Giorno di ringraziamento - Week 66

Well hello everyone i hope you all had a great week. This week went by pretty quick to be honest.

We spent the whole weekend doing Conosci I Mormoni flyers and I think it went really well. We got together with our district one night, and made signs that we put on the tallest Anziano, and then walked around centro with a force of 8 missionaries giving out flyers and talking about who we are. It really went well. We all had the same desire to just give the night our all, and by the end of the night we were completely out of flyers and had talked with thousands of people.

In church the next day we were also surprised to see many new people in church we had never met before. It was really rewarding for us to know that when we work hard we receive more opportunities to help people. We were able to teach them the restoration together and are making plans to visit them this weekend.

Yesterday we had a zone conference in Lampugnano with President Dibb and we focused on understanding gospel principles and how we need to be the best gospel teachers in the history of the church. We focused on what it means to be a seer, and then talked about Isaiah and how much he prophesied of Christ and his actions, hundreds of years before Christ even came to the earth. Sometimes Isaiah can be difficult to understand, but as we were reading the Book of Mormon together as a mission we learned some things. We are focusing on any teaching that mentions Christ, and when nephi expounds on Isaiah we learned all about how Isaiah's words really mimic what Christ did on the earth. It helped us to understand Isaiah more, and now when I read directly from Isaiah I feel like I more fully understand what he is teaching us. We also focused on how we can help people focus on the purpose of christs birth especially during this holiday season. I thought it was a great zone conference.

As far as other investigators go, we had to take a step back with C., until he can follow the little commitments that are holding him back. P. is doing well, we are still trying to figure out to pull out our 16 year old mind that wasn't focused on the gospel (I never thought that would be difficult, but it really is...) to be able to find the way to better approach his desire to grow in the church. T.G. is doing great, he is just doing everything he needs to do, and he is acting as a normal member now.

As Thanksgiving is tomorrow (unfortunately this year I won't be having a big turkey dinner 😐) I really have been focusing on the blessings that we neglect or fail to be thankful for. The lord gives us so much, He gives us everything, and sometimes we never think of it that way. So I tried this week to be more grateful for the little things and decided to write down everything that was a blessing to me during the week. Im not even finished with the week, and my list is already longer than I ever considered possible. We really have a loving Heavenly Father who blesses us. Yes, we receive more blessings when we obey, but when we don't get the specific blessing we desired, we need to look at the many blessings he gave us instead of that. If I'm not rewarded with a person who is ready to be baptized after a hard day of work, I can't think that the lord isn't blessing me. He blessed me with other little things such as patience during an encounter with a person, or making it on a bus even when we were late to the stop. We have so much to be thankful for, and I invite everyone to get their hand turkeys out or a paper and write the little blessings you are grateful for!

I know this church is true, I am grateful for constant guidance from a living prophet, and for limitless love from our father in heaven!

Conosci i mormoni - Week 65

Hey everyone!

This week has been one on the streets, but I really don't mind that right now... Well ok I do care a little because winter is upon us, and we have 100% humidity in the air, so we freeze outside these days!

Well this week was focused on a promotion the church is doing for Conosci i Mormoni, which is Meet the Mormons in English. Until the 22nd of November it is free on YouTube, so we gave out little papers telling people how they can watch this film. I personally love this because it is a way for us to show people how we associate in the world as individuals, that we aren't just missionaries, that the way we act in society is a result of the care and love we have for the gospel. If people aren't interested in our message, they can still watch this and not feel like we are forcing them to listen to us, but through this we can spark the interest of many!

Also this week with all the attacks on Paris, I decided to put a major emphasis on hope and charity, because we all know that unfortunate events like this unite people for a change, and when we all hope for a better future and turn to our Heavenly Father for help he is able to open our hearts to even more change and joy in our lives.

T.G. is doing great, he has been just so happy with his new fellowship in the church, and really feels like he has a family and friends here now. He is trying to get us to teach his sister, but she has not given him an answer yet

C. is doing well. We really had to focus on the comparison of the bible and Book of Mormon. He always felt like we would replace the bible because we would teach him using scriptures from the Book of Mormon, so we taught him a simple principle. We taught him why missionaries teach in two. We each are different individuals, we have different experiences, and are different in our age and time on a mission, but we teach the same thing using the same spirit. Our methods are different, just like the Book of Mormon and bible are different, but we teach of Christ and of his gospel, just like the scriptures.

P. is doing well. He came to church and is very interested in the activities done by the youth program. We are trying to fellowship him a bit more with some of the young men, because when it comes down to it, many teenagers prefer to receive advice from the people their age (I did).

We have a lot of new potentials that we are visiting this week, and we hope that we can teach people from this effort we put into the week. As we think about who we are as members of the church (or even not) I hope we all strive to make ourselves better every day, whether it is being a little more humble, being a little nicer to our siblings, or just trying to do a good deed every day. I promise that we will feel an assurance of our improvement from our Heavenly Father, and that he will help us in our decision to be better individuals!

Have a great week everyone!

La verità che troviamo dal libro - Week 64

Hey everyone,

This week has been quite the week. I get to stay in Busto for another month with Anziano C., I had a visit from a member family in my first city, and we had a baptism!

