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Tràpani – Week 14
Transfer 7, Mission Week 44

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 11
Transfer 7, Mission Week 41

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…]

Tràpani – Week 10
Transfer 6, Mission Week 40

Ciao Tutti!

I hope everyone had a wonderful week! We had to email in a cafe today because the Internet is out at the church. Hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season back home! It is different here for sure. They have a festa tomorrow so a lot of the shops will be closed because that is the day that they put out their Christmas tree. It’s from the tradition that the Angel Gabriel visited Mary to announce that she would bear Jesus Christ. So tomorrow hopefully will be a good time for finding for us.

This week we were able to see 2 of our investigators and they have been reading in the Book of Mormon which is great. We want to help them progress and really be excited about how much blessings are in store for us as we embrace the gospel. I really know that with the gospel we will be able to have the most joy and happiness not only in this life, but in the life to come.

We were able to have some other really good lessons with some less actives as well as members. It is so nice and amazing to be able to follow promptings on spiritual thoughts and see that it was fit and really needed by the people that we share it with. I am thankful for the people I have the opportunity to know here and the friendships I have made with them. I hope that I will continue to get to meet amazing people and helping them to the best of my abilities.

We got our transfer calls this past Saturday and I will be staying here in Tràpani and Anziano LaPray will be heading up to Terni. It has been awesome to be able to work with him and I am thankful for all that I learned from him. He has showed wonderful examples of love, charity, awareness, and boldness. He is an awesome missionary and he speaks really awesome Italian. He is going to do amazing things. I look forward to being able to see him again later down the road in the mission. My new companion is going to be Anziano Spencer and he is coming down from Terni. We are just switching companions hahaha. It will be awesome though. Anziano Spencer is awesome and this will be his second city. Excited to start work with him Thursday! [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 9
Transfer 6, Mission Week 39

Buongiorno!

Hey everybody! Hope that everyone had an amazing week! Anziano LaPray and I just did spesa [shopping] and we bought some of the oranges since it is getting into orange season and they are fantastic. The weather has been getting chillier here. Nothing absolutely awful by any means, but it’s been cold, rainy, and windy. We have been handling it just fine though. This week we were able to get back to our city and we were able to see a lot of miracles this week. We were able to gain 4 new investigators this week and they all went really well! The first one seemed a little distracted during the lesson, but that is ok! We will see where he goes.

Friday night we had to go out finding in the rain and decided that we would have much better success in going “casa a casa.” One of the last houses that we went to the door was open and the gate was slightly open but we couldn’t decide if it was a one person building or multiple apartments. So as we are deciding whether or not to go in all of sudden out of the darkness walks a old lady. It was so unexpected and there were no lights on inside whatsoever. It was a little creepy because she didn’t say anything. We asked if we could share the video but we got the wave of disapproval. It was just really random hahaha. The next is a couple that we met street contacting doing a survey and they were hesitant to leave us their number. They said they only wanted to meet for 5 minutes to leave the Book of Mormon. Well we called them and to our surprise she all of a sudden changed her demeanor. She said she was expecting our call which was super cool. We went over and taught the first lesson and it went super well! It was really awesome.

They are super cool and were so very nice. They have two kids and they are really tall for Italians which is cool. They were all super nice.

We unfortunately won’t be able to see them this week, but we are going to contact them at the end of the week to set up a time for the following week. They gave us a recipe for Trapenese Pesto and some of the ingredients which was too nice of them. Then their older son gave us a ride to centro for our appointment with a less active. It was super awesome and such a big miracle. On the way home that night we were walking along Lungomare and the waves of the sea were just huge and there were big puddles in the street that cars were driving in. We almost got splashed on multiple occasions but it was really a small miracle that they never hit us at all. It was really sweet. We finished the night off after daily planning by setting up the Christmas tree!

We got a new investigator Sunday that we have met on the street twice and he is an evangelist pastor and really wanted the Book of Mormon.

We met with him and shared the message of the restoration and he was super excited to be able get a Book of Mormon. It was really awesome and he is super ready to receive the Book of Mormon. He too will be out of town so we will be able to meet with him in a couple of weeks.

This week went really well and the new Christmas video is out which we will start using now. It is really cool and brings a strong spirit as children talk about our Savior being born. It is really cool and the mormon.org sight is nice and decked out with a lot of cool things.

