's been an interesting transition.
I am still with Elder Shenkal if you were wondering.
I'm just going to start on Friday because nothing really went on Wednesday and Thursday. We helped chauffeur people around on Wednesday for exchanges and then Thursday I was sick, yes again..., so we had to stay in. Friday though, we left the apartment and went and taught our investigator Janine. The lesson went well, we taught her a portion of the Plan of Happiness and left her with some commitments that we will follow up on. After that we went to return a big pot to our friends Buki and Rejoice, but we accidently took the wrong bus and ended up riding that to its terminus and back - that was a fun two hour detour! Once we got back to all of the bus stops we got on the right bus and delivered the pot! Mission Success!
I started reading Jesus the Christ again on Saturday and got sucked in by it. Read it for a long time - really enjoying it. Any way, the highlight of the day, well the whole day, was spent at a members house. We had a lunch appointment with the Family Tornar. Brother Tornar was nice enough to come pick us up from our apartment. We chatted with him on our way to their house. He speaks so many languages. He is originally from Italy and moved her 27 years ago or something with his wife. From the languages I understood, he said that he speaks Italian, French, English, German, and Latin - pretty crazy! He told us some crazy stories about his life. He's an older guy and was born around the time of World War II. His dad was an officer for Mussolini, so he grew up with a lot of fascist influences in his life. The way brother Tornar learned German was from the book that the Nazis gave to the Italian officers to learn the language. He was young, so he didn't know the origins of the book, but when he found out later he tore up the entire book. He bought another copy, he thinks one of the last, because he realized it is an important historical document that should be kept. He showed it to us, it was from 1941.He told us stories about the Italian Mafia and the French Mafia, just super cool stuff. He has never watched The Godfather films because he says he doesn't need to, he's lived it. He's seen the Berlin Wall during the cold war too, just crazy crazy stuff. His wife made us this delicious meal. I don't remember what anything was called but I can describe it. We had steak patties with cheese melted on them and an egg cracked on top - boy was that good. Then some sort of cauliflower, cheese, potato mixture that tasted way good too. It was a super fun time.
After we finished eating and chatting, sister Tornar told us that she had some friends she wanted to introduce us to. So we walked to the friend's house and had a chat about who we are and what we are doing here. They weren't very interested, and they were being thrown a lot of information, which wasn't really helping anything, so I started to really try and listen to the spirit to figure out what they needed. An idea popped into my head, that I decided to share. It was super difficult to say it in French, but they were fluent in English - tender mercy. So I shared what I had been inspired to say and the entire atmosphere of the room changed. The Husband opened up about his real concerns and we were able to talk about that for a while. By the end they still weren't very interested, but that's ok. You can't force religion on people, and each of us has our agency to choose, so we should respect that! I think I relearned the importance of following promptings from the spirit that day.
After that we had to get to another area to give a baptismal interview and Brother Tornar was kind enough to offer us a ride. There was horrible traffic and it took two hours, but it was way nice of him to give us the ride. and that's the week for you.
Fun story: while waiting for the bus, a little boy, probably 3 or 4 years old, was waiting with his mom and he kept walking over to us and playing with all the leaves at our feet. So we started kicking the leaves back and forth, and then crumpling them up, and then pretending they were swords. The mom was on the phone the whole time, so I don't know if she noticed, but I thought it was pretty fun haha.
Until Next Week! Keep it real,
Elder Molinari
Pictures are us with Frère Tornar and Elder Shenkal trying to teach me how to take photos. 
No comments