Ancora ci siamo - Week 75

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Ours went fast and the strange thing is I really can't remember half of the stuff we did...

Well to start we had the mission broadcast, which was sent to all the missionaries around the globe, and it was very nice. It helped give me a little push to finish off strong. It was centered on repentance and baptism, and I really enjoyed the thoughts about repentance. True conversion really comes from the steps of repentance we take. It is our signal to Heavenly Father that we believe in him and his teachings to us.

We were able to see P. and M. this week and they are doing well. M. is having a couple of doubts with some of his past teachings he grew up with, but P. is still going really strong. We talked about how necessary reading the scriptures is. We need that 10 minutes of spiritual strength in today's world. We need to be able to have God in our lives, and when we read the scriptures we enlighten our minds and give us a spiritual defense from the sin of the world.

M. is doing better, we have been trying to find a way to get his concerns resolved, but it is taking some time. We really have been focusing on what pushes him in the gospel, and what is the strongest part of his testimony. When we recollect on our spiritual foundation, we really help reinforce it.

We were also able to see G., and his grandchildren, A. and J., and had a nice spiritual lesson with them. A. and J. have been coming to our English class, and now my course, which is the less advanced group had about 8 new 12-18 year olds in it, and it is giving us good opportunities to introduce the light of the gospel in their lives in a normal way.

There is a church also nearby that on Sunday's at 6 a lady always comes in to play the organ, so we decided to visit and just sit and listen. It was really dang cool. Oh oh, I also got to see a couple of members from the Vicenza Italian branch that are in stake priesthood/auxiliary members in church because our branch was being reorganized so that was really cool.

A couple funny things that happened this week. We have been doing some polls in public lately, and one day we were walking and there is a bar we always pass by called Charlie's Angels. When we walked by I noticed one person was looking at our sign. Once I noticed that, I saw that every single person in that bar had stopped what they were doing to stare at our sign. We were just walking by, and it was just funny to see how much attention we attract doing this. Another funny thing was we were walking down the street, and I saw a car that was super iced, and there was a person scraping the ice off to leave in the car. Out of nowhere I find my face connecting with a light post... My comp couldn't hold in his laughter, nor me and my embarrassment, but it was a funny thing to laugh about after.

Anyways, my thoughts have been really centered around the imperfection of human beings. We really are so imperfect. We make so many mistakes. We have to learn so much. But the marvelous thing about being imperfect is seeing the growth within ourselves when we do good and when we improve. There is no limit to our growth, and with the aid of Heavenly Father and the atonement of Christ, we can always work on bettering ourselves. We can accept that we are imperfect, but we can also strive to be the best we can knowing that we will be helped along the way. It is a never ending journey of growth we are on.

I know this gospel is true. I know we can all be perfected through the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Sushi??

The closest I'll ever get to being in Slovenia....#onlyapprovedtohaveonefoottouching

Andiamo avanti - Week 74

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a great week. This week was a decently busy.

Giovedi we saw S., one of our less actives. He really likes the missionaries, he just has to work on Sunday's keeping him from church. In Italy it is really hard to find work these days, so we decided to talk about fasting, and how we can receive revelation on what we need to do. After that we went to a nearby city to order a new part for our phone. The screen broke, and we have visibility of only 1/8th of it... We visited G. and had a nice discussion on how we need to push ourselves to be spiritually minded in order to overcome the natural desire to sin.

Venerdi we helped Sorella T., the wife of our branch president, move a bunch of old furniture out of their home. As our reward they fed us lunch. After that we had a good lesson with P. and M. on the law of chastity. They really accepted the law to stay pure in our thoughts, words, and actions.

Sabato was a more calm day with finding work. We gave out a bunch of English class flyers and then were able to meet with P. We had a nice conversation, and she invited us over to have a dinner with her and her family!

D. was really nice. P. and M. came to church and we had a really good lesson with them on the word of wisdom. With the help of some members we really we able use their testimonies of it. They enjoyed the meetings and really feel like they are progressing.

Lunedi we were able to see Z. and talk to him about the priesthood. We focused on the importance of setting our standards higher. The priesthood is a power given to us and with this power we need keep ourselves always worthy to have it. We have the authority to use god's power only if we are spiritually worthy to receive it.

Martedi we had a good time doing white board finding. We posed a question with a "yes" or "no" section for them to respond. After they put their response we would ask them why they thought that way. It really got a lot potentials for us. After that we had our English class and we were able to set up a time to have dinner with the A. family this weekend. They have shown a lot of interest in
our message and we are glad that we have this opportunity to go teach them.

Oggi was quick. We did some planning, and are about to watch a mission broadcast for all the missionaries in the world (it starts in 10 minutes or so....) so I am excited for that.

My mind has been focusing a lot on how we allow the natural man inside of us to control what we do. It is not natural to do service or say nice things. But we receive spiritual promptings and choose to act on them. As soon as we make that decision to help someone, or do something that was given through a prompting, we make it easier to receive spiritual promptings and do good things. If we never followed our spiritual promptings, we would naturally want to do nothing. It's sad but true. We need to push ourselves to do good, and as we focus on that desire we receive help.

I know this church is true and that his gospel is on the earth today!

Week 73

Hey everyone this week was another nice week. Lots of rain, but pretty eventful. So Friday we spent practically the whole day on the train due to a zone training in Mestre. It takes 3 hours each way in train and our zone training was really short. But it was nice we talked about the importance of bold invites. We cannot expect someone to see the importance of our invites if we don't make it seem important ourselves. We need to show these people we truly are devastated when they don't accept our invites and should be very happy when they follow our invites.

