Tràpani – Week 15

Ciao!

I hope everyone had a great week! Good to hear the weather back home is doing its normal jump arounds. This is easily the warmest winter I have ever had in my life. It’s weird.

Right now we are on the bus going to Segesta, an old Greek temple and I am enjoying a new ride I have never taken, enjoying the Sicilian countryside. It is really beautiful. Today is Anziano Spencer’s birthday which is cool! So we are going to do something really cool today.

Segesta, Sicily

Sorry I didn’t explain what an “ape” was last week. It literately means bee, but In this case it is like one of those three wheeled small car things with a truck bed. So it was funny to see all this stuff piled on the back of it.

“Ape” referred to last week was probably similar to this!

This week went well though! We are really trying hard to be the best we can be. We are trying to work hard smart, and effectively as possible.

Right after pday last week we started the evening off with some finding. We were talking to people next to the soccer stadium heading down to a street that usually has more people and we tried to share a video with a man that didn’t have any interest, so we kept walking.

After noticing this man in the car witnessing the rejection, Anziano Spencer waved at him. All of a sudden we heard someone say, “Hey guys!” (in the Italian version) He had gotten out of his car and wanted to talk. We got to talking and found out he is a member. He didn’t have any interest right now in meeting with us but said he would come to English course. We did see him there and he participated really well in our spiritual thought and it was really cool to see him in those small moments where he came to Christ more in his life. It was a really cool miracle.

Wednesday we had district meeting in Palermo and got stuck there a little longer than we had initially intended to because it was La Festa di Befana, which is some sort of witch that comes and takes all the Christmas stuff down and then either leaves gifts like candy and such or coal for the children. I don’t know how I feel about this holiday. We are already letting Santa in our houses and we have trusted him over the years, but I don’t know about some old witch coming into people’s houses.

Another miracle I saw this week was with another corso [English course] student we have that is super cool! We have a really awesome friendship with her and she is super fun to talk to and her English is very good. She studies all sorts of languages so it is cool to see someone that is very gifted with learning so many languages. We were able to share our testimonies with her after English course and had a more in depth talk about the gospel with her. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she said that she would read it! It was super cool!

We did some corso finding down to centro [downtown] and back on Friday night and talked to a really nice family that we think we will see at English course.

Saturday we traveled over to Valderice for a lesson and came back in the afternoon. Unfortunately we don’t think we will be headed back over there. The family just wasn’t ready to listen to our message. They were super nice though.

Sunday we were able to begin our member missionary plan. We are helping the members kind of design a plan that fits for them individually. We are really looking forward to it because we think that it will help strengthen the members at the same time. It will be a fun time being able to work it out with them. We had a fun time during some finding this past week even though we didn’t have any success in getting numbers or appointments with people. It is a lot of fun having conversations with people where we can show them that we are pretty normal people. We are definitely peculiar, but normal all the same.

We just had a super pday up at Segesta and checked out the old Greek temple, city, and theater up there. It was super fun and was just gorgeous. We were able to get some really beautiful pictures of the scenery and the sights as well. We met this lady from Argentina that is traveling in Italy right now and she was super nice and awesome. We took some pictures for her and she was super nice. She is an archeologist and discovered these frozen mummies of children that were Incan which is super sick. She was super nice and awesome.

Today I was studying about diligence and this verse really stuck out to me from Proverbs.

Proverbs 22:

29 Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.

I really liked this a lot and it just shows how diligence pays off for us. I was then reflecting on the missionaries in the Book of Mormon.

When Ammon and Aaron were struggling they continued working diligently even when they had many afflictions, heartaches, and sorrows. Through there diligence and hard work they prevailed and they stood before kings. They were diligent in what they were called to do and it changed the life of so many people. I am thankful for the examples of diligence that others have taught me in my life and the lessons I have been able to learn from so many others I have had the opportunity to know. Diligence will pay off in so many areas of life. Especially with diligent scripture study and prayer. We will be able to continually improve our lives as we apply the gospel in our lives and through these things we will be blessed.

Thanks for everything you all do! Vi voglio bene! Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Anziano Garrett