Their Eyes Just Full of Joy

From Tucker's May 23 e-mail:

Well we've had a great week thus far! Since last week a lot of things have happened. Last Wednesday after emailing we went and had a lesson with Valentina, the girlfriend of Salvator Benemerito. We met at the Benemerito home and talked mostly about the Restoration. It went super well and there was a great spirit throughout the entire lesson. Valentia has had some tough times in her life and has many doubts of whether God exists and if he loves her. She's been treated badly by friends and for that she doubts. We have started this "perscorso" with her and she's ready to start trying to receive answers.

Right after the lesson with them we went to their daugter, Mariarosaria's house. We ate dinner with her and her family and had a great time. Their oldest kid Samuelle is a really awesome kid while the middle child, Jasmine, is LOUD. The youngest, Alessia is Loud but mostly tranquillo. They made us a typical Napolitano pasta but then afterward gave us something really tasty. Get this....Honeydew rapped in Prosciutto crudo...It was so good! I would have elaten more but I was full.

We had a really cool finish to the week. Around Wednesday we were ahead of pace in getting to our 20 lessons. By Thursday we found out that we needed to do a Blitz in Brescia on Sunday. With one day gone we were gonna have to kick our butts in gear and make up for time. Well the next couple days proved difficult and we kept getting cancelled on. We even had a member cancel on us which made it even more difficult. By Sunday morning we were around 16 lessons haha and we had planned to be in Brescia around 4:30pm. We taught Valentina right after church and had another one planned around 2pm with our new convert. Well we still needed a few more. As we drove home from church we decided we didn't really have any time for lunch.

On arriving at the apartment Anz. Parker got out his side of the car and immediately saw these two Brazilians across the street. He went right up, I was still grabbing my backpack, and started talking to them. I made my way over quickly and we starting getting to know them. A lady came outside and asked who we were so we again introduced ourselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ. She quickly said, "oh well I am cooking right now, do you want to talk with them?(asking the two young Brazilians). They both said yes so we sat down on their porch and talked with them about the Book of Mormon. There is Ezekiele and Moses, Moses doesn't speak Italian and is 18 years old. His brother is married and speaks Italian because he's been here about 5 years. We set up another appointment and actually saw them last night for the second time!

Last night we went to their apartment. It was one of those attic apartments where the roof has a decline in it down to the corner of the floor. This time Ezekiele's wife Morganna was there. After conversing for a bit we had a kneeling prayer and flipped on the DVD Finding Happiness in Portuguese. Immediately after it ended there was such a strong spirit in the room. I proceeded to bear testimony of the fact that we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father. They said that they felt really good and so we indicated that it was the spirit in the room. Anz. Parker then went on to express our expectations and the blessings from this message. You could really see their eyes just full of joy. They wanted to know more and the spirit was fueling the desire. We are gonna see them on Friday again!

This week we have just been finding loads of people. We had a member, Giovanni Dal Pozzo that always helps us bring two people to church. We had sat down with him 3 weeks ago and invited him to start praying to know with whom he could share the gospel. He immediately thought of this girl who lived close by. He didn't know her well but he knew she was familiar with his sister. A week later he added her on Facebook and the week after that he invited her to church. On Sunday she came to church!...with her younger brother. We are hoping to start meeting with Lilia this week! It's just amazing to see what happens when members take our invites seriously and see the fruits. Tonight we are going again to see Valentina and eat with the Benemerito's. The work is just going great and I really just thank Heavenly Father. The last 4 months we (Anz. Meszaros, Smith and Parker) have been working hard and now He's really helping us out.

We went and saw Franco this morning! Side note:  Franco Lorenzi is a business associate and friend of Tucker's uncle, Mark Knaphus. When our family visited Italy in 2005, Franco took us on a tour of the marble quarries in Carrara.  Haha man he's so Catholic....He definitely remembered Mark and Grandpa just a little bit. He kept saying Mark Knaffus. After awhile he asked me if that's how you pronounced it and i had to fix it for him. He's a super nice guy but just too ingrained into the Catholic "tradition" to change. For 72 years old though he isn't doing too well. He doesn't look too old but he's got the shakes a bit and you can tell the last 8 years haven't been his best.

