The Righteous “Frat" House
Whattuppp everyone! I hope you all had a great week. I am writing this email at a cafe in the middle of some ruins that we came to for pday in a city called Ostia. We decided to come with our whole district, so it has been a really fun time and I have really enjoyed it. There have been some cool old ampitheaters and some old statues and so it’s been cool to walk around and site-see. As for this upcoming week, we have some different exchanges planned with the missionaries in Terni and then also here in Rome. I am really excited for both of them, especially because I will be going to Terni to work with Anziano Farinotti. He is a great missionary, and also, I will be able to see my old city that I worked in for three transfers when I first came here to Italy. I will also be able to do a scambio with Anziano Melling, who just recently got transferred here from Trapani. He is a really cool guy and I am really excited to learn from him.
As for this week, it has been great. We have still been doing our very best to find new investigators, which has really started to pick up. We were able to find some awesome contacts that we are really excited about. One experience that I had was this past Sunday. What had happened is all the missionaries came in to Rome from our stake because we were having stake conference. Because of that, we were able to work with some of the different missionaries from the other cities. I had the opportunity to work with Anziano Mayer, who got here in the mission just 3 weeks ago. We talked about some goals that we wanted to accomplish together by giving a Book of Mormon away to someone and then also finding a specific amount of investigators. We prayed and then felt like we could find 3 new investigators in the afternoon. We then headed out and just had such a nice time doing some finding. Most of the people that we talked to were super open and willing to listen to us. We were able to find 3 new people who are really interested to learn more before we headed to the villa to do interviews. Prayer really does work!
Stake conference was a great time. The members from Terni came to Rome and so that was really fun being able to see most of my other friends that I had made in my first city. One of the families remembers me really well. The father is the one that I would always refer to as "Tarzan." I didn't see him until after but I was talking to someone and then he came up and just shoved me really hard in my back and it was so sick being able to see him. We have a great relationship because he is one that always tries to crush my hand or my arm because he is super strong, and I just kinda try to crush right back. It works out nicely. Something that I thought was pretty special was just the kindness and friendship that the old members showed me from Terni even though I haven't seen them for almost two years. A member of the Quorum of the 70 came to speak and he was incredible. His name was Anziano Phillips, and he talked about the love of God for each and every one of us. He talked about all of us going through trials, helping people, and getting back to God. I know this doesn't really change anything, but he had an English accent and that just makes everything like 10 times better when someone is talking as well.
The other huge event from this week was yesterday. I was able to participate in my last zone conference and it was a really special experience. As part of the zone conference, we had an opportunity to give a departing testimony. I was last out of the 5 of us, and something that was also really cool was I followed Anziani Chugg and Houseman, which is just what happened almost 2 years ago when I gave my "birth testimony" at the same pulpit in the same church. The spirit was really strong and it was a very tender moment to say goodbye to most of my friends because I probably won't see most of them again.
The reason that I chose this title is because this past weekend we had 12 elders sleeping over at our house for the conferences and so it was pretty fun. "Fra" can also translate into "brother" which works out well! We had 4.4 pounds of pasta that night to feed everyone. It was a lot of food.
As for my spiritual thought, I want to share something that Anziano Phillips shared to come closer to God. He gave three points that I think are very simple and very accomplishable (I don't know if that's a word)--
- Serve others
- Honor the Sabbath Day
- Pray
I love these three things. They are simple, accountable, and reachable. After the conference I was able to talk with him personally and he gave me really good advice. After I told him that I will be finishing my mission soon, he looked me in the eyes and told me, "Go to the temple often. That is how you will stay safe and you won’t get lost." Wow.
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