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Tràpani – Week 18
Transfer 7, Mission Week 48

Ciao Tutti!

I will start off with transfer news!! Anziano Spencer and I will be staying together here in Tràpani for another 5 weeks!! We are both really excited and look forward to be able to work hard together in the city some more! Anziano Trejo and Anziano Palazzo will be staying the same, which is super cool because we will get to continue to work with them and learn all we can from them. Sorella McFarland is headed out to Bari to train again and to be the Sister Training Leader over there. She has been in Palermo for almost a whole year so she was ready for a change. Sorella Workman will be staying here and Sorella McPheters is coming in to be companions with her. Because there is a small influx of Anziani this transfer, we will be receiving two more Anziani in the district. One of them is Anziano Jensen, who is in my MTC group, so that will be super fun and awesome to be able to work with him down here and have him in the district. He is hilarious and I haven’t seen him since the Bednar conference so that will be super fun to see him.

I hope that everyone had a great week! We had a nice week and were able to see some really cool miracles this week. After district meeting on Tuesday we did some study in the park near centro storico and we were finishing up and we both felt like we needed to go talk to this guy sitting on a bench not too far away from us. We headed over there and asked if we could practice the language with him and we got to talking a lot and ended up sharing the whole first lesson with him and he was involved in it and payed attention with asking good questions and everything. He also agreed to meet the next day which was super cool and he is just such a nice guy. We have really high hopes for him and hope that he will be able to meet soon! Another one was when we were able to have a super cool lesson with this really nice guy that we met doing white board finding. It was super awesome and we were able to meet his son before he headed off for work and gave the first lesson with him and his wife. It went really well and they were ready to schedule the next lesson and so we will be heading back over there tomorrow evening. They are super awesome and nice and really have awesome potential. Their son is a super good artist and he has constructed these boats and I got a picture of what he does. It is super cool.

We had a really good week though and were able to see some more members and then as well have some great lessons. We did a lot of finding and we are trying really hard to keep doing all we can do to push ourselves beyond our limits and we are just trying really hard to find people that are ready to hear the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We did a Geso last night in Centro, and we asked, “What is the most important event in history?” It was a way for us to show the “Grazie A Lui” video because it shows all these important historical events and then goes into the most important which is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It went well and we were able to talk to some really awesome people and hope to be able to do it again next week with a different question.

I had to give my first talk ever on my mission and I decided to talk about the Atonement and I based my talk off these three important aspects of the Atonement that Elder Richard G. Scott talks about in his talk “He Lives! All Glory to His Name!” from April 2010 General Conference.

First, an enormous sense of responsibility, for He realized that except it be done perfectly, not one of His Father’s children could return to Him. They would be forever banished from His presence since there would be no way to repent for broken laws and no unclean thing can exist in the presence of God. His Father’s plan would have failed, and each spirit child would have been under the eternal control and torment of Satan.

Second, in His absolutely pure mind and heart, He had to personally feel the consequences of all that mankind would ever encounter, even the most depraved, despicable sins.

Third, He had to endure the vicious attack of Satan’s hordes while physically and emotionally pressed to the limit. Then, for reasons we do not fully know, while at the extremity of His capacity, at the time the Savior most needed succor, His Father allowed Him to shoulder the onerous responsibility with only His own strength and capacity.

It is a super good talk and I really enjoy these three aspects of the Atonement. I know that it is only because of Jesus Christ that we have the opportunity to start again and have new beginnings. It is only through him that we can wash our sins in his Atoning blood, to rid ourselves from guilt and shame that sin brings into our lives. Through him we really do have so much hope and we know that he is really always here for us. The Atonement is always there for us to be able use daily in our lives. The Savior has reached out to us and saved every single one of us. It is by obedience to his commandments, laws, and ordinances that allow Him to lift us up. I am so thankful for the mercy that He is full of and he has stepped in to fulfill the law of justice on our behalf. I am so thankful for the Savior and the Atonement that we can’t fully understand, but truly know that it is through him that we have been saved. Now we just have to work our hardest at getting back to live with our Heavenly Father once again.

I hope that you all have an amazing week. It is crazy to think that I have almost been gone for 11 months and even crazier to think that I will return home 1 year from this Saturday. That is super weird. Hope to hear from you all soon!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

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