Tucker and Franco Lorenzi

My focus outside of missionary for the next little bit will be to increase my relationship with Heavenly Father. Mom's question during the last skype session really hit deep. She asked, "how's your relationship with Heavenly Father?" It caused me to think then and even over the last couple weeks about how it is. It needs to better. I've seen a lot of improvement though even in this last week and it's been great! I know it will be something that blesses me long term but also now with our investigators. I just feel great after praying and knowing that you've prayed with "all energy of heart" like the scriptures say. Kneeling prayers with investigators is something we've been really striving to do and that too just brings so much more power to the prayers.

I'm curious to see what happens to our coppis on Monday. We aren't sure what will be happening. It's really a toss up on who will go and who will stay.

We will see.

When You Work Hard Miracles Happen

From Tucker's May 16th e-mail:

It was great seeing you all Sunday! You all looked super happy and content with everything that's going on right now in your lives. When at least one person is smiling it puts at least another smile on the person who sees them smiling. The work is going forward bit by bit right now and we are really working our butts off. It's funny sometimes how Heavenly Father works. I've been worker harder these last 3 months than ever before and the work has been the slowest than ever before. He's making us be patient and testing our Faith. It really has blessed us so far this week. Sunday night after our calls we didn't end up getting 20 lessons. We ended up at around 19 but it's ok. That day was full of enough miracles so we are grateful for the things that did happen.



Andrea Giolito.....yeah he snuck that one up on me

We had half a less-active family come to church and one new person. Sorella Benemerito and her son Salvatore both came. Salvatore also brought his girlfriend who now wants to learn more! They all loved church and were all touched, I think, by the spirit. Unfortunately, Fratello Benemerito couldn't come because he's been sick, but we will be seeing them tonight! We also found out that their daughter, Mariarosaria, is wanting to meet with us more. Monday morning we left ready to start our week looking for some new investigators but instead my companion spent a lot of the morning talking with her. She called us and just started venting a little bit and telling her entire story. I won't go into too much detail but she basically has felt abandoned by God in her life. We are going to see them though tonight with her non-member husband and 3 kids!

 

Giovanni Mistura....he's gonna be a great missionary

The rest of Monday went very well. Maria, our Peruvian investigator has been reading the Book of Mormon. She is moving back to Peru in a month but we want to prepare her as much as possible for baptism before returning. She is a super sweet person and just really wanting to come closer to her Heavenly Father. We ran into a Chinese family that night and I got to through out my missionary introduction in Chinese (thanks Chen!). We might be going back and teacher their 14 year old son.
Yesterday I got to go to Mantova with my district leader. It's this super small but beautiful city very close to Verona. It seems that both our companionships haven't been doing so well this transfer but we had a great scambio yesterday. We didn't have any lessons planned for the day and we got back from Verona around 1 pm. After lunch and all that we got outside and just invited EVERYONE! Looking back on the day I think we talked to a wide variety of people. There was this Upper Class Italian guy, 40-year man from Bangladesh, a Muslim from Tunisia, 20 year old Italian girl, 50 year old Albanian, Brazilian guy, Indian guy, middle-aged Italian woman and a couple others. We ended up teaching 4 lessons, finding two investigators and setting up 2 appointments! It was great to see the Lord guiding us and helping us as we invited all of his children. When you work hard miracles happen, especially during a scambio.

Well it's been a huge relief with this sudden surge of success in our companionship. I'm super grateful that we have continued working hard. There have been many instances in which we could have given up but we grinded through the tough times. We are already more than half way through this transfer, can you believe it?....It's crazy that I've already been here in Verona more time that I was in Pisa. It's a great city and I have a feeling I might be leaving. In the end I guess it doesn't matter. I will go where He wants me to go.....

So is there anything you want me to get for you guys and send back...? Kinda sucks that the package got lost?

How's Jake doing down in Honduras?...should i send him a letter?

Thanks for your love and support. NEFF CLAN UNITE!!

Any chance I can join the High Priests when I get back? I want to hang out with Mark and Grandpa at church....

Seeing the Lord Bless Us Then Test Us

From Tucker's May 9, 2012 e-mail:

Alright so i think we've basically decided when we will be skyping. I will be calling at 7:30 AM your time. My companion's parents have church from around 11-2 so we are doing it earlier. It'll be kept to about 45-minutes to an hour too this time. I definitely went overboard during Christmas I think. Anyways it should be fun!