That is my invite this week is to check out the mormon.org sight.

Sorry I didn’t have a ton of time this week! I hope that everyone will have a wonderful week. I love you all and hear from you all soon!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

Tràpani – Week 6
Transfer 5, Mission Week 36

Ciao tutti!

I hope that everyone had an amazing week and that all is well back home wherever that may be for you! We had a good week this week and we were able to have some really great lessons. The weather is treating us well here in Tràpani. It is really pretty with all the sunsets and just the beauty of the city. We found USA food in a grocery store.  [see photo below] We also got 2 meters of pizza within 24 hours. We did not eat the entire 2nd one thank goodness. That one was shared with 3 others. We had gnocchi yesterday too, which was the first time since home. And more horse.

Tràpani is an amazing city with amazing people and I really look forward to being able to meet more and more of them. We are really having some good success in talking with a ton of people, but are still searching for those that are willing to listen to the message that we bring them.

This week we had an awesome first lesson with a member’s friend and we are really looking forward to continue to meet with her and her family very soon. She has a strong desire to learn more and to grow. She will be super awesome to meet with. We were also able to have two really good lessons with our investigators and last night we watched Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. It was super cool and I always love watching that film. The spirit you can feel when talking about Joseph Smith. I am so grateful for everything he did. I know Jesus Christ truly restored his Church through Joseph Smith. It is amazing to know that God still talks to us today and provided the evidence necessary to know spiritually that this is Christ’s church on the earth once more.

This week for my ponderizing scripture I chose Hebrews 9:11

11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;

With Christ even through times of difficulties there will always be good things to come. I love the Mormon Message with the same title. Good Things to Come. I love this quote that from the talk it is based around by Elder Jeffery R. Holland.

Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.

I would invite you all to watch the Mormon Message. It is really good as all of Elder Holland’s talks are.

Anziano LaPray and I will be staying another transfer together here in Tràpani. It will only be 4 weeks long because the Church doesn’t want to be having missionaries travel during the Christmas season. So the transfer after that will be 8 weeks long. I think I will be here for that one as well. We love working together and we are really growing together. We are really hoping to see a lot more investigators as we continue to try our best to talk with everyone we can. I love working with Anziano LaPray. He is super awesome. He is really funny and we are having a great time working with each other.

Everyone else in the district is remaining here other than Sorella Argyle, who is being transferred to Ostia for her last transfer.

Sorry I don’t have much else to report on this week. We are really looking forward to these next 4 weeks. I am loving Italy. It is wonderful getting to meet and love people here. It is an amazing place. I’m so very thankful for the opportunity to be here. I hope that everyone is enjoying life and soon Thanksgiving, which I don’t think exists here… But you all will enjoy it! Hope everyone has a wonderful week and I will hear from you all very soon!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

USA Food in a local Tràpani grocery store. Anziano LaPray has already picked out some pancake syrup.

USA Food in a local Tràpani grocery store. Anziano LaPray has already picked out some pancake syrup.

Tràpani – Week 4
Transfer 5, Mission Week 34

Buongiorno!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful week and that all is well wherever you may be! We had a really good week week with some really good lessons. We are finding new work and have been able to see progress in one of our investigators. He is reading in the Book of Mormon and keeps coming to church each week and he is continuing to learn more and more. He is super awesome. We are excited to be able to continue to see him and meet with him. We have a lot of good work going and really are hoping to get a lot more going too. We are working hard to continue to push ourselves and to be better missionaries. We saw some really cool miracles this week. We went and visited a less active that we both never have seen and he is going to start coming back to church. He still reads the Book of Mormon every day from what we understood. He has three copies and one stays at work. He was super awesome to meet with and he has a family that aren’t members that haven’t been to church and we will make sure that we get them there too. We had amazing conversation with these two people while we were waiting for an appointment that fell through. I really enjoy having those conversations even though sometimes we never may see the results of where that conversation went.

I am really liking the Trapani area and enjoying working with Anziano LaPray, he is a really great missionary and he will do wonderful things here in Italy. Not sure at all if we will be going another one together or not. His uncle worked a lot on a movie coming out soon which is the story from the Mormon message Forgiveness: My Burden Was Made Light. Sounds like it will be pretty good so you guys should check it out it is called, Just Let It Go. Anziano LaPray wants to be here for Christmas to be with all the members.