So T.G.'s baptism was this weekend and it was just fantastic! The member support in the program was great. He's a decently big guy so we made sure we filled the font extra so that we did not have problems getting him in the water. The program went well, and as I was translating for him during his testimony, he started speeding up super fast causing my translation to be a little cut off, and it was funny because I would speed up too, and then he would speed up more because he was just super happy. Everyone got a good laugh out of it. Something he said though in his testimony really stood out to me though, he said when we first met him we didn't have time to talk so we gave him a pamphlet to read. He said he read it and just felt something, but he became so worried that he would never hear from us again. He prayed that we would meet again and we called him a few days after we gave him the pamphlet and he was just soo relieved. He knew he had found the church he needed to worship at, and that we had a message of upmost importance to bring to him. He's just sooo awesome.

Also, the day of the baptism the M. family took a trip out to visit me while we were filling the font. It was so good to see them and just reminded me of all the relationships we make with people and how much I appreciated them in my time in Vicenza.

Soo most of the week was spent getting his baptism all coordinated and such, but now that I am staying another month, I am excited to keep all the good work going here. C. is doing well, we have
focused on how when we read scripture, we need to read it for what it is, sacred teachings written by prophets of God for our learning and understanding. If we read it as a literature book, it is harder to
focus on the spiritual aspect of the book, because we only follow the story and wars and chronological events that happen. We can gain a testimony anytime we read the scriptures, but when our focus is to be inspired and taught by the writings, then it will make such a difference in our reading.

We met M. again after a break, and he seems to be doing good, and we also focused on the importance of the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon truly is the source of all truth in this gospel. Yes, we believe in the bible, as translated correctly, we believe in latter day prophets, we believe in personal revelation, but in order for us to know this is the true gospel Jesus Christ and that his church is established on the earth again we have to have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. All of the truth of the gospel, of this latter day church is based on the fact that this book is true. If the book is true, Joseph Smith did in fact have the vision of the father and the son, that the priesthood has been restored on the earth, that prophets are on the earth today to guide us. Without the Book of Mormon, we would have no reason to believe a 14 year old boy had a vision, we would never be able to receive our own personal testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know the Book of Mormon is true and that everyone can receive their own testimony if they act in faith and read the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture.

Have a great week everyone!

Doing good no matter what country you are in - Week 63

Hey everyone, this week went by quick and things are rolling.

T.G. is all set to be baptized on Saturday and this week really has been just making sure everything will run smoothly with the program, clothing, and everything else. He is thoroughly excited and I'm just excited that I am still here to see him make this covenant with our Heavenly Father.

C., after a brief break has been getting back on track. We are focusing on setting meaningful spiritual goals, with ways to achieve them and dates to achieve them. When we want to grow, we have to push ourselves to reach our goals. If we want to grow our testimony and say we want to read the scriptures more, the best way to do it is through setting specific goals, such as reading 5 pages every day for a week, or by the 15th of November I want to have read all of the gospels and this is how I will do it. This has really reinvigorated him and he seems to be progressing a lot more.

We met a new guy through C. named P. He is a nice Italian man who loves Americans. We have talked to him before, but his interest really sparked when he met some missionaries in Spain who gave him a pass along card. He did some research because he knew us too, and now wants to know a lot more from us directly.

We did a blitz up in Varese to help their work grow, and we had a really nice discussion with a man at a beautiful park in the mountains. Things were just falling into place and we were like "this guy knows too much about our doctrine, he has to have met missionaries in the past" so we asked him. He replied with the answer of having been an exchange student in Utah, where he met a lot of members. We exchanged information with him and hope that he meets with the Varese Anziani. This just helped me realize our impact on others, especially our friends. People really watch what we do, they pay attention, and we can have the best influence on them if we live the gospel standards, if we live like our savior lived.

The district singing together

Scenes from Varese

Today we decided to go to another country, Switzerland. There is a chunk of southern Switzerland in our mission and who would turn down the opportunity to go to Switzerland?! Let me just say Switzerland is a beautiful place. The weather wasn't the best today, but it was still awesome. Now I can say I've been to 4 countries in Europe, England (where our plane flew in), Italy, San Marino, and Switzerland. Now I just need to touch Austria, Slovenia, and France haha. Also side note, Swiss chocolate is the bomb!

Switzerland!

Well, I just want to leave with a little thought on being an example. As I was saying before, other people watch what we do. There is a Mormon message titled "You Never Know" and it is about a mother who, after getting everything done on her to do list, was not able to see her cousin. Feeling depressed and saddened she felt like everything about the day was awful. She then looked at all she had done for others and realized that she had done many good things for others without thinking about it. My thought is that we all have so much to give to others. When we feel as if we are failures, do not get down on ourselves and just keep on doing good. We can help so many people, and hopefully are already being a help. When we give our time to help others we can never feel down or like we made a wrong choice. Charity is the pure love of Christ. As a missionary, I have truly learned that even when I don't find a new person to teach, I know I have been doing good and hopefully made a difference in someone's day.

I know this gospel is true. The gospel is simple, loving, and precious. We have all the counsel we need to return to our Heavenly Father, and He guides us in all we do.

Have a great week everyone!

Anziano Chase

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