It sounds like you are having a grand time down there in Guadeloupe, apart from the raining! Does it basically rain all year in that part of the world? What is it that you do all day long? I imagine it's not exactly like Italy where you have these world famous museums, historic sites, or architecture. Are you just hanging out with members? I do wish I would have done better at having more personal relationships with the members. It's been difficult for me having changed cities so much. It's something I really do want to work on a lot.

Quick question before I forget. So what ended up happening with the package you sent with the Blanks? Did they mail it or just bring it back to Utah with them? I still haven't sent off the package yet for Mother's day. haha don't ask me why. Mix between never having time and yet being lazy. Mom I want you know i love you and that that love is more important than any gift. There will be a gift coming though......sooner or later. The fact of the matter is that I wanted to sent something else with the stuff I've already bought but I haven't been able to get it yet. The other gifts I got a long time ago.

So this week has been very up and down for us. We are having a lot of fun seeing the Lord bless us and then test us. We did reach our goal of 20 lessons again at the last minute. It did involve a flat tire and quite a bit of driving but we reached it. This week our mission had some really cool records broken. As a mission this last week we taught more lessons than have ever been taught and we beat it by about a 100 lessons. We also finally reached 100 baptismal dates as a mission which had never been done. For us it was a really cool achievement and we got to spread the "excitement" through the zone. They are really doing great and we've been so pleased with the hard work they're doing.

Recently we've decided to start working with the youth of the ward. We wanted to get them involved in missionary work and really exercising their faith. We taught each one about the power of prayer and talked about our vision for the transfer. We explained that we as missionaries needed their help and then at the end we invited them to start praying to know with whom they could share the Gospel. Well seeing how this last Sunday was Fast and Testimony meeting both Alessio (17years) and Andrea got up and bore testimony. Both talked about the lessons they had with us and how they really felt the spirit.

Alessio talked about how he immediately started praying and that the next day had a wonderful experience. One of his friends started talking about how he'd been going around visiting various religions because he was curious to see what they taught. Alessio, remembering the invite we'd given him quickly asked his friend if he'd visited our church! His friend said no and so Alessio invited him and so next week his friend will be coming! The other youth, Andrea, also bore a really spiritual testimony about our lesson and about other things. It was really reassuring for us how much this work really does. It's brought a renewed energy for me to really focus more on helping members as well as investigators grow their testimonies of the Gospel.

You remember Marines right? Well she is the less-active we found about a month ago. She has come to church the last few weeks and took serious our invite to prepare to go to the temple. She will soon be speaking with the bishop about what she needs to do to be ready. She is great! On Saturday though we asked her if we could get her 8 year old son, Marlin, as a referral. He's living with her parents right now in Brazil. So I think the missionaries there will start visiting him and her parents pretty soon! Area Book and convert lists work miracles.

The less-active Benemerito Family is also doing well. The wife has really justified her "doing good" as being active in the church. We found out that they aren't sealed in the temple. The father, Angelo knows what he needs to do but is lazy. The wife is a bit arrogant yet always claims that she wants to be active. One of the last lessons we had with them we basically had to call them out and be bold. It really helped! They realize that they need to act and they need to act sooner rather than later or else it'll be too late. Apparently during our scambio on Monday(I was away in Bolzano) the lesson went great. The Benemerito's kids were there too(their 25 year old less active son Salvatore and their other daughter Maria Rosaria). Many were in tears and hit hard by the spirit is what my companion told me.

This transfer has definitely been full of crazy stuff so far. haha it's both fun yet hectic at the same time. We are still praying mightily to have some solid investigators. We have one, Maria, who is a referral from a less-active Peruvian woman. She is going back to Peru in like a month though so hopefully we can get her super prepared for the missionaries in Peru. The less-active lady, Arleni who I found on scambio two weeks ago will hopefully soon be active. With her work as a "bidante" she can never come to church. We really helped her realize the blessings of church and of being active in it. She is going to move back to Peru soon so she can leave her work and be active!

I'm really grateful for the way the Lord has been blessing us. I have never done so much less-active work until now. He's blessings us in so many different ways and I think I'm beginning to recognize his hand more clearly. haha I just need to be more grateful and thank Heavenly Father more for the way in which he's helping us fulfill this great work. I really hope though that all this hard work we are doing will pay off in the form of a convert baptism. The ward is in dire need of a new strong member! With that being said I see Marines as a Young Women's President or consigliere in the Relief Society Presidency. The ward just needs to integrate her.

