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Tràpani – Week 24
Transfer 8, Mission Week 54

Ciao Tutti!!

Hope that everyone is doing well and that you all had an awesome week!! I will start off with transfer calls so you don’t have to dig around for them. So I am leaving Tràpani this week and I am headed to Cosenza which is in Calabria, and my new companion will be Anzinao Borner. It will be hard to leave Tràpani it has become like a second home to me. Speaking Italian better in these past transfers has given me the opportunity to be able to really get to know the members and everyone I have been able to meet well. I have really been able to gain a lot of friends since I have been down here. I am excited to move on to a new city with some new adventures at the same time. I will have the chance to get to know some new people and a new part of Italy where I hear they like really spicy food. So it is a given that I am excited about that. I will miss the people a ton and just the beauty of Sicilia in the countryside and of course in the food as well. I am really grateful for the things that I have been able to learn down here with my companions. I will miss Anziano Spencer a lot!

We have been able to work really well together and I have enjoyed these two transfers that we have had together. I have definitely learned a lot from him and really am thankful for the things that he has taught me and the lessons that we have learned together as well. It has been 4 really awesome transfers down here in Sicilia. So far a perfect track record for 4 cities with 4 transfers apiece. Hope I will be able to continue that as well. I know that Tràpani is in good hands with Anziano Spencer and his new companion will be Anziano Olsen who is coming down from Pozzuoli. Sorella Workman is getting transferred to Rome 1 so that is really sick. So a greenie will be coming in place of her and the new zone leader down here will be Anziano Bellows with Anziano Trejo. So not a ton of changes happening to the district.

This week was really awesome and we were able to have some really good lessons with our investigators. We had one last Monday night where we were able to bring the two move-ins from the recent weeks with us who are both returned missionaries. The lesson went really well and it was cool to see the members and the investigators hit it off. It was really awesome. The lesson went well and we have another one with that family this evening. We had another one with this other family that went well and we really touched on coming to church on Sunday and it went well, but unfortunately they didn’t make it out to church yesterday so we will talk about that with them again this week. We were able to meet our English Course student twice this week which was really nice and the lesson went really well. I hope that he will continue to read in the Book of Mormon and really find his answer as he continues to genuinely search it out. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 23
Transfer 8, Mission Week 53

Ehi tutti!

I hope that everyone had an awesome week and that you were able to find the time to do everything that you had to do.

This week went really well for Anziano Spencer and I and we were able to see a lot of cool things happen in our work. We really hope that we will continue to see awesome things as well.

This past Monday we had another good lesson with that family and we were able to watch the restoration video together and it went really well. We really think they understood at least the major differences between our church and theirs and we hope that they will continue to search out this for themselves. We really love them a lot and they are super awesome and we really just want to help them as much as we can, but it is up to them to act and keep the commitments that we leave to find out for themselves whether or not it is true. We had a good lesson after that with another family and it went well. It was kind of a crazy dinner with a lot of random things happening hahaha. It was short because we got done eating dinner so late, but they invited us to come over again Thursday night so we will see how it goes.

Tuesday after our DDM we started our scambio and Anziano Trejo and I were able to ride back to Trapani with the Wurdles who are a senior couple in Mistretta right now. They are super nice and they had to come down to do another apartment check so that went well and we were able to enjoy getting to know them better and chat with them the whole way down. They are super awesome. Anziano Trejo and I had a good night of finding, English course, and then we went over to visit a member’s home. It all went really well and I always enjoy learning everything that I can from all the other missionaries, since there are so many things that we can learn from everyone. Which is why I like so much that we have different people speak in church each and every week and never the same people each week. We can all just learn from everyone.

Wednesday we got two bidones and then we went to visit this member house for lunch but things got swapped around so they gave us food as they watched us eat because we had to get back to Palermo. She wasn’t going to allow us to leave without eating something so we sat their and ate a quick lunch before heading back up to Palermo to swap back.

The scambio went really well and I can just see how much Anziano Trejo cares about the members and the people he works with. He is also really good at being super bold with everyone he meets which is a super good quality that he has, that really helps him in so many different aspects of the work. I was really kind of having a rough day that day as well and we were on the bus home and I just was kind of down. I was really hoping as the bus filled up that I would get someone to sit next to me and on the last stop the last guy to get on sat down next to me. It was super awesome and was able to have a really good conversation with him that really helped me a lot. It went really well.  It is just unfortunate that he lives on one of the islands off the coast of Tràpani so seeing him is near impossible. Well I really wanted to get him a Book of Mormon so we exchanged numbers and said that we could possibly meet the next morning down near centro where he would be staying before going on a boat to his home. We finished off the night trying to find some less actives and trying to visit all of them if we can. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 22
Transfer 8, Mission Week 52

Ciao tutti!

Hope that everyone had a great week and that you were all able to accomplish the things that you needed to do! Our week went well for us.

Monday night we were able to go over to that family’s house and were able to have a nice meal together and then share a shorter spiritual thought than we had originally planned, but it went really well! They are super awesome and the mom was able to read in the Book of Mormon which we were really happy about. We hope that she will be able to continue in it and that we will be able to really get the girl to get started in it as well. We will be watching the Restoration film with them tonight so we are excited.

