Week 34 (Feb 29)--Trapani

SCIROCCO! 

What is up to all of my favorite people!! I hope you all are doing
gooooddd and life is awesome! I titled my email SCIROCCO because that's what 
Italians call this wind that comes in from Africa and it’s sooo strong,
it's intense. Apparently sometimes the sky is yellow because of how
strong the wind is. (I have no clue how that works lol). But yeah we
get woken up all the time during the night because of the wind. It
makes it sound like there is a woodpecker or something going ham on
the house. It's horrible, but at the same time I love it. We just got
finished playing soccer for Pday and I could actually play! My knee is
really sore now, but it's holding up fine and there is no locking up
or anything so I am really happy. It was so much fun and not gonna lie
our team wrecked, so hopefully I brought honor to Gavin's and Caden's
names.

This week was really good though, we have been having a lot of success
and something that I am sooo excited about is there is a couple that
is moving into the branch that are young and both returned
missionaries!!! They are sooo sick, and it makes me so happy too, cause
they speak English so they can come to our lessons that we are doing
with some of our investigators that prefer to be taught in English.
Like he told me it makes sense that I am from Texas cause I said y'all
during Sunday school. Ohh man I love him already. I really am super
excited and wish that I could describe it better haha.

So something that went really well is Thursday evening we planned to
share the Joseph Smith video in English (the hour long one that's
really well made) to our advanced course because they all understand
English really well and we are trying to invite all of them to take
the lessons with us because we have such a good relationship. It was
really powerful. They all really enjoyed it and it really helped them
to understand why we talk about how the Book of Mormon is so important
for us and why we believe that there is a prophet on the earth today.
It helped them after to ask some questions that they have had about
who Mormons really are. My favorite was how Mormons are apparently
part of the Illuminati... Umm what?! Lol Wikipedia is not an accurate
source for who we are and what we believe in. We told him to search
Mormon.org to find information about us. He is such a boss though and
we are going to start working with him soon, so I am really excited.

We had a really good lesson this week with one of our English course
students who has actually been coming to corso for about 4 or 5 years
and so he already knows a lot about who we are. One time we were going
to go out and do a survey with people and we drew the Angel Moroni on
the board and he was llike, "Oh hey that's Moroni|" Hahah that was
totally unexpected. We had a really good personal lesson for him
where we focused on his concerns and needs. It was a really good
testimony builder to me because the spirit was so strong and as we
were talking he was teaching himself with different things that he was
saying from the things that we asked. We brought everything back to
reading in the Book of Mormon and asking God. It is really that simple
and he understood so we are really hoping that he reads and prays
cause he is super humble and a really good guy. He said something that
really meant a lot to Anziano Garrett and me: a while ago he
was pretty upset and depressed cause he lost his job. What actually
helped him and continues to helps him is our English course, which
really meant a lot to me. Those friendships and being around others is
what he needed and it was awesome to hear that.

Okay so my funny experience for this week--
We were doing a Scambio with some other missionaries and so I was in
Trapani with Anziano Jensen and we had planned to do a lesson with
Fratello Carucci. The really short awesome one who has a bomba
testimony. So we show up at the church thinking to go on in and have
our lesson but he was like, "Anziani get in the car" "Ummm okay?" "We
are going to visit my friend; he needs service." "Ohhh Soo awesome!!" So
he drove us to pick up this guy's groceries for him and when we show
up at his house to help him with his groceries and we get out of the
car, it starts to rain. Not bad but a lot. So we are out of the car
trying to help and all of the sudden we hear Fratello Carucci from the
car screaming "ANZIANI GET IN THE CAR… IT'S RAINING.. YOU’RE CRAZY!"
What? It's just rain... "GET IN!!" So yeah Italians are kinda scared
of rain and literally they all disappear when it even starts to rain...
We sat in the car and it was just funny for me as he was like, "Ma che
face!?" Just basically like what are you doing?! So make sure you are
careful of rain, it is very dangerous hahaha.

Another one was yesterday we were having an appointment with one of
the best families ever in the branch and the very blunt awesome
Italian grandma was there. Basically for about 10 minutes she was
asking me if I would marry an Italian and my preferred age... What?..
She was totally trying to set me up with her 16-year-old granddaughter
(for after my mission) who was just sitting across the table. It was
hilarious cause she was being completely serious.. Funny at the same
time but she was completely serious. Ohhh, my, that was awkward...

Me and Anziano Garrett are definitely seeing miracles with our work
and it is just a huge testimony builder to me that when you do your
best and even follow your own goals that we set, the Lord will bless
you. We have seen that a lot as we set a goal to speak Italian
together for 3 hours every day. Sometimes it's really hard, but as we
follow it we are showing the Lord that we are trying our best even
with the little things and we are being blessed. There is this one guy
who stopped coming to church and we had a lesson with him this week.
It was really cool because before we started our message he told us
that he wanted to share something with us. He then shared a quote
from Pursuit of Happiness that basically what he was trying to tell us
is God answers our prayers through other people. It was powerful and I
am really excited we are working with him!!

So my spiritual thought is from John 21:11

11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes,
an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet
was not the net broken.

So these are just some of my thoughts that I had on this scripture. I
know that this might not even be true but it really caused me to think
and reflect a lot.

I like how in this verse we can see that the net did not break with
the fishes. I feel like this is very symbolic because at the beginning,
when the disciples had cast their nets in and drew the fishes up, their
nets had broken because they were "young and immature" to the teaching
of Jesus Christ and so they needed to follow him and learn. They were
not ready to catch all the fishes of "men" so therefore their nets
broke. But now, the resurrected Savior is here again to teach and to
show love and to testify. This time their nets did not break, and this
time they are ready to bring in their fishes.

I know that the Lord knows how to prepare us for the things that he
knows we can do in our lives. Just like at the beginning the Lord
called the Apostles to follow him and they had many things to learn.
Now, I am not saying that after Jesus Christ came again for the second
time that they didn't have things to learn, but they were more prepared
because... Jesus Christ taught them and they had grown spiritually. I
know this is the same thing for us with learning and preparing and so
how I am trying to apply this to my life is preparing and trying to
learn as much as I can so that I can be an effective tool for whatever God
needs me to be on my mission but also for after my mission.

Ti Voglio Bene a saaiii!!!

Anziano Spencer

Anz Palazzo and Anz Spencer at a zone soccer game on P-day.