Conferenza Generale - Week 59

Hey everyone,

I hope you all got to witness this wonderful General Conference we had this past weekend. I was truly inspired by our prophet and apostles.

This week was really short due to transfers and conference, but nevertheless it was full with spiritual enlightenment and blessings. My new companion, Anziano C., is just a stud.  He's from L.A and is just a happy dude. I'm helping his Italian and he's helping my Spanish out so we can teach people in Spanish in addition to Italian and English. It's quite fun to have different languages to speak.

We were given the opportunity to watch conference this weekend, and for us it had to be a 3 day event because our time zone is too far ahead and the afternoon sessions start way too late in the day for us to watch them. We invited all our investigators to watch conference, and T.G. came with us to watch a session in Lampugnano, a section of Milan where the stake center is for the Milano Ovest Stake. The day before conference, we had been teaching him about how the prophets give us latter-day revelation. When we told him that the prophet would be speaking to us, he said he had to be there so he could follow the council of the prophet and see what he sounds and looks like. We watched the priesthood session with him and he was just so happy to see the prophet. He is doing whatever it takes to be closer to our Heavenly Father.

We were able to visit some people this week and use conference talks as our lessons with them this week. My personal favorite talk was by President Uchtdorf during the Saturday morning session.  He talked about how we need to simplify our path to discipleship. I like how he said we chase after shadows, we peruse matters of little value.. The gospel of Jesus Christ is simple. The fourth article of faith states the simplicity of it: Faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Yes, we make more covenants with our Heavenly Father, and are asked to follow certain things, but sometimes we get caught up in the things that really are not important, or get caught up in the fine details of things so that we forget the core of the principle. We search for explicit information from extra resources and disregard the truth we can already rely on. Our Heavenly Father wants us to progress, but we can only do that if we continue to work on the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I also really loved the talk by President Monson during the Sunday morning session. We know that life has it’s tolls on the human body, but what I learned from the end of President Monson’s talk was that his faith and his firm testimony was more important than anything else. As he was struggling to finish, he would not quit until he got those final declarations of faith said. That is how we all should approach our testimony of the Savior. When we get weak, when things get hard, would we still lay down our lives for the Savior?? It was all the confirmation I needed from the prophet to know that we all need to do more than we are currently doing.

I hope everyone is able to see the Lord in their daily actions this week, and ask yourself the same question Larry R Lawrence asked. "What is keeping me from progressing?" and then make that change!

Have a great week everyone,

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸

Rendiamo grazie a dio - Week 58

Ciao tutti. Spero che tutti di voi state preparando di sentire le parole questa weekend. Non è spesso che abbiamo questa opportunità di vedere i incarichi di tre apostoli. Io so che riceveremo un spirit dolce se ascolteremo alle parole da loro.  (Translation: Hello everybody. I hope all of you are preparing to hear words this weekend. It is not often that we have this opportunity to see the positions of three apostles. I know that we will receive a spirit sweet if we listen to the words from them .)

New transfer calls came in this week and my companion Anziano M. will be leaving. For being a young missionary, I know he is going to do great things, as I learned so much from him. My new companion will be Anziano C. from Los Angeles, for which I'm pretty excited about. He has been on his mission only for 3 months but is a great missionary. Seeing him at our zone trainings, he is always a happy guy and we have already become friends just at these trainings, so I believe we will do some great work together.