Tuesday we had our DDM, which went really well, and Anziano Brandon and I started our scambio and we stayed in Palermo. It went well, and we were able to do a good amount of finding for the night before English Course. It was really cool to see some small miracles while we were finding. One guy in particular stuck out to me. We were walking and we both made eye contact and I just think that he knew I was going to say something and I had a small feeling that he would stop, but also possibily go on. He stopped and watched the video that we were sharing and it went really well. Hopefully they will be able to see that guy soon. English course went well and then we were back to the house. The environment of a four man house is a lot different. It was really funny because Anziano Trejo is trying to eat better and put on more muscle and of course Anzinao Palazzo knows what he is talking about. He just has to ask every night what he can and can’t eat hahaha. Pasta was a big no no, but he couldn’t find anything else so he let temptation beset him and Anziano Palazzo wasn’t happy with him. His punishment was getting punched in the stomach for his ab workout the next day. It was really funny hahaha.

Wednesday started with a good workout and we were able to finish up our scambio with some more finding after doing some permesso stuff for Anzinano Brandon.  We headed back to Tràpani after Anziano Spencer and Anziano Jensen showed up. W finished up our night with some finding in Tràpani.

Thursday we started off with doing our program sheet to keep track of Book of Mormon reading for the members. I really hope they will undertake the challenge to read it within four months. We were really pumped for English Course because afterwards we were able to share the film Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. It went really well and I think that the English Course students definitely enjoyed it and they were able to definitely learn more about the story and history of Joseph Smith. I am definitely thankful for all that he has done for us and all the sacrifices he made to keep doing the will of the Lord. I know that he is a prophet of the Lord and has done so much for us I love these scriptures in D&C 135. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 21
Transfer 8, Mission Week 51

Ei buondi!!

Hope that everyone is doing well. Sorry that my emails didn’t make it through last Monday. I resent them to everyone so hopefully they all got there and everyone was able to read them. President Waddoups did a good job of scaring the crap out of me too. I had just had my interview and Anziano Spencer and I were finishing up a sick night of finding in Palermo and I got a call from him and he says, “Well Elder you’re in trouble.” I was like oh crap, “What did I do?” He replies it, “It wasn’t what you did, it’s what you didn’t do.” My reply, “Uhhh…” Thoughts were running through my head. Did I miss someone to give a pass along card to or something like that?  He then explained that I didn’t email my family and everything which was really weird since I spent like 3 hours in the church emailing. We got it all figured out and I sent them off the next day while we were waiting for Zone Conference to start.

Last week went really well though! Monday night we had a really awesome lesson with this family and it went super well. We were talking about the plan of salvation and they really enjoyed it. We could feel the spirit super strong at the end as we bore our testimonies on the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that has been restored through Joseph Smith. Super awesome lesson and we are going back over there tonight to watch The Restoration film with them and then have dinner. We are excited and really hope that it goes well.

Tuesday we did a scambio with the Palermo B Anziani in our district, so Anziano Jensen and I came here while Anziano Spencer and Anziano Brandon were in Palermo. It went really well and was good to get to know Anziano Jensen some more because we didn’t get many chances to talk one on one in the MTC. We were able to have a pretty successful scambio together and I definitely took a lot of good lessons away from it. We were able to randomly meet so many people I knew on the street that I never really see at all. It was really weird, but we turned out to have a lot of really good conversations.  We finished up the scambio visiting some members and having lunch with them. We headed back to Palermo Wednesday so we could get there for interviews. Anziano Spencer and I teamed up again and went out for a night of finding that went really well and we were able to talk to some really awesome people. Hopefully the numbers will go places for the Anziani there. We stayed the night with the Anziani at the Palermo 1 house with all 4 of the anziani plus the assistants as well. It was fun, as always, to get to talk to everyone before heading to bed.

Zone conference was a lot of fun and we were able to really learn a lot from all our leaders. President Waddoups did two really good addestramentos. One on becoming a consecrated missionary, based around Tad R. Callister’s Becominng a Consecrated Missionary talk. It was super good and a really good reminder for me to make sure that I am putting my all on the altar of sacrifice for the Lord during my service over here. He then focused on the Book of Mormon and we have the challenge right now to read it in three months which is going really well. I am excited that we are all really trying to focus on Preach My Gospel and the Book of Mormon right now. The assistants, Anziano Flynn and Anziano Taranto (Toronto), gave an amazing addestramento about focusing on Preach My Gospel. Sorella Waddoups also had a really awesome activity that she did where we were able to share our thoughts on two missionaries, then the Book of Mormon, and finally the Savior. It was really awesome. Super fun zone conference for sure.

We did a lot of planning Friday night and then coordination meeting with our branch mission leader. Saturday we were able to have 4 lessons which was really awesome and they all went really well. The one with our new investigator from English course went really well and we were able to read Alma 32 together and it was awesome. We really look forward to seeing where he goes and how he progresses. He came to church too!! It was so awesome. I really love him a lot and really hope it all works out with him.

