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Tràpani – Week 19

Ciao Tutti!

I hope that everyone was able to have an awesome week! We are still working really hard to meet with a lot of people and we are seeing a lot of miracles with the work and just trying our best to really help people progress. We are really loving it here in Tràpani and are really excited to be able to stay together and keep working with one another. We really work well together and we are really trying to do our best to be who the Lord would have us be. We were able to have a couple of lessons this week and one of them was super cool!

We were finding last week with the white board and talking about the most important event in history and we stopped this guy that was walking his dog, who he said was named Spanky. He stopped and we had a good conversation and he said that we could stop by some day at his house and talk with him about the Book of Mormon. Sweet! So we headed back there a few days later in the evening and we couldn’t find his name on the citofonos so we kept searching and decided to check this one last house and we finally found it. So on the citofonos (the things you ring to talk to them at apartments) if you double tap the button it is the symbol of someone that is a friend or family member or something. So we double tapped it and they just unlock it (only occasionally happens). We go up to the next one and double tap it again and it is once again unlocked with no questions. So. Now we are in business. We walk up to the door that is opened and are trying to introduce ourselves with all the unfamiliar faces of a grandmother and granddaughter. The dog comes out which is the indicator that this is the right house. I explained that we had met this guy on the street with the dog, “Spanky right?” Well needless to say that wasn’t the dogs name which was a good start. We get to talking and then the guy walks out and they just invite us in. The wife was super nice and was excited to have us in. They really wanted to know about what we believe and we were able to share the Restoration lesson with them and it went really well. The wife asked super good questions and was really interested in knowing more. It went really well, but she talked about how she could never change. That is ok though! She is super excited to read the Book of Mormon which is super awesome with us!

They wouldn’t give us a day that we could come back so hopefully we will be able to stop by again this week and see where we can go from there.

We had another good lesson with the family that we met last week and were able to read out of the Book of Mormon with them. It went really well and we read 1 Nephi 3&4:1-7 which went really well! They are super awesome, but they weren’t ready to totally commit to baptism right now. We really hope as they continue to read in the Book of Mormon, which the wife is already at Jacob, that desire will be there if they are reading with that real intent to act on the knowledge they would receive. Look forward to getting to see them this week. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 18

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. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 17

Ciao!

I hope that everyone had a great week! This week we were able to have a few more lessons, but we are still working really hard to be able to find some more work right now. It was a great week though!

Monday we were able to go bowling with a friend of ours which went super well and it was a lot of fun. We were able to play pool too, which I haven’t played in so long so that was a blast. He is super cool and we were able to have a super good conversation with him afterwards and invited him to take the lessons. He said yes which was so awesome to us and we were super pumped up! We then got ready and did finding after that and it went super well! We had to make the decision to go left or right out of the apartment and we went left and ended up right away meeting someone that was in a hurry to the postoffice. We were doing the sondaggio on the scriptures, and he gave a quick response that didn’t show at first that he had much interest, but he was just in a hurry. He stuck around though and we talked for while and were able to get his number and an appointment with him which was super cool! We then kept going in finding and we ended up meeting that less active we had met by the stadium just two weeks prior in the exact same spot. It was super awesome and he asked for our number so it was super sick to be able to see those miracles that were happening that night. It is really amazing the things that Heavenly Father allows us to be a part of. We then finished off the night with a family home evening with a member family. We were able to have two lessons this week that went really well with one of our investigators. He is really intelligent and a super nice guy. He is a lot of fun to talk to, but we unfortunately can’t see him right now because he just expressed to us that he isn’t really ready to commit. Hopefully down the road the Anziani will be able to meet with him again and he will be ready then. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 16

Ciao!

I hope everybody’s week went by well and you all really enjoyed it. It is crazy how fast the time goes by here in the mission. All of a sudden it is Sunday again and its just really weird how the time just rolls by here on the mission. I can’t believe I am rolling up to my year mark. That to me is insane.

The weather turned around all of a sudden and now it has been super windy and pretty cold. The wind is pretty crazy here in Trapani because of the way that the city is laid out around the sea we have wind that can come from all directions so when it starts to pick up it is really strong. Had to bust out my heavy winter coat for the first time last night.

We had a lot of finding this week. We had a good DDM as usual on Tuesday in Palermo and came back for finding around Trapani. We do what is called “White Board” finding. We a question on the board and do a little survey or sometimes we will write “Corso D’Inglese Gratuito!” It is fun and we have some good conversations from it.

We had good English Course lessons this week and we saw some new faces there which is really nice. We always love getting new sick students that become really good friends of ours.

We were able to hit a good number of families in the branch this week to get started on our member plan that we prepared for them. It will hopefully yield a lot of ways to get the members more involved in the work with us and help strengthen them at the same time. We were able to talk to some really awesome people this week, and we hope that they will be willing to meet with us so that we can help them in any way that we can.