The week was mostly set with goodbyes but it was still a productive week. The sisters in our area had a baptism for a girl of 11 years of age that we all had been helping out. We made sure we would get the whole ward involved in this baptism because we wanted to bring as many investigators as we could to see the baptism. The ward responded gladly and a couple of our investigators, including her dad who isn’t a member, got really emotional during the baptism. The spirit could not have been any more present than it was at that baptism. The Sunday confirmation was quite stressful, but ended up being perfect. Our mission president decided to attend our church for the confirmation and we got a lot of our investigators to commit to coming to church. As my companion and I were sitting down next to some members, we noticed church was about to begin, but the girl who was recently baptized, our investigators, and the rides for our investigators still weren't here. I then got a call from the girl’s mother saying their car wasn't working and they were stuck. So at the beginning of the meeting I had to sneak up to the stand to inform the bishopric that we needed to get them here. One of the bishopric members then raced off to pick them up. As time went by, we saw two of our investigators show up. But time was running out for sacrament meeting and the confirmation. I was praying super hard that they would show up.  Our mission president was in our ward, we had investigators in church, they just had to show up. As the last speaker was speaking, I noticed he was going a little longer than usual and out of the corner of my eye I saw the family with the bishopric member. She was confirmed just before the end of sacrament meeting. The rest of church went fantastic. Our mission president helped teach our investigators, and I just knew the lord has blessed us immensely.

T.G. (I finally asked him to write his name down for me because I could never understand it fully. I then realized it was literally "Thank God" #Perfect) is making tremendous progress. He knows what we are teaching him is true. He always wants to be around us so he can let the word of God sink into his heart every day. I truly know he is being prepared to be a great person.

C. is making great progress as well. We are focusing on "are we better today then we were yesterday?" as a guide towards the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to be an eternal progression; we can never stop bettering ourselves. Once we notice we can better ourselves, and ARE bettering ourselves we can notice the gospel working in our lives.

P. is doing great, he really enjoys young mens and asking questions. He really understands the need to be more like the savior Jesus Christ. If we follow his example we will know what we need to do to return to him. I truly think he is being a great example to his peers and will accept the gospel in his life.

I know this gospel is true. I am a witness of Christ. I have seen Him work in me for the salvation of others, and acts as a perfect example of our Heavenly Father. He has given us the way back, and suffered for our sins so we may return to our Father above. As we listen to conference this week I hope we all have questions in our hearts, and seek for inspiration. I promise the spirit will speak individually and teach us all the things WE need to hear.

Have a great week everyone

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive

Il nostro padre celeste - Week 57

Hello everyone.

This week was just your typical week as a missionary.

Working hard and helping people come closer to Christ. This week went

a little slow with some of our investigators but we keep moving

forward.

Tangod is doing great, I've never taught anyone who has had so many

deep spiritual questions and desire. He really wants to know more

about our Heavenly Father. We had a great lesson with him and he said

he was filled with the spirit in church. He wants to continue his

progression so he can be baptized, and he keeps giving us perfect

questions for us to help him.

Christian is doing well. We taught him about the Ten Commandments and

we really focused on helping him feel the blessings of following God's

teachings. We can't receive blessings from God without doing something

to receive it. I use to think God blesses people just because he can,

but I realized that God is a just God, and in order to bless his

children he gives us promised blessings through commandments. As we

follow his commandments it enables him to bless us. Without this he

would not be able to be a fair/just God at the same time as a loving

God.

Yaw is doing well. We had a lesson on the restoration of the

priesthood. The restored priesthood authority gives us the enabling

power to perform sacred ordinances such as baptism. We taught him that

it isn't wrong that he had been baptized in a church. We taught him

that through the restored priesthood, he is able to receive the gift

of the Holy Ghost, and many blessings that can only be giving through

His(God's) priesthood. He understood it and said he would pray to know

if it is true.

I did a two day exchange in Varese this week and it was a little hard.

