The Italian Bag

Unlike today where missionaries carry around an ipad with all their books at a touch of a button, we carried around the actual book with us. We were also walking missionaries which means we didn’t have a car to hold extra Books of Mormon in. We had to carry what we needed around with us. Sometimes this meant carrying all day long just to give out at the end of the day. The usual backpack included your person scriptures (and for us new bees that meant both the English set and the German set), at least 2 German Book of Mormons to give out, 1 English Book of Mormon, along with any other items like your Preach My Gospel, Lunch, Wallets, Umbrellas, Maps, and so on that you might need during the day. In short your bag weighed a lot before you ever left the house.

One particular morning while we were packing our bags we felt that we not only needed the regular English, and German Book of Mormons we carried but that we needed something else. I added a Spanish Book of Mormon to my bag only to take it out right before we left and put an Italian one in my bag instead. Italian what was I thinking. We had a better chance of placing a Chinese Book of Mormon than an Italian one, but there it was going into my bag.

We headed to the church for our appointment. We stopped everyone we saw (like we always did) sharing the gospel with all that would listen. We met some amazing people but no one in need of an Italian Book of Mormon. Our appointment fell through so we headed off to our next appointment, planning to do some door to door contacting in that town before our appointment.

We were sitting on a bench waiting for our bus when a young man came and sat next to us. Sister Christopher quickly turned to me and said. “Sister Jensen, look at his bag”. As I looked I was a surprised as she was. This young man’s bag had the Italian flag on the front of it. We quickly engaged in conversation with him. He German was awful – worse than mine. His English was ok, but his Italian was perfect. He was so excited when we shared the Italian Book of Mormon with him. He was here for school and missing home. We gave him the web address to the Church site and invited him to read the Book of Mormon and visit the site. He promised he would.

I don’t remember if he got on the bus or not but I do remember quietly thanking the Lord for inspiration that morning. Thanking him for working through us to help the life of someone in need.  

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen