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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…]

Roma 1 – Week 6
Transfer 1, Mission Week 12

Ciao!!

This week has been really nice and sorry I don’t have a ton of time to write today, but I will tell you about my week and what all we did.

Well last P-day was a lot of fun and we just walked around Rome and saw some things, since Sorella Arnold is headed back home this week from her mission.  We ate at Subway (which was really expensive for Subway), but it hit the spot for sure.  We then just went around to some other significant places and such and didn’t do anything too new, but I still love just getting to walk around.

We received a fair amount of biedones (where we get a lesson cancelled), but that is OK and we just keep on working.  A lot of our investigators are about the same as last week.  We only got to see a couple of them this week.  We saw Riccardo and he is just still struggling to find his faith and it’s hard.  We are trying our best to help him find it and understand that faith is action (Peter 2:17).  We have to have action to exercise our faith.  Without it we won’t receive testimonies or answers if we never pray and ask Heavenly Father.  He wants to hear from us and has so many blessings in store.  We just have to sincerely ask for them with real intent. [Read more…]

Roma 1 – Week 5
Transfer 1, Mission Week 11

Ciao!!

We didn’t have a ton happen this week and I don’t have a ton of time to respond today so I will try my hardest to just give a recap of the week and what all happened and share something I learned this week in studying.

We had a second lesson with someone from our English course and he ended up dropping us after the lesson.  He has different beliefs and just doesn’t want to continue, but that is ok.  It reinforced the fact that we aren’t here to force people to do anything at all.  We are here to invite and for people to ask God themselves if the things we teach and if the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  We are unable to convince people.  We have to allow the Holy Ghost to touch their hearts and do what we can do to create the best spiritual environment.

We met with Silvestro and Claudia again and we just seem to continue to run into the problem that they will not commit to the things we ask.  It’s hard when they tell us they will and they just continue to fall short, but I am trying to remember that everyone has their moral agency and they have the right to choose for themselves what they want to do.  That seems to be a main struggle is getting to meet with our investigators and getting commitments.

So the family that I had talked about that is here from Nigeria?  We haven’t heard from them and whenever we call it goes straight to voicemail, so we went to visit and see what was up and we ended up finding out the dad went back to Africa for work related purposes (we think) but one of the sons was there.  He had a priest over from the Catholic church and they said it would be fine to be able to share a message with them.  We did a quick lesson on the restoration and then left. [Read more…]