Tràpani – Week 20

Buon San Valentino!!

Hope that everyone had an awesome week this week and that you all enjoyed everything that you were able to do!! This week was filled with a lot finding and then a nice and busy Saturday full of lessons.

I will start off with a miracle that we were able to see Monday. After getting done playing pool with two of our friends at the bowling alley, we had some lessons planned at the church. We were waiting forever for one of the guys to show up but, unfortunately, he literately took forever. So we waited and waited and he finally came with 3 friends and thought we were doing some sort of English lesson. It was weird hahaha. Well he left and so we decided to go and try a less active again. Well she was home, but didn’t feel like answering the door, so we decided to move on from that too. We got to one of the busier streets and literately saw only one person. We then decided to go up to him and ask if we could share a quick video with him. He said no and brushed it off super fast. Anziano Spencer then asked about English course and he was interested in that. He is really good at it since he lived out of Italy for a while. The conversation just kind of went on and he asked what church we were a part of, which then, in turn, allowed us to share the restoration with him. He sat there and listened, intrigued. We asked him what he thought of that and he said he wasn’t really thinking too much about it, but he believed that things happen for a reason. He said that he normally never talks about religion with others at all so he said this may have happened for a reason as well.

It was super cool and we were super pumped because then he asked us to do a little homework and he wanted to know how the gospel changed our life and in what way it affects us daily. We were pumped and then asked when he wanted to meet and he said tomorrow or the next day. We got an appointment scheduled and everything. We were super pumped to see how it all laid out.

Tuesday was really cool at District Meeting to be able to meet all the new missionaries in the district. They are all super cool and really funny. We have a super funny district and it will be a lot of fun! It was really awesome to get to catch up with Anziano Jensen as well. We will be going on a scambio this Tuesday as well.

Back to the miracle guy. Well Wednesday comes around and the miracle guy never showed up and blocked our phone. We had confirmed and everything, and he had asked us more good questions through texts.  It was hard to see, but I thought that he handled it well with moving on and we kept going.

Saturday turned out to be awesome. We started off the morning with a less active lesson that one of our members drove us t,o which was super nice of him. We then met with one of our English Course students and had a lesson in English that went super well! He is so awesome and it was great to get to know him better and share our message with him. He accepted a baptism date and everything that we will be helping him work towards. We are super excited to be able to work with him and are really happy with the way it all turned out. We never know who is ready to receive the gospel. We could never tell if he was interested in our spiritual thoughts, but he is truly ready for the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are pumped for him. We got to meet another awesome guy that evening and the lesson went super well there too. We were able to share a really good Restoration lesson with him and he is excited to read it. It will be really sweet to see where he ends up as well. It was so very nice to be blessed with all of that on Saturday and it was really just amazing. Church was awesome this Sunday and I was able to really learn a lot and enjoyed it a ton.

Something that I have really been enjoying from my studies is looking at how Nephi, Laman, and Lemuel all had the same situations that they were in. They all had the trials, suffering, afflictions, and what not.

1 Nephi 17:

4 And we did sojourn for the space of many years, yea, even eight years in the wilderness.

They spent eight years in the wilderness and this to me is like their refiner’s fire. They were able to take many lesson and experiences away from this. Nephi chose to really take away from all that they had experienced in the wilderness and all the things that Lord blessed him with. Laman and Lemue,l on the other hand, didn’t take nearly as much away. They continually complained and missed out on the opportunity to grow and develop spiritually because their hearts were hard and separated from the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is something that I have really enjoyed lately and is something that we can reflect on. We all have similar situations and are truly blessed with these trials for our benefit. We can really do as Nephi did and take away so much from them or be like Laman and Lemuel. I know that we can be like Nephi. We have so many tools to help us do what we can do to have that good attitude and be grateful in any circumstance. I love you all and hope that you have an amazing week!

Love,

Anziano Garrett