Vicenza - Week 21

Ciao Tutti e Auguri!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have a great New Year's! Well I had probably the most white Christmas ever this year, literally, and spiritually! So on Christmas we went to and fro from a bunch of members homes for various meals etc. It was a full day of just chatting and feeling at home for a day. I then got to skype home and who is going to not enjoy that??? It was a great relaxing day. The following day we went back to work proselytizing and teaching people on the street. We honestly had a hard time finding people to teach mainly because no one wanted to go out the day after Christmas (We also assume the same will happen on New Years as well). But it was okay because we had a baptism we had to prepare for. We woke up bright and early Saturday morning to fill the font in the Padova church Building. We were not expecting the B. family to show up until 30 minutes before the baptism, but they were so excited and showed up over an hour early! We got them dressed and all of the people who were going to baptize them. It literally was a sea of people in white. I don't think i will ever see a sight like that again (but i would sure like to). We planned for about 40 people to show up to support the baptism, and over 60 ended up coming!! The baptism went soo great, the family was so excited, and when I went to baptize the youngest son Eric, I felt a surge of energy fill inside me. It honestly was too cool to describe. After the baptism we thought our white Christmas was over, but as we were driving back from Padova with a member family, it started snowing!! It was just a perfect combination for the day. A baptism filled with people in white, and the rest of Vicenza in a blanket of white!

I was so excited to see the snow, and quite frankly got sick because of it. I walked outside in the snow for fun without a coat on and got under the weather and was out of commission for the rest of the week. But I’m fine now so no worries haha. Now that the B. family is baptized, we get to start preparing more people for baptism so we are back on the streets looking for people who want to hear the gospel. We hope to find some new people this week and give them the same joy we feel.

Here is a little quote I like about the scriptures:

"None of this makes much of a difference unless it gets inside you. All of this is just marks on pieces of paper bound together in leather; it has not value, unless it becomes you. The purpose and essential blessing of life is to be changed, to become more like the Lord your God, to realize the full measure of your divine potential"

I hope we can all apply this to our lives and resolve to recommit ourselves to being more like our Savior. There is not better time to start changing then there is today. Happy New Year!

Anziano Chase

Vicenza - Week 20

Hey everyone!

I don’t have a lot of time today, but I’ll make some quick remarks. This week has been full of Christ-centered appointments. Man, if only every week was Christmas, we could have so many people who want to think about Christ. We have been flooding people with messages of Christ and of the true spirit and meaning of Christmas. My companion was a little sick this week, but even with that, we were still able to attend all our appointments and much more. The baptism is happening this Saturday and I am just soo excited! It is a white Christmas for the Lord and it just testifies to the many miracles that Christ gives us. I hope that the work will flow everywhere because everyone I talk to, if they don’t just turn us away and yell bad things at us, ends up going away feeling a little bit better about themselves and think just a little bit more about the pure things in life, the gospel, and the Savior.

I really like these verses of scripture for Christmas:

Luke 2:

 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

 30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

 31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

 32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

We know of our savior. We know he is the way, we know he is the light. Let us come unto him and embrace him. He is the gift to mankind. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and spends a little time thinking about what we can give to him this Christmas. After all isn't this considered his birthday, the time we should be giving him gifts, not receiving gifts???

Buon Natale!!!

Thanks for having everyone send letters, It is appreciated a lot!

 Me teaching about Christ

Making ginerbread men for pday with members

The gingerbread missionary was made for me from a daughter in the family named Ellie

Vicenza - Week 19

Buon Giorno Tutti

Questa Settima era buon. Lo ho recevuto una nuova collega se chiama Anziano L. Elder L. is from Idaho Falls. He has been on his mission for about a year and a half. He loves football, and aspires to be a college football coach. So needless to say, we are off to a good start. To be honest, I didn't want a new companion after Elder S., but I think we will be ok.  Sports and this Christmas season will unite us. I gave him a pretty good introduction to Vicenza. I picked him up at Milan (He is coming from Genova) and we went bowling with the senior couple for introductions to the area and the people.

We then had ourselves an American Ward activity for Christmas and we had a lot of good converstations with people.

Anziano Chase and L.

President Dibb and his wife ended up coming to our ward for church on Sunday. It was strange having him there, but you can always count on him to lay down the law for the ward in regards to missionary work and how they should always have someone for us to teach. Who knows if it will make them change, but it sure is something we can hope for.

