a change of heart

​Cara famiglia,

This week was Easter here in Trapani and the town got overrun! Every Easter in Italy they have a huge 24-hr parade that goes from Friday to Saturday afternoon. They have huge bands playing, but the highlight of the parade is 12 statues each portraying different parts of Christ's life, or the Madonna, or other scenes. Apparently Trapani and Madrid Spain are the only two places where they have these statues so people come from all over the world to see these. It was so fun to be around all the festivities! There were the many different people, cultures, and languages and then just us two to Americans. Haha We went down to Storico Centro Friday evening where all the festivities were taking place to do finding, but it was very crowded and most people didn't want to talk with the parade going on so we started slowing making our way across town back to our apartment. We walked several blocks passing many people but there was this one guy that looked about our age who seemed like he was walking our same way. I didn't think to talk to him particularly and I didn't think he would be that interested, but Anziano Melling started a conversation with him. Turns out, he was actually extremely interested in our church. Over the next several blocks, we recited the 1st version, talked about the Book of Mormon and basically taught the whole Restoration lesson. It was so awesome! It was a testimony to me that you really just don't know who will or will not be interested.

Saturday morning as we were having daily planning, we talked about going to a neighboring city called Marsala to visit a less-active. We tried calling him before to make sure he would be there, but he didn't answer. We weren't sure if we should make the trip all the way down and just show up at his door, or if it would be a better use of our time to just stay in Trapani. We decided to pray about it. I remembered a quote that dad said in a recent letter where so often the correct prompting is the first one. Well, we finished the prayer and I just felt good about it. We decided to go down. Turns out, the less-active was in fact not home and we were not able to get ahold of him. We went to some other less-actives though. These other less-actives in fact had asked before to have their records removed so we were pretty sure they weren't interested in meeting us, but we went anyways. When we rang the citifono the wife just quickly talked to us over the speaker and said she didn't have time right then because she was heading to work. Having made all our visits we headed back to the train station to go to Trapani. The whole time however, I just felt good about our decision to come. And as it turned out, we were so blessed! As we were walking back to the station we were stopped by a man on the street who was very interested in our church and wanted to learn more. But the best was yet to come when several hours after returning to Trapani, the husband of the wife called and said he had been at work and was sorry he had missed us and that he really wanted to meet with us! I don't know what happened in his heart to cause this change, but somehow his heart had been opened and he was ready. God helps us so much!

Well, today was Pasquetta in Italy. It's the day where they celebrate Jesus Christ ascending into heaven. The members were mortified that we didn't get invited to pranzo on Pasqua. Haha so some members insisted that we come feast at their house today even though it was P-day. They take such good care of us!

Love you all, Anziano Stucki.