We got two new investigators this week. It is a younger couple which is really cool. We gave the first lesson at a Tabaccheria because that is where they asked to meet us.  It went really well, but next time we will be meeting in the church which will be a lot better in order to avoid distractions and better to be able to feel the spirit more strongly. They asked a lot of really good questions and she really wants to know the truth which is really sweet.

We had a good Sunday yesterday as well. We ate at one of our regular families we go to after church on Sunday. They are super awesome and just so so so nice. We finished off the night with some less active and white board finding. We asked the question, “Perchè abbiamo le scritture?” (Why do we have the scriptures) and it went really well. We got some really good conversations out of it and a few phone numbers. [Read more…]

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

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!

“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.

Valderice.12

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. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 14

Ciao!

I hope that everyone had a fantastic New Years celebration and that everyone started the new year out super well!

So this week we were able to accomplish some really cool things. Monday we had a lesson with one of our investigators and we unfortunately had to drop him. He just wasn’t in the right mindset to listen right now and wasn’t keeping the commitments necessary to be able to keep moving forward.

He expressed interest in English Course so we hope to be able to keep in touch with him through that and hopefully in time he will be ready to meet with the Anziani down the road. We then were supposed to have a lesson with a potential [investigator] after that and we had a member there with us as well, but the investigator showed up late. We got to talk to the member, though, while we were waiting and it ended up being super worthwhile because we were able to help him out and we could feel the spirit super strong while we were talking with him. It was super cool and special for us to be able to have that. Literally as soon as our member had to leave the investigator showed up. It is interesting and amazing how that all works out. We had a good lesson with our investigator. He kind of takes things he likes from all different religions and flows with that so we will see where it goes. If he reads the Book of Mormon everything else will fall into place.

Tuesday we had district meeting and then a member lesson after we got back from Palermo. It went really well and we were able to help the Sorella out the best we could. We then had English Course that night and were able to have a nice lesson with them. I really love our English Course students a lot. They are all super cool and super nice. We always enjoy getting to see them and then sharing the spiritual thoughts at the end.

Wednesday we tried to go down to centro twice to be able to find some service opportunities but didn’t come up with anything. We had correlation that night with our branch mission leader and we were able to talk about all the work going on. Our branch mission leader is super awesome though. He is so nice and really funny.

Thursday we had a super cool lesson with an new investigator, that we had originally met with a random text in October when Anziano LaPray was here. These were the texts.

Random Phone Number: Buon pomeriggio signore Antonino chiedo scusa per il ritardo che avrò nei suoi riguardi. Farò lo più presto possibile.

Nome. Grazie (Good afternoon Mr. Antonino excuse me that I will be late. I will do it as soon as possible. Name. Thanks!)

Us: Simao I missionari che facciamo il corso d’inglese io gratuito.

Possiamo aiutarti con qualcosa? (We are the missionaries that have a free English course. Can we help you with something? We thought that she was originally asking for English course because we had received a call from someone with the same name a couple days prior)

Random Phone Number: Siete voi che fate il corso d’inglese io pensavo che erano i mormoni. Dove lo fate e che giorno? (You guys teach the English course? I thought it was the Mormons. Where do you do it and what day?)

Us: Sì. Siamo i mormoni e facciamo questo corso per servizio. Lo abbiamo ogni martedì e giovedì alle 18:30 Bella Nostradamus chiesa.

Via Della Provincia 5-7. (Yes we are the Mormons and we do it as a form of service. We have it every Tuesday and Thursday in 6:30 I our church.)

Random Phone Number: voi date anche il corso operatore socio sanitario che ad iniziato ieri? (You guys also give a social sanitary operator course that started yesterday?)

Us: Allora. Non facciamo quello corso. Mi dispiace. Ma, hai l’informazione per il corso d’Inglese? (So. No we teach that course.

I’m sorry. But, you have the information for he English course right?

Random Phone Number: No ne ho l’informazione. (No I don’t have any information.)

Us: Lo abbiamo ogni martedì e giovedì alle 18:30 nella nostra chiesa.

Via Della Provincia 5-7 (we have it every Tuesday and Thursday in our church at 6:30)

We totally thought this was some sort of prank. We had to give her the information twice so we totally thought it was some monelli (rascals).

We then are doing finding a little later and end up meeting this lady on the street and it ends up being that same person. It was super weird but really cool! She came to English course once but hadn’t come back since. Anziano Spencer and Anziano Trejo met her on the street during the scambio and now we are teaching her. She is really cool and has a lot of faith and great relationship with Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven. She said a lot of awesome things during the lesson and hen after said some really profound stuff that really hit me. It was super cool, and you could feel the spirit very strong. We had English course again but only two people came because it was New Years Eve but it still went really well! We shared this super cool video about the New Year. It is really cool and I really like the message.