Saturday President Dibb came to Gorizia for interviews. They got to the church a little late, but it was nice to talk with him. We only get to have interviews with him usually once every three months, so every time he comes it is a pleasure to talk with him. I'm sad he finishes his mission two weeks before I do, and that I will have my last interview with a new mission president, but I'm excited for the last 5 months I have with President Dibb here.

Sunday a lot of members were sick, but we had a very nice sacrament meeting. We were able to visit G. and his grandchildren A. and J. were there. A. was very open with us and we were able to share a neat message with them. We also were able to see M. and got him to pray, which he hadn't done in front of other people for 10 years. We also saw P. and his friends, and P's desire to be baptized has really sky rocketed. He knows baptism is essential for his growth in the gospel

Monday and Tuesday I was in Udine for an exchange with Anziano C. He is in his 2nd transfer but is an awesome missionary. We went and gave service at a center for the handicapped and disabled. They truly are amazing people and we spent time sharing bible stories and playing games with them. Then we were able to visit some families in their branch to help spread the relationship of member/missionaries a little bit.

Today we went to Trieste to go to a cave called Grotta Gigante. It is a really nice cave that goes decently deep into the earth. The experience was awesome and even though no pictures came out well due to it being a cave it was awesome to go through something like that.

My mind has been thinking about the meaning of true sacrifice lately and how we truly do give up so much for our Heavenly Father. There are so many things we give up to follow him; substances/objects, time, jobs, relationships, temporary pleasures. Many people think we do it because we know that it is an advantage in the world to come or that we will receive certain blessings because we sacrificed that specific thing, and that is true. But even more important is that our sacrifice comes from our love and devotion to our Heavenly Father, and not just the promised blessings that follow. As a missionary I know I will be blessed for my sacrifice, and I know my family has been blessed for it, but I am also sacrificing my time because it's something I want to do for my Heavenly Father. In essence it isn't a sacrifice to me, but a pleasure. True sacrifice can be difficult but having the love for our Heavenly Father to do it, makes everything worth it.

C'è neve in questa missione - Week 72

This week has been jam packed with stuff so we are just going to get right to it.

So for New Year's Eve we had our district meeting and then were required to be inside at an earlier hour due to festivities that may be uninviting for missionaries. So we spent the day really inside. From our balcony we can see the city's castle, and at midnight the castle had a firework show that lasted for a full half hour. It was a nice little thing that the city does.

Our New Year's Day was really nice. A lot of people were asleep and inside most of the day, but we spent it visiting investigators that we knew were not big party people. G. was at home and he was with his daughter and her family. It was really nice and we were able to invite them to English class and are also possibly going to visit them at their home! After that we went and had a visit with M. I think he really is listening to us, and on the fast Sunday testimony meeting, he got up a bore a sincere testimony of prayer. We just need to help him get over his little doubts and issues he has with being rebaptized.

Saturday we were doing casa and it was cold and just had been a long day. It had been raining and our spirits were pretty low. We get to one apartment complex and starting calling all the doors and on the last one we see someone look at us, and we just get so surprised when she says "venite" (come) so we slowly walk in and then we get even more surprised when she asks us "so you said you have a message about families?" (Our approach to teaching some people) usually we don't get that surprised, but when we do door approaches seldom do people let us in and then actually ask us about our message. It was a mother with two little girls, and we shared a little bit about the plan of salvation and how it blesses families. She invited us back, and told us she knew a family that were members so that is why she let us in. We felt extremely blessed to have met her.

Sunday we spent the day with some members trying to fellowship and help with family mission plans, and we ate some of the best food I've ever had in my life.

Monday I woke up to just a wonderful site. SNOW. We had snow proprio falling almost all day. We were set to have an exchange so the udine missionaries were coming to do the switch so we decided to make our first snowman (and by us I mean the two Californian missionaries and the one Arizona missionary. The Idaho missionary aka my comp has made plenty) after the snow play day, Anziano L. and I were able to meet some new people. We taught a man named prince about the restoration and he invited us to come and teach his friends at the end of the week. The snow brought so many people outside and everyone became super friendly.

Tuesday was Anziano L's birthday so we made a big breakfast to celebrate the end of our exchange and his birthday, and then took him back to Udine. The snow was almost all melted which was really sad, and our snowman was melting, and fell so we were a little depressed, but we talked to some good people and found a couple more potential families.

Today we took a trip up to the city Tarvisio, a city up near the border of Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. There was a ton of snow up there, and we went on a hike that was just soo epic. We felt the we were the fellowship in Lord of the Rings embarking on an adventure. The city was just so calm and full of snow. There was a ski hill nearby and just pretty things. It was a really cool find.

So with so much going by this week, my mind has been very scrambled, but I read something pretty profound from President Monson. “Life is full of difficulties, some minor and others of a more serious nature. There seems to be an unending supply of challenges for one and all. Our problem is that we often expect instantaneous solutions to such challenges, forgetting that frequently the heavenly virtue of patience is required." Sometimes patience is a pain in the rear, but how much more do we learn when we exercise our patience? We can see the blessings come from the patience we have. If a trial came our way and two seconds later it is immediately lifted, we would always get mad when after two seconds our trial was still here. As a missionary, we practice patience daily, and always are working on our patience. But when we truly are patient we always receive the blessings.