There are not many investigators in the city at the moment, so we knew

we were going to be looking for new people to teach. For hours and

hours we stopped people, preaching simple truths, but we're not

getting anyone who was interested. We finished the first day with no

one new that we could meet in the future. We taught a lot of people,

but ended without anyone wanting to know more. We thought maybe the

next day would go better. It ended up the same way. After leaving for

my city I felt like I didn't do enough to help the other elders get

new investigators, but as I was stopping people in my city I ended up

finding a couple of people who were interested in our message but

lived in Varese. I was able to give the other elders their numbers but

when they called the people were no longer interested. I felt like I

had failed. Then, as I was praying before bed that night, I felt a

revelation in my heart. I felt God testifying to me that I did all

that I needed to do. That I taught his children and tried my best to

help people know of him. Sometimes we only think we are doing well if

there are numbers to back up our efforts, but I realized it is the

effort behind our work that lets us know if we are succeeding. No, I

didn't find anyone new, but God didn't ask me to find them new people,

he asked me to bring his word to his children in Italy. And if I'm

doing that them I am successful. Some people will listen, some won't,

but the effort in our work makes all the difference.

I just want to leave with a thought on our Heavenly Father. He truly

knows us. Just as he knew my heart and intentions on my exchange, He

truly knows what we need to hear, do, or see. He is the master of all

things. Everything of God invites and enticiths to do good. He is what

we are trying to become. That is why we are here. And He is always

waiting to lend us a hand. He only gives us commandments and teachings

to bring us back to him. He loves us more than we can ever imagine,

and is waiting for us with open arms.

I know this gospel is true. The gospel has been restored on the earth,

and its teachings are meant for us, not yesterday, or the future, but

for right now. I know we can find true happiness through the teachings

of Jesus Christ. He lives.

Have a great week!

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸

Busto Arsizio - Week 56

Hey everyone,

I'm really starting to run out of little openers to say, so I'll really just get straight to it this time. This week definitely had its up and downs. But in the end I'm always still happy with the week.

So this week the focus was on getting all our investigators to church. After going through all the ways to get people to church, through rides, directions, and even plans to walk with them (which from our
starting point would take an hour on foot) we felt we had done everything we needed to do. The person we were going to walk with ended up canceling, and every single investigator who had a ride also cancelled. Sitting in church, we felt just helpless wondering what more we could have done. Then I turn around to say hi to a member, and see one of our investigators sitting in a chair in the chapel. He came by himself on his bike because we had talked about church. I was a little shocked, because out of all the people we thought might come to church, he would be the least likely because he wasn't sure he could come and he was on bike. He ended up having a great experience, and I
learned that the Lord will always help us if we are doing all that we can. It may not be how we expect it to be at the end, but it is none the less still a blessing from the lord. I know everyone else will find their way to church in the end if we keep helping them, but I know now that the Lord is always going to help us in one way or another.

C. is doing really well. We taught him the word of wisdom and he wasn't really that phased. The tea thing confused him a little bit, but when we talked about, how sometimes we don't understand why God asks us to follow certain commandments, but it is an explicit demonstration of our faith in him. We don't always need to know why, but we do need to believe that it is to bless us.

M. had a little busy week, but we will be seeing him in the end of this week

C. is doing good, we read Alma 7 together and talked about God works within us. Nothing can change us in the gospel unless we allow it to get inside us. As missionaries we teach unto the people, and the spirit works in the people. We have to allow the savior and the spirit into our lives if we want to make any change. He really liked that and slowly is starting to feel more confident that the Lord is making changes in him everyday.

Y. is doing well too. He is becoming a lot more open with us, which to me is a sign that he truly trusts us and the gospel. When we were talking about the principles of the gospel he pointed out how nice it is to know that there is always a companion in the Holy Ghost, that we can feel secure and comforted in times of trial. He really is making a change in himself, and I see him as a much happier man already.

We met a new investigator named T.G. He came to Italy about 2 months ago and has been searching for a church to worship at. He met us and told us how he has been blessed with work because he made the promise to worship God on Sunday and never work Sunday. When we introduced him to the restoration of the gospel he became super excited and wants to come to church with us this following Sunday.

