Vicenza - Week 22

Well First off, I personally think it is really weird that the week I got snow, you all got snow too.... But anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed their New Year’s parties and are ready for this wonderful upcoming year of 2015. This week in Italy, there were still holidays going on until yesterday with the 6th of January being the last winter holiday, the day of Epiphany. I won’t describe the holiday in detail because I know you all have the means to look it up yourselves haha.

This week we consecrated ourselves to working on the streets to find some new investigators. In the midst of the freezing cold, we were stopping people and knocking on doors trying to get someone to listen to our message. With the lack of success we were having this week, I started to wonder what I was doing wrong, trying to figure out how we could do a better job finding more people, and I couldn’t figure it out. But I didn’t let that discourage me because out here in Italy, it is going to be hard.  I am going to have plenty of weeks that I would sure love never to go through again, but as quoted in Batman Begins "What do we do when we fall? We pick ourselves back up". Myself and Anziano L.continued to keep our happy faces, and tried to make as much fun as we could out of street contacting. We sang horribly out of tune songs, cracked jokes to each other, and acted like weird Italians. As soon as we changed our attitude about finding work, we were able to start seeing some success. We received a lot of potential investigators that we are visiting this week. We had worked our butts off, and slowly started to see something come out of it. It certainly boosted my testimony that if ye are diligent in your labors, you will receive the fruits of them. I certainly am starting to taste of the fruit

This week we were also able to, in addition to finding work, start family mission plans with a lot of member families. We go to their house and work with them on things they can do, through goal setting, to increase their activity in missionary work. One family was so excited that they invited us over this upcoming week to follow up on their mission plan that includes 2 families they want us to teach. I know for a fact that when members get involved in missionary work, that it grows exponentially. So, as a missionary who's job it is to teach and invite people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, I ask that every member see what they can do to aid missionary work.

I would like to just leave with a little quote:

"Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun is out"

If we are not constantly praying and giving thanks to our Heavenly Father when he blesses us, than why would he want to bless us when time gets hard? He loves us and will always love us, so we need to always love him and pray always to him, not just when we have no where else to go.

Hope everyone has a great week and can see many blessings!

Anziano Chase 

My California flag

English class