It counsels us to not look back at the past, but to look forward with faith and keep going forward with our savior. It is really good and I would invite you all to watch it.

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2010-12-21-new-years-look-not-behind-thee?category=mormon-messages/mormon-messages-2010&lang=eng

For our celebration for dinner we made some beans and had resses and jones soda. It was a good way to celebrate. It is crazy to think another year has come and gone and it just absolutely flew by. I hope to be able to set some really good goals for this year and keep moving forward and progressing as much as I can.

For New Year’s Day we were inside all day cleaning. We cleaned non stop except for a short dinner break and then went right back to cleaning.

It was good though and we were able to get some things thrown out and did some good cleaning and the house looks even better now. We had to throw out and old fridge and a member came and picked it up in an ape [autocorrect error??].

It was hilarious. I wish I had a picture of it hahaha. Saturday we saw a member and had a less active lesson and it went really well too.

Sunday we had a great meal after church and we ate some good food. We had a pasta del furono shock was killer. It had some different meats in it boiled eggs, and a nice ragu sauce. It was awesome. Then we had some beef wrapped around prosciutto with Parmesan in the inside and along the outside, with salad and bread of course. Went to our fruit next where I had a pear. Then finished it off with empanadas looking things with ricotta in the inside. It was an awesome meal. The food is really good down here and we were able to share a spiritual thought for someone who isn’t a member afterwards. Had some finding after that down to centro and back home to close up the week.

This week I got an email and it was talking about missionary work and she said how exciting it must be to help people change their lives and how one person can just change someone’s world. It caused me to reflect on that and I thought it about the Savior. He did that he changed my life, but not just mine. He literately changed everything.

All of our lives. I am so grateful for that. For the cleansing power of his atoning sacrifice and how we can truly change our lives through him. I am thankful for the savior and know that everyone of us can look to draw ever closer to him this year.

I hope that you all will have a wonderful week and that you will be able to enjoy everything that life throws at you. I love you all and talk to you all soon!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

Excellent missionary food

Excellent missionary food

Excellent missionary food

Excellent missionary food

Anziano Spencer is ready to eat!

Anziano Spencer is ready to eat!

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Caroling in Palermo, Dec. 24, 2015

Tràpani – Week 13 (Christmas Week)

Ciao Tutti!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas week and a good time celebrating with friends and especially family. The week was really weird. I was in Palermo from Tuesday until Thursday doing a scambio with Anziano Palazzo. We had a really good scambio and I definitely learned a lot from him. We were able to see this new investigator that they received. Months ago the Sorelle met this younger guy on the bus and they were talking to him and he was asking questions and they said it was a really good conversation, but he wasn’t interested to meet and learn more. They felt they needed to leave him with the Book of Mormon so they did. Then just about 2 weeks ago he showed up to English course and he had read the introduction and something really hit him about the Book of Mormon (the spirit). He is now super interested and wants to learn more so we met with him and had a really awesome lesson on the restoration. He is very intelligent and understands things really well. He is such a humble guy and super nice. We then had English course there and talked about Christmas for the lesson which was a good time.

Wednesday we did finding in the morning for English course and then switched it to a Christmas survey before lunch. We handed a ton of English Course bigliettini [cards] out. Then, disgustingly, I somehow ate 425 grams [15 ounces] of pasta in a sitting and was still hungry afterwards. That was really gross. In the evening we went to this Palace in Palermo and sung for the employees there. It was super cool! A member had set it up and invited the missionaries. We then did finding on the way back to Palermo 1’s church. Anziano DaPonte and I went out and did Christmas Survey finding together which was a lot of fun. We were then able to finish up the night with another lesson with that super sick guy. The plan of salvation really went well and he is such a good guy.

So for the holidays it worked a little different than a normal week.

We had somewhat of Pdays you could say starting at 1:00pm on the 24th and going until 6:00am on the 26th. And we had permission during this time to skype our families, go to members for meals, watch 2 animated movies, and other pday appropriate activities. Thursday we had our zone blitz where we sang Christmas carols with all the missionaries in the zone. It was a really good time, and my voice definitely hurt afterwards. We had some members and investigators there with us singing as well. We sang at the two big piazzas where the opera houses are in Palermo. They are really cool. So we had a really nice backdrop for our caroling. We were talking to people that were walking by and listening to the caroling. We shared the Christmas video with them and tried to receive potentials for the Palermo areas. [Read more…]

The Christmas Skype Call

Once-a-week emails are great, but there’s nothing like interacting in real time, asking questions, getting answers, and being able to see each other!  We got to have a nice, hour-long conversation with Taylor yesterday (Christmas).  We had some technical difficulties to begin with (bandwidth issues), as he was connecting from the church in Tràpani, but once he had done a router reset, turned off another bandwidth-hogging computer, and determined, with Anziano Spencer, that they would go one at a time, it all worked.  Even though it took about 45 minutes to get it working right, once it was working, things went fine.

