Hello everyone! I hope that everyone is well! This week I had the opportunity to go and work in Mestre, which is a small city, just outside of Venice, and the area actually includes the city of Venice. It was good day, but made me reflect alot about rules, and their role in life. Throughout my Mission, I've seen many Missionaries with many different attitudes towards the rules, some who didn't put much stock in rules, and others who revolved their entire Missions around the rules. I've come to realise that neither is a good idea. I'm preaching to the choir, I think, if I say that it's important to obey the rules, but often we get so tied up in obeying the rules that we forget why we're here in the first place: To help others. Other times we get so caught up in the "spirit of the law" that we start thinking that it means we can do whatever we want, and justifying it by saying "it's the spirit of the law that matters, not the letter". Before the Mission, I had a discussion with an evangelical with the Missionaries. When I said we needed to do good works, otherwise we wouldn't be saved, he agreed, but when I followed up by saying that we needed to obey the commandments, he called me legalistic. To me that was a great example of using the "spirit of the law" to escape the consequent requirements of having the law: The need to obey it. I've learnt that we should ALWAYS go with the spirit of the law, there is nothing else that the Lord wants us to do. That is what really serves, what really helps, and what will save us in the end. The small print to go with that is that the spirit of the law rarely contradicts the letter of the law, and it's even rarer that it is easier. On a final note, I've noticed that my Italian is heavily influencing the structure of my English, so if it seems strange to you, forgive me! I love you all, Anziano Nelson