I've been focusing a lot these last couple days on the importance of having faith without extreme experiences, and even more in continuing in that same faith. I was thinking about Hyrum Smith, the brother of Joseph the prophet. Hyrum never saw angels like Joseph and Oliver Cowdery. Oliver was a great help to Joseph when things were going great, but when trials arose, he would murmur and fall away. Hyrum, he stayed faithful through it all. He never doubted the religion his brother restored, he followed the teachings of Christ, and he too sealed it with his blood alongside Joseph. We don't need a vision of God the father to know that he is real. We don't need to see the gold plates to know the Book of Mormon is true. We get that revelation through promptings of the Holy Ghost. And how blessed are we when we follow these teachings. The rewards in the heavens will be immeasurable. I know each and everyone of us can receive our own confirmation of the divinity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we will be blessed for our efforts as we endure to the end.

I know the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, I don't need him to come say it to me, because I already know it to be true, I know Thomas S Monson is a prophet called of God. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is Christ's church upon the earth today, and I know that God answers our prayers.

Have a great week everyone!

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸

Le scritture sono per noi - Week 55

Hey everyone!

This week went by incredibly fast, I don't know where to
start. We met a lot of new people and it just is going good.

So we had the great privilege of having Elder Kearon of the quorum of
the seventy come and visit our mission. He is our new area president.
He gave a great teaching to us. I could talk about so many things he
said, but I will simplify my thoughts to about how we need to become
the message that we teach. We teach so many great principles, and the
best way for people to understand them is if they see it in us. He
also gave a lot of thanks to us about what we have already done.
Missionary work should be happy work, and that we cannot forget about
our new converts. He said "twice in white" and it is true. True
salvation can only come when we are baptized and go through the
temple. It's never a one and done thing in the gospel. Anyways it was
just a great conference. On to the work.

We received a referral from the Varese Anziani about a man named
Mercy. He was with a friend that was being taught in Varese and
wanted to know more. It just happened that he lived in our area. We
set an appointment with him, and as we went to meet him, he was there
and brought a friend named Joel, who also wanted to know more. We had a
great lesson with them and we are going to be seeing a lot more of
them.

We were walking through a park one afternoon, after church and we saw
fFank, one of our investigators that left for vacation in August. We
greeted him and started to talk about what we had wanted to teach
him before he left. He asked us to finish the lesson, and as we were
teaching his friend, Desmund, came. We had a spiritual lesson on the
plan of salvation.

One of our new investigators, Christian, came to church with us because
his friend, Terry, one of the members in Busto, kept telling him how
great church is. He came and during priesthood we decided to teach him
a lesson in another classroom. As we were teaching him, it was as if
everything he would reply in my questions went along with what I was
about to teach him. He had been so spiritually prepared before I
taught him. Terry bore a bold testimony, and when I asked him if he
believed these things to be true, he proudly said yes. Now we are
helping him progress so he can be baptized soon!

Prosper and Delfino were busy this week, but we were also, so we hope
to have a good lesson with them in the very near future.

For family home evening I had the privilege of teaching
everyone how to make American cookies. Boy were the people excited! We also
decided to use the cookies as a parable for a lesson about how
to make cookies, we need ingredients and a recipe. We need different
things to put together a testimony of faith. Once we put our
"ingredients" together we need to nurture them in the oven, allow it
to solidify, and then watch our cookie dough ball become that
delicious cookie.

I also had the privilege of giving some instruction to my district
this week. The desired subject asked by the assistants was to talk
about what we learned at the conference with Elder Kearon. So I took a
lot about he taught us to have faith in our work, and molded it into a
training that assists it. We always talk about how we need to find
more faith in what we do, and that is absolutely necessary, we can't
grow without it. But my focus in the training was to help us realize
the faith we already have. Sometimes we spend so much time wondering
why we don't have the same firm faith as others, that we disregard our
own testimonies. My two questions of focus were, "what has God already
done for you in your life?" And "what have we already done for God?"
Our testimonies are always growing, and the most common way they grow
is through experiences, what God has done for us, and in turn what we
did for him. When we notice what we have done for him in the past it
is able to assure of us the faith we have expressed. If we truly want
to build our faith, we have to build it off of the faith we already have.
So why not make an account of the everything that has made you who you
are today. I know each and everyone of us have stronger testimonies
than we give ourselves credit for, and when we stop and realize the
things that have already happened in our lives we can have the faith
to increase that faith we had.