There is this family that the other Elders have been teaching - Gina, Jesus, and their two children Julian and Eric. They are a military family, and are just some of the nicest people around. In the month that they have been taught, I have been on exchanges teaching their family for almost 75% of their lessons. I never really thought about it that much. On a night when I was their with one of the other elders, we committed them to baptism! We were so excited. But it gets better.  Anziano L. and I were out teaching a less active, and I get a call from Eric. He asked me to be the one to baptize him! It is pretty freaking awesome! I never thought that I would have made so much of an impact on a family that wasn’t in my investigator list. One of the elders that actually has them as investigators and myself, get to baptize them. It just made me so grateful to know that wherever I am, I can still make a difference in someone's life. They are getting baptized the 27th of this month, and I am just soooo excited for them.

Hope everything goes well, and remember to share the true spirit of Christ with all those that you can. One less active named Hiranth told us that he was just so grateful that we would think to tell him that Christ loves and knows him, just like our Heavenly Father. If we just take a minute and tell someone they are loved by their Heavenly Father and Savior, we have no idea what type of impact we can make in their lives.

I know the gospel is true with all my heart. I know that Christ is the one and only reason why we should be celebrating this Christmas season. I know that this gospel has been restored and that it is verified in the teachings of the Book of Mormon. I am grateful for the trials I have in my life, and for the strength to overcome them!

Ciao Raggazzi!!!

Anziano Chase

Vicenza - Week 18

Hey everyone!

Hope you all had a happy and fun week. This week was sure busy. We had a Christmas conference, well what they considered to be a Christmas conference. We sang some carols, had a cinnamon roll, and watched the video "Egli è il dono" which is "He is the gift" We have been encouraged to spread this video  across the globe, and to all we meet. It is a nice video that shows the true gift of Christmas, the first gift, the reason of Christmas. So here is my little promotion of this video: Watch it, share it, and remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Transfer calls came in this last week too, and I will be remaining in Vicenza for another 6 weeks. My companion, on the other hand, is heading out to Morbengo tomorrow. It is really sad to part ways with a top bro in the mission, but it had to happen sooner or later. We spent the whole week making visits to members, investigators, and had a good week. Lots of people are going to miss Elder S.here, and that just makes me want to do the same as he did, and leave an impact on this city. I am getting a new companion, Elder L., who is coming in from Genova. From what I hear, he loves football, so I have high hopes for what the future brings.

The time of the year makes for many spiritual blessings, and there is just such a great feeling out in the center of the city at night. There are lights up in every city, and personally, it beats Christmas houses in America. I love how the whole city comes together to make this season a great experience.

The future is still covered with a veil of mystery, but I am excited for what is to come, and will try my best to make every moment the best. Hope you all have a great week and enjoy this festive time of year!

Anziano Chase

Cool little scipture section to read. Start with Words of Mormon 1:7 and after you have pondered it, go to Ezra 10:4. We do not know all things, but the Lord does. He works in us to do His will. He will be with us and we need to have the courage, and then actually go out and do it!

Marostica

The board game Brotherhood

Vicenza - Week 17

Hey everyone!

Hope all of you all had a great Thanksgiving. There is no such thing as Thanksgiving here in Italy, but once again I have the military base here in Vicenza to be grateful for. There is a Samoan member named Ringo who really loves missionaries. He is the one who always takes us to all-you-can-eat places. He picked us up Thanksgiving morning and brought us to his house. There, he had an uncooked big turkey, a ham, and limitless food items that you would have at a Thanksgiving. Then he told us we had to cook our Thanksgiving meal.  We got to work right away and created a masterpiece. It turned out really awesome! I know for sure no other missionaries in Italy had it made like we did, and I am continuously grateful. We had a great day with him and then he sent us home with all the food for leftovers, so needless to say, I have been stuffed lately.

We have had a pretty good week with lessons and so forth, but things have slowed down a little bit now due to a dry spot in new investigators. We don’t let that get to us, though. We keep going with the people we know and try to make a difference in their lives. We were walking through town with Robson, our Brazilian friend and investigator, and he told us something that really touched me. He said, "when I am with you guys I know I can walk anywhere, and have the power of God to protect me." It gave me a real confidence boost that I know no matter who I talk to, or where I go, I am in the Lord's hands and he will protect me from anything that tries to take me away from my mission here in Italy!

