20th Letter from Varese

Cara famiglia,

I saw the pictures of Elder Oakes. He looks great. And very happy. I
am so proud of him. We are committing ourselves to serve our best out
here and secure blessings for all of you. I really appreciate all of
your love and support for us as missionaries.
We are so blessed to have such awesome family and friends.

Many of my favorite miracles occur while doing finding work. Go Book
of Mormon fishing. . . My explanation mark key does not work, sad.
Well, immagine it's there. Yesterday, as we were waiting at our famous
lucky bus stop to go to Mikele, our new baptismal date, we met another
golden potential. When we first sparked up a conversation with Anton,
he was pretty skeptical of our sincerity. He furrowed his brow and
leaned into me and asked.... insert quote mark...You both say that you
believe in Jesus Christ. You, tell me how you've seen a miracle of
Jesus in your personal life?....The Spirit told me in that exact
moment what to say. I responded, He has given me the power to forgive
someone who did me wrong. I know that I could not have done that on my
own, only through Christ. That is a miracle to me. Anton nodded
his head and his heart seemed to soften.

Sorella Mcnamara raised up her Book of Mormon that she had in her
hand and bore testimony of how her relationship with the Savior had
grown through reading and praying. As our bus pulled up we asked him
if we could meet again. He gave us his contact info but said that he
did not have time to meet us. He got on the bus with us. Sorella
Mcnamara and I decided to walk to another part of the bus, to leave
him with the Spirit and ponder what we had just said.
After a few minutes he approached us, tapped my shoulder and said,
How do I get your book? We told him that he could read a bit in the
bus until we got off. He returned to his seat, opened up the Book and
read the first two pages before we got off. I secretly hoped he would
run off the bus and steal our Book of Mormon. That would be awesome,
haha.

Turned out that we both got off at the same stop. As he handed us
back our Book he said, I am available in the mornings. Where and when
can we meet? We set up an appointment with him. I am very excited to
meet with him again.

We have 3 baptismal dates right now- Luca for the 1st of July, Mikele
on the 14th, and Wahabu on the 7th. Mikele and Luca and doing great
but it has been hard to meet Wahabu- teaching Africans is a completely
different than teaching Italians. He is really humble and sweet but I
do not how much he understands of what we teach him. It would be great
if you could keep him and Richie in your prayers.

Sending all my amore e affetto,
Sorella Oakes