I know this gospel is true, I know God loves us. He lives, and he
loves each and every one of us.

Anziano Chase

I was playing the piano and my companion decide to have some fun

La vita è bella - Week 54

Hey everyone,

So the end of the week started to pick up with people and work, so we feel like we are running full steam ahead again. So I had the opportunity to do an exchange in Varese with
Anziano Mastino. They have been trying to pick up the work in their area, so we hit the streets looking for people who were interested. We used the question, "what is the purpose of life?" as a thought provoking intro to people we would stop. Naturally as we were stopping people, they would say they didn't have time or were not interested, but right as we were about to finish our street contacting, one woman said just the best response, she said to be happy. We got so excited to hear someone say that we threw our hands up in the air, and said "that's the perfect answer!" She laughed and we started talking more about it and she wanted to know more. After that we really had a renewed fire in us to stop people. This time we wanted to change our question to "how does God help us find happiness?" and we really got a lot of good response to that question. God is the master of all things, he knows exactly what we need to be happy. He gave us the Plan of Salvation aka the Plan of Happiness. He gave us his gospel, ways for us to receive blessings, and he never leads us down a path of sorrow. I really put that into perspective this week.

Prosper, he is a stud. He really understands the gospel of Christ. We were teaching him the principles of the gospel, and he just applied it to himself right away. He is only 16 years old too! I really believe God gives us so much wisdom and that no matter how old we are we can receive knowledge we never thought possible. Prosper just embraced our lesson and really took it upon himself to apply the teachings. He is making great progression.

Charles is continuing on slowly but surely. We had a great talk about the purpose of fasting and tithing, and with fasting we were able to talk about how it is another way to receive knowledge from God. We invited him to give it a try if he truly wants an answer. That if he has the faith, he will receive an answer. He said he will think on it and maybe give it a shot.

We met a new girl named Roberta this week. She is 20 from Brazil, and she speaks Portuguese, and a little bit of English (no Italian). She recognized my companion and I in our missionary clothes, and told us her mom in Brazil is a member that feeds the elders. We talked with her and she told us she was wanting a change in her life. We invited her to receive the lessons from us and she said yes. We had a powerful lesson about Jesus Christ and how through him we can return to our Heavenly Father. If we want council or are in need of guidance, prayer is the way of communicating our needs to the Father. She told us what we were doing is a beautiful thing. We really enjoyed teaching her, but she will be learning from the sister missionaries for now on. I am sure she will notice a great change in her life, and with the spirits guidance she will know of gods love for her.

I was thinking about how life can be rough at times and a scripture came to mind that just made everything better. 6 Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass... (Alma 37:6) I was thinking about how God asked all the ancient prophets to write down their spiritual promptings in a book. It really is nothing big, but after thousands of years it became the bible and Book of Mormon, which are huge things. The same thing goes with everyday life. A simple smile really goes a long way. A short testimony given to someone may have been simple for you, but made a big change in someone else's life. God doesn't ask us to build an ark these days (well at least not me anyways) but he asks us to do small and simple things, because it is the everyday little things that make really difference. I told Roberta that life isn't a walk in the park, but gosh darn it, it's worth it. We don't have to create the first artificial human, or solve cancer to bring forth good things, we just have to do the little things that God asks us to do, to receive an everlasting joy. Almost every testimony starts from a little thing, everyone has a seed in them, and through nurture and care, it grows into a forest of a testimony. I know this to be true, the gospel is simple, and it's requirements small, but it's rewards are great.

I hope everyone enjoys their week!