Well Enrico is getting baptized on FRIDAY!!!!wahooooo... (Enrico is the young man that Tucker found while doing a scambio with the other Verona elders).

I'm looking forward to Sunday. Try putting together some questions so you'll be all prepared come Sunday!

Love you guys a lot.....Ciao

Tuck!

Over the Past Week Our Zone Has More Than Doubled the Baptismal Dates!

From Tucker's May 2, 2012 E-mail:

Ciao tutti!

 

I am sooooo tired right now haha. We just got done playing a bit of basketball and I really stunk it up. It was fun though and was definitely great exercise. This week seems to have flown by. Hopefully i didn't wear myself out for this next week.

So we aren't too sure yet about what we will be doing for Mother's Day. We need to find a member that will let us come over and use their computer. I'm positive though that we will be using Skype though. We will figure it out over this next week, and the exact time we'll do it. It sure is gonna be fun eh?...time is winding down....crazy huh?

Well this week was pretty good. We did a lot of traveling like I mentioned last week. I drove a little but Anz. Parker did most of the driving. Thursday morning we drove up to Bergamo (Beautiful City), and Trento on Thursday. Unfortunately a lot of our current investigators just don't have much interest or are busy. We still haven't been able to return and see Maria-Rosaria and Cirò. Maria-Rosaria has been starting to read more from the Book of Mormon though! Talking on the phone this last week she expressed her desire to want to be apart of the church again (she's less-active). We will keep praying for them.

We are working our butts off to find new people and we need to if we want to reach our Vision. We are still setting our sights on a family and with the clock ticking down we have to find them in then next week. We thought we had found them this last Monday. I will tell you the story. So Monday morning we went out to Bussolengo (paesino where most of our members live) to teach Giovanni, a 23 year old return missionary. The lesson went really well and after we had planned to do some casa in casa in that city.

Well as we drove we both felt good about this certain area. We parked the car and got out. We immediately stopped this 17 year old boy who was with his little 7 year old brother. They'd just been playing some soccer and were going home. We talked quickly about the Book of Mormon and he expressed some interest in reading it. We will be seeing them this Friday!...Anyways the story gets better.

Immediately after leaving them we entered into the first palazzo we saw. After a few doors we met Sebastiano. We did a quick Book of Mormon explanation with a question or two. We asked him what it would mean if the BoM was true. His answer was perfect for what we'd said up until that point. He said well if there are two proofs on both sides of the world and they say the same thing then they must be true(something like that). We asked to get in and he said yes! We started with a kneeling prayer and started to explain a little better the importance of the BoM. He felt the spirit very strongly and even said at one point that this message really interests him and inspires him to learn more. He told us that he would want to meet again and would talk to his mom about learning more. This time as we kneeled again he agreed to say the prayer. The prayer was amazing! It was probably the best first prayer I've ever heard. We left on a spiritual high and we were pumped the rest of the day.

As I called him the next day though to confirm he told us that his mom had said no. I asked him what he thought and he said that he has to obey what his mom says. I invited him to keep reading and praying about the BoM. It's really hard when other people intervene and take away somebody else's agency. I mean maybe it could of just been Sebastiano not wanting to meet but I felt like it was the influence of the mom.

We are going to keep going forward though. We've been doing some great "power of prayer" lessons with all the members this last week and a half. We are coming to learn that a lot of members have people in mind they want to share the gospel with. I think within a short period of time we are gonna get some good member referrals.

OH yeah! Well the zone is doing great! We had all the district leaders talk about baptismal dates in district meeting last week while we talked about prayer. Over the past week our zone has more than doubled the baptismal dates! We went from having 12 to now having about 25 dates. Our lessons went from about 17.4 lessons a week to 18.7! I know our companionship hasn't been seeing the success we wanted but our Zone is doing fantastic. Can't complain right?

Well I'm really hoping to get these packages sent off soon. I keep procrastinating it but hopefully they will get sent off soon.

Anyways I love you guys a bunch. Thanks for the updates; I hope you have fun on your trip!

How's Connor doing? Zach gets home in about 2 months so that will be good for Connor I think.