The food is really good down here. Haven’t eaten a ton, but what I have eaten has been really good. I was hesitant to share last week what I ate in the fear of losing friends, but we ate horse last week. I didn’t know until the MTC that they eat horse down here. I can’t lie…. it was good. I love the brioche which is a nice big roll and then they slap three different flavors of gelato on them. They are amazing. I often think it is funny when we will be eating here and people will be talking about food for a good portion of the meal, but I honestly can’t laugh too much since my family does the exact same thing hahaha. We must have close Italian ancestry honestly. Trapani is awesome though.

If you have Meet the Mormons on DVD the bonus features have a lady that comes from Paceco which is just outside of Trapani. It has a lot of shots of the scenery around where I am at. It’s got an amazing story in it as well.  [The extra feature on the DVD is entitled “The Artist.”] [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 2
Transfer 5, Mission Week 32

Buongiorno!

I hope that everyone had an amazing week! This week was great for us!

I want to start out with one of my miracles of the week. So we were doing finding one morning and we were going around sharing a video and talking to people. We were near a hospital at this point. This one family looked like they were in a hurry so I tried to hand the mom a pass along card but she didn’t take it. It did look like they possibly weren’t from here and so we kept walking along the side of the hospital building. All of sudden I just felt something wet land on me in different places on my body. I just asked Anziano LaPray, “What was that?” I asked a few times and looked around myself. I finally noticed that a bird had managed to poop on me. The iPad case took most of the hit thank goodness, but needless to say it was on my hands, iPad, head, pants, and shirt. So I was like we are going to go clean up in this hospital. We walked to the side door that was just behind us where that family was. They asked if we spoke English and they were needing help getting in. We took them around to the front after finding out that side door wasn’t open. They were needing help getting medicine for the little girl since she had a ton of mosquito bites. We offered to translate for them and went to ask for help. They directed us to the pharmacy to get them where they had just come from so we told them we would help them out but I needed to clean up first. Went and cleaned up then we went to the pharmacy and helped them get the medicine they needed. While I was cleaning up I was just thinking that the bird really did poop on me for a reason. I was so thankful to be able to have a small service opportunity.

I didn’t get to tell much about Anziano LaPray at all last week. He is from Idaho Falls, Idaho. He graduated in the same class as me, but I am still older. He is really awesome though. We have the same taste of music, movies, books, tv shows, video games, etc. We do have a lot in common. He is super funny too which keeps things fun for sure. We are getting along just great and I am excited to be working with him. He is a really hard worker and is an awesome missionary. He is really good at Italian too which helps and both of us are learning from each other. He is super fun to work with and is just super cool.

This week though we got to meet with a good amount of investigators.

We walked to a little town about 8km away and it was a beautiful walk.

We had a referral over there that we were going to meet and it ended up being a wonderful lesson. On the way back we found there was a bus we could take and we decided to wait for it. Thank goodness too because it just started to pour. It reminded us of the Rock Bottom episode of Sponge Bob. We had two good lessons yesterday that we thought went well. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 1
Transfer 5, Mission Week 31

Buongiorno!

I made it down to Sicilia safely and made it to Tràpani. We found out Wednesday night I had to be staying in Rome 2 [for the night]so President and Sister Waddoups came and picked us up. We stayed the night there with some others that were parting to different areas. We got picked up by a senior missionary that took us to the airport early in the morning and our flight was supposed to take off at 8:25 but was delayed just a little. The flight didn’t take too long at all, but I was surprised they flew us down instead of putting us on a train. Tràpani is really nice and is a lot different than Roma. It is less busy with people on the streets for sure. When we landed the other missionaries were waiting for us and we got on the bus to go to Palermo and then caught a bus to Tràpani. The ride was very pretty on the way to Tràpani.

Adjusting to a different area is weird. I feel like I was in Rome for so long I just knew my way around everywhere and knew the members super well. It will be an adjustment, but one that will be great for sure. I haven’t had a chance to meet too many members at all. Just a handful of them. Still getting used to the area and how to get around.

I haven’t run into a ton of difficulty with the language down here.  The two languages of the bilinguals are Italian and Sicilian, which sound so much different hahaha. I did hear two people speaking it one day while doing some finding and it sounded so much different. I couldn’t really make anything out at all.