We went to Segesta again today, which was really fun,  and we were able to go with Anziano Palazzo, Anziano Trejo, two other members from Palermo 1 and then an investigator of theirs. It was super fun.

Something that I really enjoyed from my study this week was from this morning was 2 Nephi 9:39.

39 O, my beloved brethren, remember the awfulness in transgressing against that Holy God, and also the awfulness of yielding to the enticings of that cunning one. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal.

I really like the last sentence. It is so true that as we are spiritually minded it truly helps us make the best decisions in life and helps us avoid falling into temptation from the adversary. I really liked that a lot to just be spiritually minded which will help us get to where we want to go, our enteral home with our Heavenly Father.

I love you all very much and hope that you all have an amazing week and that you enjoy life in all ways possible. Talk to you soon!

Vi voglio bene,

Anziano Garrett

Sometimes sidewalk chalk drawings are used for finding on the street.

Sometimes sidewalk chalk drawings are used for finding on the street.

On the beach at Tràpani, Sicily

On the beach at Tràpani, Sicily

Segesta excursion, Feb 22, 2016

Segesta excursion, Feb 22, 2016

Zone conference fun, Palermo Zone, Feb. 2016

Zone conference fun, Palermo Zone, Feb. 2016

Palermo 1 District, Feb. 2016

Palermo 1 District, Feb. 2016

[Photos of zone conference from Sister Waddoups’ blog]

Palermo Zone, February, 2016

Palermo Zone, February, 2016

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups' blog)

Palermo Zone Conference, Feb. 2016 (from Sis. Waddoups’ blog)

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. [Read more…]

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 8
Transfer 6, Mission Week 38

Ciao tutti!

I hope that everyone had an amazing week! So this week was pretty different and a little wackier than the past. Tuesday we were able to do some good finding in the morning. We have been doing a survey that has been really helping us find success in getting numbers this past week. We have a lot of potential investigators  that we are going to start buckling down to get ahold of for lessons. I am really excited for the fact that we have been seeing a lot of success with it.

We were able to stay for English course that night and then headed to Palermo afterwards in order to be there in the morning for Specialized Training. It was  really awesome. The Sister Training Leader, Sorella Hansen, did a really good addestramento (training or something like that) on faith. It was really good talking about how faith is a power that really helps us move and as we apply faith in all we do we will see the miracles that will so often come with missionary work as we do all we can to make them happen with that faith. The Zone Leaders (love them) Anziano Kennedy and Anziano Trejo gave excellent discussion on unity within the a companionship so that we are able to better counsel with the lord and invite a stronger spirit with us. It was really nice and something that I was really happy to hear and can look to how we can do our best to have this between us and the Lord. We then had an interesting activity with Sorella Waddoups that taught about temptation and how hard Satan works with investigators to try to get them to stop meeting with us, not believe it, etc..  It was really a cool activity and just taught well about the competing voices that are investigators face but the spirt works by a still small voice. This is something that will help us for sure. President Waddoups gave an excellent addestramento on revelation.

We then had a good day and a half back in Tràpani and then Friday morning we went into scambio. I was able to go to Palermo with Anziano Kennedy. He is in his last transfer and will be going home shortly. He is so awesome and it was great to be able to learn so much from him. We had really good finding and were able to find success with that. We then had a really nice new convert lesson about Jesus Christ that went super duper well and we could feel the spirit as we talked about our Savior. Then to finish up the night there was an organized activity to watch Meet the Mormons in Italian for anybody that wanted to come. It went really well and was a really good thing to be able to show everybody that came. [Read more…]

Tràpani – Week 5
Transfer 5, Mission Week 35

Ciao!

I hope that everyone had an amazing week! This week was weird for us, but we made it through and were able to really see a lot of good things happen this week.

So Monday night we had a family home evening and had a new investigator that night. We talked about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It started out really well and then went kind of crazy (not in a bad way. Just got a little off topic and such) and we got it reeled back in. We went off topic after a few minutes more and we just needed to get it reeled back in. We went from talking about the Great Apostasy and went straight into Joseph Smith and the First Vision. It was really amazing because everything just got quiet and we could feel the spirit really strongly as we shared about Joseph Smith and the first vision. It was really amazing to just feel the spirt as we talk about that event that changed everybody’s lives. It was a really cool experience.

Tuesday we went to Palermo for our DDM [district meeting] and then we had to stay there because we went to the airport to go pick up Anziano Goode, who had to come back down to Tràpani to pick up his permesso (papers to stay in Italy). So it was a long day but it was really good. We got the permesso, no problem, and sent him back to Palermo and then we went and had some lessons.

Thursday we had a scambio and Anziano Trejo got to come back here to Tràpani. This was his first city in the mission and now he is back in Palermo as one of our zone leaders. He is super awesome. He is really funny, loving, kind, and is an amazing missionary. He was super fun to work with and I had a lot of good things to learn from him.

Friday we had some lessons planned but some of them fell through, but we had a good night. We made some caramel apples for some people and the first batch was a big learning curve. We are no Sister Cloward, but we tried our best.  The second batch looked and turned out much better. The third should be even better.  [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…]