November 22, 2011 e-mail:
Hey everyone......happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Well....the good news is that our district destroyed the other districts in the Firenze Zone for football. Basically it was just an interceptionfest. The bad news is that the next day we literally....literally couldn't move. We actually went straight from doing the pre-Thanksgiving turkey bowl to doing a scambio. We got to go to La Spezia for a day while the Capi Zona stole our house and did a scambio with the Livorno missionaries. I probably had the coldest nights sleep ever that night haha.
Anyways our apartment in Pisa had been cleaned. We actually moved back into it today but the company will have to come back in a week or two to respray our bedroom. We are excited though to be back in our own place. We were super crammed in the Livorno apartment and basically had no place for our clothes or study materials. We also will be able to start working a lot more since we don't have to commute back and forth. It was very expensive because we also had to bring the bikes which also add to the cost.
I personally am very excited for this extra time because unfortunately it took away from our finding time. Our teaching pool is probably as thin as it could get. We have Chen but other than him we have like nobody......agh. haha. We have lots of new converts that need teaching so that keeps us busy, but now we will get to start grinding out some good casa and street contacting hours.!!! I actually am quite excited ... I'm not being sarcastic. I get to the point when I'm not finding that it feels like I'm being lazy or ineffective. We read a really cool talk the other day about being a sacred missionary rather than a honorable missionary and a social missionary. It really helped me think about how much better I can be. It's helping me refine everything I do and how I think. There is a lot of room for improvement and I'm excited to get started.
Well tomorrow we will be eating with the Trexler family at their house for Thanksgiving! It should be really fun especially because they are half American. Root beer is another plus. So who's all gonna be down in Cali with you guys this week? What are you gonna do for dinner? Any news about Connor or what he's up to?
Funny story...so we had a couple American families in sacrament meeting this week. All together there were about 15 people which really filled the chapel! Anyways, I asked the parents if they would like me to translate and they politely declined. As I'm walking away their grandfather says, pointing in front of him, "I think my granddaughter would like you to translate for her"(typical move that I just know my grandfathers would pull too because as he said it he was laughing/smiling and his grandaughter was very embarrassed). Like she was a very pretty girl and I did not want to translate for her haha but I couldn't say....hm...no I can't actually....so I went and sat by her and her siblings to translate. Don't ask me why but I was very nervous and I stuttered quite a bit in the translating process. It was funny though and I actually was asked to bear my testimony for sacrament meeting. I felt really good getting to bear my testimony especially because when I arrived here I wasn't able to (lost my voice the first week).
Well I'm very excited to hear about how your trip went. So the Utes have decent shot at getting to the PAC 12 championship game? That'd be sweet. Well I'm going to go and put our apartment in order...it's filthy. I know it's like a month until you can skype me, but don't get too excited alright?
Love you all and hope you're all doing great.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Modena Memories
Anziani Hardy and Neff with Antonio
Tucker in front of the Duomo
Tucker in Centro
Tucker in front of the Ghirlandina (Tower)
"They Truly Are Just Open-Hearted"
November 15, 2011 e-mail:
Man.....I'm missing out again on the soccer tournament...I remember how bummed I was last year. I think this year it's kinda just whatev though. haha it's been a back and forth week again but we are putting in our best effort. Luckily we are getting support from our branch. It's apparent already that this branch is very strong. Compared to others I've seen I think this is one of the best. They are really good at trying to know what's going on and getting things figured out, whatever it may be.
Pisa is really an interesting city. There is a huge river that runs right through the middle of it and it's really neat. There are lots of really interesting churches, but of course the tower, duomo, and baptistery are the coolest. My companion is pretty sick of it though seeing as how we pass by them almost every day. He has been here for about six months but I don't think I'll get sick of it. I still need to get a picture with it, but we have seriously not had any time do it.
Sunday was really fun because our new convert Wang Zany(Wong) brought a friend to church. She had actually participated in a lesson with Chen the other day through skype. Anyways she came to church and it was super cool talking with her before sacrament meeting. She talked about how she needs a change in her life. She explained how she feels like she lacks something and even doesn't sleep well at night because of it. I translated for her during the meeting(well for her and Chen) and it was amazing. I had to actually summarize because both I'm not a pro at translating but also because they don't have a Christian background. Anyways she kept commenting about how peaceful it was, how beautiful the hymns were.