Taylor wanted to share a Christmas greeting for his blog, first in English and then in Italian.  So here it is:

My apologies for video quality.  I was shooting with my phone from a little ways away from the TV, but the sound is OK.

Tràpani – Week 12

Buone Feste!!!

Hey I hope everyone had a great and fantastic week! I hope that you are all doing well! This week’s email will not be super long. I have been trying to send out some emails that I haven’t had the chance to in a while.

I don’t have a ton to report on this week. We had a good week and were able to meet one of our new investigators and trying to really help him feel the love that the Savior has for him. We have been able to visit some members this week and I always love getting to know them and help them in any way the Lord needs us to.

This week will be a little different with Christmas and such. I will be in Palermo for a while starting tomorrow for a scambio. We have a zone blitz as well where we will sing Christmas hymns together and do finding like that for awhile on Christmas Eve, then have a zone lunch and gift exchange. It will be a lot of fun.

I am excited to be able to Skype home! That will be really awesome and really amazing to talk with my family again. Face to face at least.

We are excited for Christmas. We have a branch activity tonight and we get to do the spiritual thought which will be really nice and it will be a good activity. Unfortunately it starts pretty late so we won’t be able to spend much time here at all.

Hopefully we will be able to go over to a members house this week for Christmas! That will be fun if we get the chance to. The weather is super nice so it feels weird that Christmas is already this close. I am so very thankful for this season that we have though. This time that we have to remember the Savior’s birth and the importance of Jesus Christ in our lives. I am so very grateful for this. I love these verses from Luke 2.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

I love these verses. I love that gospel, when taken back to the Greek meaning, means good news. This is really neat to me. The Angels brought the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This wonderful news that we have a Savior given unto us by our loving Heavenly Father. I am grateful that we too can all share this good news with others. Through our Christlike service and as well as sharing this wonderful message of Jesus Christ with others. I am so very thankful for him and all that he has done for each and everyone of us. Our older brother who is perfect. Who we can always look up to. Who is there with us in every moment of our lives. I love him so very much and am thankful for the relationship we have. I am grateful to that this relationship will always be able to grow and grow. I am thankful for this time of the year and the Christmas season. I really do love it.

I love you all and really hope that you all have a merry Christmas! I am thankful for all of you and being able to hear from you all! Thank you so much!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

Tràpani – Week 11

Ciao Tutti!

I forgot to say last week that my zone conference was yesterday so we had to get P-Day switched to today. Well I hope that everyone had an awesome week! We had a nice crazy week. Last Monday we were able to play basketball with some ragazzi [boys] which went pretty well. I still stink as usual, but hey the ball never hit me in the face at all.

Tuesday we were unable to grab a bus to Palermo for DDM because it was a festa [holiday] so we had to stay in Tràpani. There weren’t many people out that day at all. We had a good pranzo [lunch] with our ward mission leader and his wife which went really well. We had 3 people show up to English course and they were all advanced so it was great to be able to have a nice time with them and share our testimonies with a smaller group of people. They are all really awesome and definitely have really good friendships with them.

Wednesday had a fair amount of appointments with people set up. Only one of them fell through and we were able to get to know a member family a lot better which was really nice. We headed out for Palermo that night and then we had to wake up at 4:30 to get to the station in Palermo in time for Anziano Bourne to catch his bus to Bari at 6:15. It was Anziano Bourne, Anziano LaPray and I that headed there together. Anziano Trejo and Anziano Vrska went to drop Anziano Borough off at the airport. We texted Anziano Trejo around 6:00 and asked if there was any faster way to get to the station. He called and Anziano LaPray, in an anxious tone, explained that we just woke up. We were just cracking up thinking of Anziano Trejo’s face. It was a fun little joke. Everything went well though. Everyone made their departures on time.

Anziano Trejo, Anziano Vrska, and I were in a trio for the rest of the day. We had two lessons in the morning after studies and then went to eat at a new convert’s house who is the Italian Stan Lee. He is super funny. We had lunch over there and then headed back to the apartment before heading to a less active’s house. We shared a really good message with him that he received very well and it was awesome to see that we all three had different examples, but they all were able to be applied back to the main message. Anziano Trejo had told us about this guy’s movie collection and it is huge. I was nerding out of course for the 5 minutes he showed us. He just has everything you could imagine. He even has a Back to The Future hover board and that hat Marty wears in the second one. It was insane.

Anziano Spencer got in just fine a little after 7:00 and then we headed to Tràpani and got settled all at home. [Read more…]