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸

You Mormons?? - Week 53

 Hey everyone,

So this week was one of the rougher weeks, just with everyone seeming to be gone for the middle of August. Our bikes are being repaired and on Saturday it was Ferragosto, a holiday in Italy, being the longest day of the year. Everyone was gone, everything closed, and no buses. We ended up walking over 10 miles that day. But there are still so many tender mercies of the Lord. Oh, also transfer calls came and I am still with Anziano Mortezazadeh for another transfer. We are excited, and think that there are some people in need of the gospel from us.

The Esse family is still on vacation, but they return tomorrow, and we are looking to keep them on track (Delfino, Pierre, and Prosper) for baptism. We think they truly are a big help to each other.

We had a great lesson with Charles about sabbath day observance. We let all worldly things take place on Sundays now. Shopping, partying, big sporting events (I was a big failure when it came to watching sports) and other big shows. We allow ourselves to think of Sunday as just a day maybe to go to church, and then just another free day to do whatever. God didn't ask us just to go to his house of worship on Sunday, he asked a lot more. He asked us to give 1 day in 7 to dedicate our thoughts, actions, and feelings towards him. To restrain from everyday labors. Keeping the sabbath day holy doesn't come and go in the 3 hours of church. We are asked to go about doing good, thinking of him, study his council. When we have the attitude of making God the center of our focus on Sunday, we become happy. We get more out of the day. It is a dedication of our love and faith to him. Charles really liked that. He still wants to receive an answer of where to worship, but he does believe in being focused on God in his actions on Sunday.

We found a really nice man named Luigi this past week. He was talking about our nationality and how we were serving missions and he wanted us to come teach his family about who we were. We got all excited and set up a day to meet them. My companion and I went to a train station in Gallarate, a nearby city, and called him to see what stop he wanted us to go to. He told us a city up on the north side of Lago Maggiore. It turned out to not only be out of our area, but out of the zone limits. We were heartbroken, because we knew we couldn't go to his house to teach him, but we knew the missionaries in that area would be great for him. We told him our dilemma, and sadly he said that it was ok, and he would call the other missionaries. Then he told us he is just staying in that city for the summer and then would be returning to a city in our area and will be coming to our English class after. We knew we were blessed for following guidance given to us. If we would have left to see that family we might not have been able to make a good connection with them, but I truly believe that because we followed the teachings of our mission president we are going to be blessed.

So a lot of people canceled on us this week, we had long days of walking, rainstorms, closed shops when we were hungry, but overall we were pretty happy. We had some funny moments with people. One day we were on a bus and a guy walks on with a beer. He looks at us and says "Mormons?" "Yes we are" "I'm drunk, do you speak English?" "Why yes we do!" With that little questionnaire we started to have a very casual conversation with him, and ended up giving him a couple of pamphlets for when he sobered up. It was quite funny. He kept asking us strange questions and then adding things that are only funny when drunk people say them. Another day we were walking down the street and a guy yells as us singing "God bless America" and then to top it off, we were walking on another street and pass a guy and before we can say a thing to him he smacks his chest, right on his heart and gives us a pleasing nod of approval. So despite having some rough appointments there were always good, funny moments to be had.

In my studies I've been tackling 3 nefi, and I was reading something in chapter 12 that hit me.

44 But behold I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.

There are plenty of "difficult" people in the world, but as God has commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, it refers to everyone, regardless of what we do. The purpose behind it is for us to be like God. God doesn't treat anyone lesser than another, "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good" he wants us to use our "sun", our "light of Christ" towards everyone, good and bad. We can't be like our Heavenly Father if we don't love one another. It is not easy, but nothing is meant to be easy, or being like Heavenly Father wouldn't mean as much to us.

I truly believe that Heavenly Father wants us to be an example of his teachings. I know the truth of his gospel, and I'm here in Italy sharing it with all who will listen, good or bad. I know everyone deserves to hear the truth, and that the gospel blesses all of us.

Have a great week everyone!

Anziano Chase

Perché egli vive🇮🇹🇮🇹🇺🇸🇺🇸