It was kinda funny(kinda weird too) because there was a family behind us with a new born baby and Catherine(the Chinese friend of Wong) kept saying something about it. She said once, "oh I want to be married or that she wanted to have a kid someday". haha I didn't really know how to respond to the baby one but I just kinda said ya ya OK. It will be awesome though when we can teach her the Plan of Salvation. We are excited to start teaching her though. She is super elect though just like Chen. More than anything they are just super humble! They truly are just open hearted which is something you don't see a lot of here.
Chen is doing GREAT! He is accepting everything and really just soaking it in. At church he even felt really bad when we explained that the sacrament is something we do after baptism to remember Christ and our covenants at baptism. He said...."oh then I should not have eaten it last week?.... I broke the rules." haha I told him it was ok and he didn't need to worry about it. He is awesome though and we are shooting for the 26th of November.
We were in Modena yesterday for Leadership Training. I found out from Anziano Hardy that Antonio's baptism went really well and that he's doing great!.....I also saw an investigator who we'd been teaching at the end of the conference. He was at church to have his baptismal interview. He will be baptized in about two weeks! It was super fun. We watched an awesome movie during the conference. It was seriously so dang awesome. It's called 17 miracles and it's about the pioneers....watch it.
Anyways, everything is going great here. We don't know when we will be back in our apartment but for now we will just keep going forward. I was pumped to hear the Utes pummeled UCLA. Now they just need to "take out the trash", (Mighty Ducks 3)
and beat Colorado and Washington State. I got a bunch of articles from Aunt Carol. haha of course lots of Utes stuff and tons of Cardinals stuff.....agh.....next year....they will win it next year.....
again...anyways....that is crazy that Danny is basically married....I swear I was just writing him while he was still in the mission with 4 months left. Crazy...I still haven't heard a gosh darn thing from CONNOR...what's his deal? Dad maybe you need to give him a little squirrel tap and just tell him what's up. I got an email like 3 months ago but it was like a sentence long....
Allora.....Vi amo....alla prossima settimana (Well ... I love you ... until next week).
Man.....I'm missing out again on the soccer tournament...I remember how bummed I was last year. I think this year it's kinda just whatev though. haha it's been a back and forth week again but we are putting in our best effort. Luckily we are getting support from our branch. It's apparent already that this branch is very strong. Compared to others I've seen I think this is one of the best. They are really good at trying to know what's going on and getting things figured out, whatever it may be.
Pisa is really an interesting city. There is a huge river that runs right through the middle of it and it's really neat. There are lots of really interesting churches, but of course the tower, duomo, and baptistery are the coolest. My companion is pretty sick of it though seeing as how we pass by them almost every day. He has been here for about six months but I don't think I'll get sick of it. I still need to get a picture with it, but we have seriously not had any time do it.
Sunday was really fun because our new convert Wang Zany(Wong) brought a friend to church. She had actually participated in a lesson with Chen the other day through skype. Anyways she came to church and it was super cool talking with her before sacrament meeting. She talked about how she needs a change in her life. She explained how she feels like she lacks something and even doesn't sleep well at night because of it. I translated for her during the meeting(well for her and Chen) and it was amazing. I had to actually summarize because both I'm not a pro at translating but also because they don't have a Christian background. Anyways she kept commenting about how peaceful it was, how beautiful the hymns were.
It was kinda funny(kinda weird too) because there was a family behind us with a new born baby and Catherine(the Chinese friend of Wong) kept saying something about it. She said once, "oh I want to be married or that she wanted to have a kid someday". haha I didn't really know how to respond to the baby one but I just kinda said ya ya OK. It will be awesome though when we can teach her the Plan of Salvation. We are excited to start teaching her though. She is super elect though just like Chen. More than anything they are just super humble! They truly are just open hearted which is something you don't see a lot of here.
Chen is doing GREAT! He is accepting everything and really just soaking it in. At church he even felt really bad when we explained that the sacrament is something we do after baptism to remember Christ and our covenants at baptism. He said...."oh then I should not have eaten it last week?.... I broke the rules." haha I told him it was ok and he didn't need to worry about it. He is awesome though and we are shooting for the 26th of November.