We get transfer calls this Saturday, and I am really nervous that they will be taking Anziano S. out of the city, because we have been together for 3 months now, but I know whatever happens, will be for the better of the mission.

A little spiritual thought I would like to share is from the book The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W Kimball. "All of us are sinners... the only tragedy in life is sin... no one is perfect, but the Lord has given us a sure cure- Repentance" These are all broken up parts of the book, but it's message is clear. Anything we do wrong has a way back. If we seek that forgiveness we can achieve it through repentance. We are not chained down from heaven because if we sin, we can still be freed from our chains through repentance.

I hope everyone has a great week. Vi Volgio Bene!!

Anziano Chase

I got the Christmas package. Thanks for all the food and gifts and the tree. It's hanging up all set up. I was not patient and accidentally ripped one of the presents, so I just opened them all.

Vicenza - Week 16

Bridge built by Paladio, the creator of Vicenza

Hey everyone!

Hope you all had a great week. This week seemed really short, due to us having our P-day back to normal now. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty eventful week. We started this week by deciding to focus on gratitude, because Thanksgiving is this week in America. We would write down just a few things we were grateful for each day, and would write down different types of gratitude too, such as; why we are grateful for Italy, our companion, our ward, our investigators, random, etc.. And then we decided to go off of what President Utchdorf said in a Conference a few days back about being grateful in our circumstances and FOR our circumstances, So each day we would write down why we were grateful for a circumstance we were in and also why we were grateful for a circumstance we went through. It brought a whole new change to our thought process and helped be a lot more happy throughout our week.

We had a lot of investigators show up to church on Sunday, the most I have ever seen, so we are hoping to get some good things accomplished this week with them. We are continuously blessed by the members here in Italy. We went out with Ringo and an investigator again this week, but instead of going to all you can eat BBQ, we went to all you can eat sushi. I have to workout twice as hard right now to not gain too much weight, but i have gotten so many food blessings that it is pretty dang hard haha.

We took a bike ride to go do a passby of a potential investigator and while we were riding we decided to stop by lago di Fimon. We were a little dissapointed that we didnt get a real good view of the lake, but it was still nice to be able to go look at the natural landmarks in Italy. You can never go wrong with a good long bike ride around Italy. We also saw a huge pork for sale at the store. It was just a little bit out of our price range though as missionaries.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving, and try to look at the hard times you may have had, or are having, and look for ways to be grateful about it. The Lord never gives us a trial that we cannot handle, which should also give us a greater reason to be grateful for the growth we receive from it.

Anziano Chase

This is a really nice family in the Vicenza Ward. The Matteazzi Family. 

Vicenza - Week 15

Buona Giornata Tutti!

This Wednesday we had a mission tour done by Elder Fingerly of the Quorum of the Seventy. We went down to Verona for the tour. All the missionaries thought we were getting IPads but it ended up that we might not being getting any at all in Italy. Elder Fingerly talked a lot about how we can use technology though to improve finding people to teach. He talked about how we should encourage members to use social sites to invite others to church events that missionaries will be at. He also talked about how we can improve results in our lives by looking to improve little things by just one percent. If we do that, all the little areas that improved by one percent with make a huge difference on the overall scale and will bring so much more to the work.

The week was pretty slow again, but we had some good lessons with Aurora, still prepping her for baptism in the future. We also went with a member in the Italian ward named Ringo to eat at an all you can eat Brazilian bbq place with a friend he wanted us to teach. It was such a blessing to not only get fed like crazy, but to have people trust us enough to teach their friends. To me, gaining that member relationship is huge because it helps us to create bonds and help them. It is so much better than going to a member’s house asking for someone to teach.  If they want us to teach someone, then they will ask us also. It really helps that relationship because we aren’t using them to find people to teach. We taught a lot more lessons and had some good times.

No favorite italian food yet, but there are plenty of interesting meals I’ve had like Bankoo, an African dish with fermented corn mashed into a ball with a spicy soup to dip the ball into.

Side note, I got to hang with Elder M. at the conference all day so it was pretty cool to be able to hang with him and some other cool bros.

Hope everyone has a good week and I get to email you all back Wednesday again!!