November 21
Woo hoo great week this week! I was able to go to zone conference and meet up with a lot of people and learn about the gospel in Verona.
We learned a lot that meeting, first off I got to go and see Anziano Edwards, my old companion from the MTC, he is the sweetest guy and I missed him a lot. Such a joyful reunion. We learned about the most important thing about missionary work on how to help people change and become closer to God and Jesus Christ. This is simply to love them. When we truly love people they will feel this and understand more how to repent and come unto Christ. I love this principle a lot.
The wife of our mission president, Sorella Wolfgramm, really teaches us this with her example. She is probably one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met, (besides my grandparents and of course my mother) and every time she talks to us about how much she loves us you can just tell how sincere and loving she is. I absolutely love it. She had us pick a christlike attribute for us to work on until christmas, working on it every day. I chose Charity, the pure love of Christ. I feel like this will help people I teach feel how important our message is to them.
On another note we also learned that the Church policy is that we do not actively teach muslims (musulmani) anymore. They have to be interviewed by our mission president and have absolutely no chance of being harmed by friends or relatives if they convert. So this will save a lot of time with our contacting because we contact a ton of muslims everyday, the place right outside our apartment is a morrocon hangout spot and we see the same people a lot. They always shout, good day americans! or something like that. Its really funny.
We also got to meet with our new bishop on Sunday, Bishop Carrus. He is an absolute stellar man from Sardegna. He was an amazing missionary in the Catana Italy mission when that was open, and told us some amazing things about his mission. When he was the branch president in the branch in piacenza, he helped along with the missionaries to increase the people attending the ward from about 25 to over 60 people. Seriously an amazing man I am so excited to go forward with his mission. Also one experience I had with the Italian people here was with the ward mission leader. Italians are different than Americans in that if they want to say something they just say it.
The ward mission leader Marco told me really seriously that I needed to commit myself to learning the Italian language and make sure I was working really hard so I could bear my testimony and help people feel the spirit. Haha it was really awesome.
One other tangent about Italians I must go off on is that the standards of dress in Italy are a little more slack than in America. In Church, you see many different crazy colored suits and styles and especially how the high school crowd dresses here, it is much crazier than anything in America or anywhere. I like it a lot. Everyones really nice though.
I love it here and continue to love the food, I have a cookbook with all the meals that I have ever made, good thing my companion is a good cook.
Oh and thanks family for all the letters and everything, I have gotten everything you have mailed to the mission home and also to my home in Reggio Emilia, I appreciate it a lot! I will try to respond as much as possible! I loved the Christmas ornament advent calender, and family photos, and your drawings were very entertaining Jeremy haha you are a pretty good artist nowadays. Well anyways im running late for Pday but until next week!
Enormous Train Station in Verona
Train Station in Milan
Here are some photos I guess ill explain some more! The train stations here are ENOURMOUS wow we were able to go to a zone conference in Verona, and the train station was gigantic. Also the train station in Milano is gigantic, one of the tallest ceilings I have ever seen. Very exciting.
Me with Sandoon
Im in a picture with a new convert named Sandoon who I described last week. His actual name is super super long but he just likes being called Sandoon. For some reason he is not smiling in this picture but he is seriously one of the happiest people I have met. He helped us a lot this Pday with getting to shopping, we usually ride bikes or take the bus but he offered us a ride today. He loves to help us and share the gospel and is very very giving.
Ciao Belli
Anziano Day
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