We were in Modena yesterday for Leadership Training. I found out from Anziano Hardy that Antonio's baptism went really well and that he's doing great!.....I also saw an investigator who we'd been teaching at the end of the conference. He was at church to have his baptismal interview. He will be baptized in about two weeks! It was super fun. We watched an awesome movie during the conference. It was seriously so dang awesome. It's called 17 miracles and it's about the pioneers....watch it.
Anyways, everything is going great here. We don't know when we will be back in our apartment but for now we will just keep going forward. I was pumped to hear the Utes pummeled UCLA. Now they just need to "take out the trash", (Mighty Ducks 3)
and beat Colorado and Washington State. I got a bunch of articles from Aunt Carol. haha of course lots of Utes stuff and tons of Cardinals stuff.....agh.....next year....they will win it next year.....
again...anyways....that is crazy that Danny is basically married....I swear I was just writing him while he was still in the mission with 4 months left. Crazy...I still haven't heard a gosh darn thing from CONNOR...what's his deal? Dad maybe you need to give him a little squirrel tap and just tell him what's up. I got an email like 3 months ago but it was like a sentence long....
Allora.....Vi amo....alla prossima settimana (Well ... I love you ... until next week).
Monday, November 14, 2011
"I Am Ready to Say the Prayer"
haha....what a week. This week has been yet another hectic week full of fun experiences as well as frustrating ones. Well, I moved into the Pisa apartment pretty easily last week. It was cool to figure out during our morning run that we live about 5 minutes away from the Leaning Tower. We will be seeing it a whole lot the next while. My companion actually seems quite sick of it haha.
My companion anizano Scheurn is from Gilbert, Arizona. He's a pretty big kid and just loves working out so maybe he can get me back on the working out train. I've been pretty bad the last six weeks. I think you can start to see it in my face now. Well anyways he about killed me on our run the other morning; I was so out of breath. I haven't run again until this morning but that's because I got kinda sick. Bummer huh? It wasn't anything that kept me from going outside and doing missionary work but I was struggling enough as it was. I decided to not work out because my body was soo drained of energy already.
The other hectic events to make this week just so great were the bed bugs. So our apartment has lots of mosquitoes. So the first night I thought the itching and scratching was because of them. Then on Sunday morning I woke up and my forehead was just covered with bites. Apparently bed bugs bite in lines of 3 or 4 and we had that.
We called the office and basically we're told to move in with the Livorno missionaries. They are about a 15 minutes away in train. We also had to spend a butt load to wash every single item of clothing we have and either take it to Livorno or bag it up and tie it and leave it in our apartment. So we will be living in Livorno for a while until our apartment gets sprayed !!Yay!!! haha
Well besides that Pisa is really cool. The work isn't going like super well right now but no worries it'll get going if we can just get the whole coming and going to Livorno everyday down. We lose lots and lots of time everyday and it gets frustrating let me tell you. It is more frustrating for my comp, but no worries. He is one of the funniest kids I've met, holy crap. He quotes and knows movies better than I do. I am gonna have to buckle down a little more to help us concentrate better and work hard.
So yeah right now we have about 3 or 4 investigators. Up until now I have only met 2 of the 4. Well actually one of those we found the other day and is so legit. So basically the ones I know are Gi Gi and Chen. Gi Gi came to church for the first time in five years this Sunday. That was pretty sweet. Apparently he's been an investigator for a long time but I still have yet to teach him. Chen is the friend of two Chinese new converts(Lin and Wang Zang). These two new converts are sooooooo awesome. They are seriously two of the coolest people I've met. They are students here and were found by my companion and his last companion. They are so solid in the gospel and just love the church. Anyways they brought Chen to church on Sunday. We taught Chen Sunday night and talked all about the Restoration. It was a really strong spiritual lesson and was just incredible. We taught him how to pray and we gave him the instructions located in the Restoration pamphlet to read. After about 5 minutes of reading it, he looked up and said "OK I'm ready". We then asked him what he was ready for and he said "I'm ready to say the prayer". It was so awesome. He said the best prayer and said it perfectly.
