Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Cantiamo con gioia - Week 52

Hey everyone, another week, another euro I'm not making, but saving
souls means no complaining. I really don't know if that rhymes or
makes sense, but I really have a better job out here right now -
bringing souls to Christ.

This week honestly didn't bring up too much new adventure, but it did
move forward in a good direction. Delfino spent a week in Bergamo with
his aunt, so we focused our teaching efforts on his brothers Pierre
and Prosper. Pierre struggles with his Italian but is really intrigued
about our doctrine and the plan of salvation. Just yesterday we spent
a good time with Prosper, who is the youngest at 16, talking about how
our faith really can't be outdone by anything else. We don't need to
see something to know its true. When we allow faith to guide us, we
will get the knowledge we need to confirm it. With that, we had a
great lesson with him, and now he is preparing to get baptized along
with Delfino. We will be inviting Pierre next appointment, and we
really have high hopes for these brothers.

Charles is being the same ol Charles, but this week we talked about
ways we follow God and show our love by Christ. We talked about the
Ten Commandments and how really in the world, 4 of the 10 are widely
accepted still. No killing, stealing, lying, and honoring mom and dad.
But the other 6 have become so regularly disregarded, and almost
recreational to break. For the most widely accepted doctrine of God
among Christians, how is it that we can't follow even 50% of the Ten
Commandments? We really need to have our eyes open to he simple
commandments God gives us. If we want promised blessings from him, it
starts with following his commandments. We can't receive anything from
God, unless he gives us something to do. Other wise there is no just
way to bless one person over another. That is what allows God to
freely bless us, when we follow his teachings.

Clifford has been doing pretty well. We have been teaching him
alongside Terry, who has been a great influence to him. We invited him
to be baptized and he told us he would pray about it. He knows baptism
is sacred to God, and he has been baptized in the past, so he wants to
be sure this restored priesthood is true. We are going to address that
more in detail with him, because we know the Lord has prepared him,
and that every step we take in life is just leading us to the next
place we need to be.

We met another friend of Terry's this week also. His name is Christian
and he is pretty new to Italy. Terry gave him some pamphlets about the
church and he wanted to meet us so we explain these things more to
him. We got through a pretty good restoration with him, but we had to
cut it short because he had to leave for a meeting. We hope to be able
to see him grow in his faith.

Saturday night we decided to stop by a part member family, the Flores.
The husband, a less active member, is engaged to a non member, and
they have 3 little girls. They are not so well off, but love their
time together as a family. We stopped by and started to teach. The
little girls, all being younger than 6 were quite loud and wild. It
was a little hard to get our lesson across. But as we progressed we
starting asking the little girls thought provoking questions they
could answer. They wound down, and we started to have one of the most
spiritual lessons I have felt in my mission. The mother testified of
her desire to be baptized and about how we are all imperfect, but
Christ's love for us makes it more than possible for us to come back to
him. The husband testified of how being brothers and sisters in the
church really is a strength. There is a love and fellowship that can't
be felt really anywhere else. There are not many places that you can
have so many people rushing to help you when you are knocked down, or
facing difficulty. It was truly a spiritual evening. We really are
hoping that they can get there documents to be married, so the wife
can be baptized, and the family united together.

This week my companion and I studied a lot of stuff. We truly
expanded our knowledge of a lot of things. Things I never really asked
myself, I started searching for the answers to them. We were
discussing a lot of this and I started thinking about how sometimes
the simple principles give us the most knowledge we could ever
achieve. Why do we study the Book of Mormon, and the principle of
faith multiple times a month? Why do we always repeat lessons about
the restoration of the gospel, or the plan of salvation? It's because
we always have things to learn from them. I think about my reading in
the Book of Mormon. I've written down my thoughts, highlighted verses,
and felt promptings. A few days after I've written my thoughts, I go
back and read the same scriptures and this time something else hits
me. I still had a remembrance of my previous thought, but now I was
learning another principle from the scripture I didn't notice before.
Our room for growth is incomprehensible. Our limit for knowledge we
can obtain is so large we physically can't learn it all before we die,
even if we did study 24/7 everyday for our whole lives. We have a lot
to learn. God would not want us going over the same principles, he
wouldn't ask us to always read the scriptures if there wasn't more to
learn from them. I truly believe we will always learn from the basic
principles of the gospel if we open our hearts to it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and the church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints is his church on the earth today. I know it, I
cannot deny it.

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸

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