So we are in the Palermo 1 district which consists of me, Anziano LaPray, Anziano Kennedy, Anziano Trejo, Sorella McFarland, and Sorella Argyle. So we are going to be doing district meetings in Palermo.

Since it was conference weekend we were able to watch every session except the last one. I really enjoyed conference and look forward to being able to study the talks more here soon. It was really good and the talks given were really good. I especially liked Elder Holland’s, President Eyring’s in priesthood session, President Nelson’s, and President Uchtdorf’s from the general women’s session. It was a really enjoyable conference. One of the most important things with conference is taking the things that we learned and applying them in our lives. We can set goals that will help us be able to do this and I need to sit down and set some goals for how I can improve on the path of discipleship. There are always things that we can work on in our life and like President Eyering said our faith is either increasing or decreasing. There is no middle ground. And we can always look to progress in our lives.

It was also very awesome to see the 3 new apostles called to the Quorum of the Twelve. I look forward to getting to know them more and hear from them in the future conferences. I will miss Elder L. Tom Perry, Elder Richard G. Scott, and President Boyd K. Packer and the beautiful messages they always gave. They have left us with wonderful teachings and things we can still continue to learn from. [Read more…]

Roma 1 – Week 24
Transfer 4, Mission Week 30

Ciao!

OK, sorry this email will be pretty short this week but I don’t have much time! I hope that everyone is doing well!

OK, so this past week we didn’t see a ton of people, unfortunately. We only got to see one of our investigators, but he brought a friend which was super cool! He hadn’t been answering the phone because he was sick, but then we got ahold of him and were able to meet with him once. He is doing well but hasn’t been answering the phone again. I hope that everything is going well with him though.

We got to see 3 of our less actives which went really well and they are doing well. We are still trying to find new work right now.

Anziano Rasband is doing better now. He had a doctor’s appointment but had been feeling better a little before we went. He is finally eating normally again, which is great.

So today I had no clue what we were doing for pday but the whole district did. We had to go somewhere, but the metro was broken for a fair amount of the A line and we had to take a bus from one stop all the way across Rome which took forever. It was crazy hahaha. We went to this place called Escape Rome where they put you in a room and you have to find clues and try to get out. It was really neat. Definitely made me feel a little dumb for sure. They gave us a lot of help sometimes hahaha. I don’t know if I wasn’t in the right mind set and not knowing how this all was set up or anything. I was a little confused and they didn’t even let me know what the place was when we went in hahaha. It was neat but I wonder if they didn’t help us if would have got out. They only give you an hour to do it. There was like a Vatican themed room and a CSI themed one.

We were in the CSI room with Sorelle Rossi and Nagliati. It was fun and I think that we all felt a little dumb from getting the help and finished with 5 minutes left hahaha. We then went and ate a really nice meal. I had a a mozzarella di bufalo pizza it was super good.

They then gave me some cream puffs with a candle and then we got gelato to finish it all off. It was a super fun day and the whole district had a great time. It was cool to see Sorella Nagliati before she goes home tomorrow.

I am really excited about General Conference and really looking forward to hearing from the prophets, apostles, and other general authorities. I really enjoy hearing the messages that we need to hear in this life. I am really excited to hear from them all.

I like this scripture in D&C 1:38

What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.

We are hearing these messages from the Lord and they are all specifically for us and I am really excited to hear the messages and hope to be prepared to receive them. I was sad to hear about Richard G. Scott. Having three vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will be really interesting to see if they will all be filled and who the Lord will call to fill them. I am really pumped for this weekend.

Ok and last, but not least transfer news. I am going to be leaving Rome 1 and I am heading down to Trapani in Sicilia! That will be a lot of fun! Anziano LaPray will be my new companion. I am excited to be going down there but also a little sad to be leaving some people here.

I will leave this Thursday and I am excited to head down there. I will be taking a plane so it won’t take as long, but I will have to watch my weight limit which is going to take some skillful packing I think hahaha. I received all the birthday cards and am really thankful for them! I haven’t gotten to read them all, but will be sure to do so tonight! Thank you all! I hope that everyone has an amazing week, and I am sorry I won’t be able to get back to everyone today! Take care!

Vi voglio bene!!

Love,

Anziano Garrett

[Taylor’s new companion in Trapani will be Anziano Lapray.  He is just completing his 12 weeks of training.  This photo is from Sister Waddoups’ blog]

Anziano Lapray

Anziano Lapray