He's only about 19 years old, but he looks like he's 12. It was so awesome though to see how much he lit up when we were teaching him. We taught him again with Lin and Wang Zang at a members house. We taught him about Jesus Christ and the importance of following him. Again he would just light up when we were teaching. He kind of laughed with joy when we invited him to be baptized. He accepted but also said he would need to think about it a little more. He told us at the end of the lesson, "I've known from the first time we met that this is what I need to do". He is seriously like a little kid, but he is so smart. He was also asking us for a CTR ring because he saw that Lin had one. So that was one of the cool miracles for us this week.
We also have an American living in our branch. His wife is Italian and he has about 3kids. One of them actually just got back from the SLC mission(Trexler family. They also just set up a huge football tournament. He got President's permission to have it on the army base, and to have our entire zone come!!!! How sick is that? I also heard that I can get some hook ups on American food....oh yeah.
Well, I love you all and hope everything is going good. I'm stoked to get things going here. haha Don't worry about our misfortunes. We will survive.
Love you all,
Ciao
My companion anizano Scheurn is from Gilbert, Arizona. He's a pretty big kid and just loves working out so maybe he can get me back on the working out train. I've been pretty bad the last six weeks. I think you can start to see it in my face now. Well anyways he about killed me on our run the other morning; I was so out of breath. I haven't run again until this morning but that's because I got kinda sick. Bummer huh? It wasn't anything that kept me from going outside and doing missionary work but I was struggling enough as it was. I decided to not work out because my body was soo drained of energy already.
The other hectic events to make this week just so great were the bed bugs. So our apartment has lots of mosquitoes. So the first night I thought the itching and scratching was because of them. Then on Sunday morning I woke up and my forehead was just covered with bites. Apparently bed bugs bite in lines of 3 or 4 and we had that.
We called the office and basically we're told to move in with the Livorno missionaries. They are about a 15 minutes away in train. We also had to spend a butt load to wash every single item of clothing we have and either take it to Livorno or bag it up and tie it and leave it in our apartment. So we will be living in Livorno for a while until our apartment gets sprayed !!Yay!!! haha
Well besides that Pisa is really cool. The work isn't going like super well right now but no worries it'll get going if we can just get the whole coming and going to Livorno everyday down. We lose lots and lots of time everyday and it gets frustrating let me tell you. It is more frustrating for my comp, but no worries. He is one of the funniest kids I've met, holy crap. He quotes and knows movies better than I do. I am gonna have to buckle down a little more to help us concentrate better and work hard.
So yeah right now we have about 3 or 4 investigators. Up until now I have only met 2 of the 4. Well actually one of those we found the other day and is so legit. So basically the ones I know are Gi Gi and Chen. Gi Gi came to church for the first time in five years this Sunday. That was pretty sweet. Apparently he's been an investigator for a long time but I still have yet to teach him. Chen is the friend of two Chinese new converts(Lin and Wang Zang). These two new converts are sooooooo awesome. They are seriously two of the coolest people I've met. They are students here and were found by my companion and his last companion. They are so solid in the gospel and just love the church. Anyways they brought Chen to church on Sunday. We taught Chen Sunday night and talked all about the Restoration. It was a really strong spiritual lesson and was just incredible. We taught him how to pray and we gave him the instructions located in the Restoration pamphlet to read. After about 5 minutes of reading it, he looked up and said "OK I'm ready". We then asked him what he was ready for and he said "I'm ready to say the prayer". It was so awesome. He said the best prayer and said it perfectly.
He's only about 19 years old, but he looks like he's 12. It was so awesome though to see how much he lit up when we were teaching him. We taught him again with Lin and Wang Zang at a members house. We taught him about Jesus Christ and the importance of following him. Again he would just light up when we were teaching. He kind of laughed with joy when we invited him to be baptized. He accepted but also said he would need to think about it a little more. He told us at the end of the lesson, "I've known from the first time we met that this is what I need to do". He is seriously like a little kid, but he is so smart. He was also asking us for a CTR ring because he saw that Lin had one. So that was one of the cool miracles for us this week.
We also have an American living in our branch. His wife is Italian and he has about 3kids. One of them actually just got back from the SLC mission(Trexler family. They also just set up a huge football tournament. He got President's permission to have it on the army base, and to have our entire zone come!!!! How sick is that? I also heard that I can get some hook ups on American food....oh yeah.
Well, I love you all and hope everything is going good. I'm stoked to get things going here. haha Don't worry about our misfortunes. We will survive.
Love you all,
Ciao
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