I got Franco's address. We tried passing by last week but it was a holiday so nobody was around. We are gonna try again this week.

Love you all

Ciao & Buona Vacanza

Why can't we all just love each other?

From Tucker's April 25, 2012 e-mail:

Sounds like it has been a rather crazy week for you all. I will fill you in a bit more with transfers and companion stuff then talk about the week. So Anziano Parker is from Mesa, Arizona and is just a firecracker. He's super energetic and just a great missionary. He's really been helping me to break out of my shell even more and be a better missionary. I wouldn't say there are any "tricks" he's shown me, but the transfer is still early, right? Anziano Webb and Money have stayed the same so the apartment is basically the same.

This last week we finally reached 20 lessons! IT was definitely a great accomplishment for us seeing that our teaching pool is rather small and we had transfers. I would say that it came from a good mix of dedicated/diligent planning and hard work. Now we just need to get it every week and keep setting the bar for the other companionships. It definitely helped having the car but I think we would have reached it even without it. On Monday I got to drive the car down to Modena for their district meeting and boy was that a bit scary. Apparently even with our American licenses we would still be driving illegally. President Wolfgramme gave me the ok to drive. After our district meeting I drove back to Verona with the district leader in Modena, Anz. D'Addabo. I was super excited because he's a very diligent, hardworking missionary. We had some planning mishaps during the scambio but we worked hard and had a really effective scambio. We actually found two less-active Peruvian sisters! We got to bear some really sincere testimony of the blessings of attending church. It was a cool little miracle of the Lord guiding along.

Well since Anz. Parker has been here we've had a bit of a turn-around. I would definitely say the faith in the companionship has been raised a bit. I'm not saying it was Anz. Smith at all,  because I think at transfer times there is a renewed excitement/faith level. Anyway while meeting with the less-active Benemerito family we asked if they knew anyone that needed the message of the Gospel. They immediately referred us to their children. One of their baptized daughters lives very close and has a family of her own. Her name is MariaRosaria and is also less-active. She is married and has three kids. While we asked about them Sorella Benemerito just dialed her number and handed us the phone. Within about 5 seconds my companion was talking with her haha. We asked if we could meet and about 20 minutes later we were driving to their house. It was great! It was really fun getting to know this family of five. The husband Ciro is also from Napoli and they have three kids, Samuelle, Jasmine and Alessia. We shared just a small little message off big things coming from small and simples things. We compared it to reading the scriptures and invited them to do it every night with the promise that their family would be more happy and united. We are hoping to return within the next few days! It's definitely a relief that our zone of 5 districts was reduced to 4 districts this transfer. It will mean fewer visits and more time for our own work. It's super important that our work goes well because we have to be examples for all the other missionaries. The zone is the same size but two of the districts got combined together. Having the car  will shave off hours of traveling time so that a great help.

The personal prayer is coming along but I tend to fall asleep at night. I think I need to pray out loud more and find less "comfortable" settings. We have made the new "battle cry" for our zone this transfer and it will be centered on PRAY! I'm super excited because like we've talked about it is super important. We are discussing with the missionaries that we need to take our demands to the Lord and tell him what we will do to receive the blessings of our demands. We need to be specific and express our own frailties so that he can then help us. There is also a prayer evaluation thing we will be doing a few times throughout the transfer that is found in PMG. 95.

I was sad to hear during transfers in Milano that David in Pisa is already less-active. Apparently after being baptized the ward mission leader decided to take charge of doing the "post" baptism lessons. Well Anz. Hardy told me that they weren't ever really able to see him after that. I also heard that someone in the ward offended him in some way. Mike Trexler from Pisa was visiting family in Bolzano and saw Anz. Scheurn while he was up there. He told Anz. Scheurn that the Pisa branch has problems with talking bad about other members. Anyway, David told the branch president that he didn't want members trying to contact him at this time. Poor guy....he already had had a wife that didn't treat him well and was very self-conscious about himself. Why can't we all just love each other?.....dang members! Lin got called to be the secretary to the ward archivist/ward clerk! haha He's so awesome. I think Chen will be getting a calling soon as well!

Well.....I'm trying to convince some of the missionaries to write Devin. She's not dating anyone is she? That is sweet that the Jazz made it in to the playoffs.