week 4 in Italy

Ciao tutti!
 
I hope that everyone is doing well and that everyone is in good spirits!! This week has been a good one! I got over that sickness after a brutal afternoon. I’m feeling much better and things are looking up.
 This week we have had a pretty crazy schedule. On Friday we went and visited less actives and recent converts and the Bishop in Asti. Another city that we go to once a week. It is where the rest of the
ward lives. well...some of them. And so that day was filled up with appointments and then lots of waiting. Because we don’t want to do any finding work in Asti because we can't really visit Asti more than once
a week. So unless there is someone who is really really really ELECT, we don’t look for new investigators in Asti.
 
Then Sunday we went and ate at the house of the ward mission leader. He is like 21 and his mom made us the best food I have eaten since I got here to Italy. She made us pasta (of course) and we had meat and
meat and more meat and it was all SOO good. So we will for sure be setting up another appointment to go back there.
 
Then on Monday we had a Scambio. That is an exchange or splits...I don’t even know in English....anyways I went to Vercelli with Anziano Reynoso (from California) and we did some awesome work we taught 2
awesome lessons and we found this young 14 year old boy who is really excited about the BoM and the Restoration. I’m sad that I won’t be able to teach him and baptize him because he belongs to the Anziani in
Vercelli...but it was amazing anyways! And I learned a very very important lesson while on the Scambio. Anziano Reynoso was stopping EVERYONE to talk to them. And it was different because I was no longer
with my trainer. I was just another missionary and the expectation felt like I should be just as capable as Anziano Reynoso to do anything that we needed to. And as it turns out I was, I didn’t have a trainer anymore...for a day...and I had to pull 50% of everything...it occurred to me that it shouldn’t be any different with Anziano Blaga...So yesterday was probably the best day of my mission so far.
We went to a park and started talking to people and with the confidence I found and the new fresh courage and vigor. We taught 3 lessons in the course of an hour and a half and got 4 numbers and addresses that we are going to go for a second appointment. And Several times yesterday after we finished talking to someone I realized that I was talking in Italian to that person and I wasn't scared or worried about if what I was saying was right or what to say. I was just talking and they talked and I understood at times 100% of what people
where saying and I was fluently speaking in Italian (Very basic and beginner Italian of course, not Shakespeare or anything, but Italian none the less) It was so cool.
 
Things are going so well right now. Anziano Blaga and I are working hard and he is a great trainer. He is a bit different because he is Romanian and at times there are moments when we don’t understand each other and it takes us like 5 minutes to understand where the other person is coming from or what they are trying to say but then we get it figured out and things are bene... Cultural differences are hard at times but he is a great trainer. He works efficiently and doesn't do things that are unneccessary....yikes didn’t spell that right...anyways he reminds me of dad in that way. He makes things as simple as can be while still getting the job done. No extra fluff and no extra nonsense. I have learned a lot of clever tricks and ideas from him.
 
I can't believe that it’s almost April this last month has just FLOWN past! It seems like yesterday that I got here. And at the same time it seems like the MTC is a world and half away. Hopefully that means I’m
growing. And I think and hope that I am. I try very hard every day to become the person that this mission SHOULD make me.
 
Tomorrow we have a training in Milano with all the new missionaries from my group. So I get to see everyone that was in my MTC group and see how they are doing and I’m so excited for that. It will be
interesting to see how each of us has grown and how we are doing. I really miss those guys. You really do make friends for life out here.
And I’m finally starting to feel like a veteran missionary. Even though I’m only halfway through my first transfer. Haha But the training program has the new missionary start to take the responsibility of new
things every week. SO I’m now leading daily and weekly planning and making phone calls and setting up appointments and I teach 50% of everything we teach. And I can finally talk to the members and chat
with them. And I can FINALLY Remember names. It was hard at first to remember names because you have to remember a name you have never heard before. For example if I told you to remember the name john, you could probably do it. But if I told you to remember the name Haquiff... (Really a name of a potential Simp we had) then it’s a bit harder. (Lots of Albainians in Alessandria) or for example Martonello, or Mateo Chitelili or something like that. It’s like trying to remember a made up work...but I’m finally getting used to it and I know now a lot of the members.
 

The biggest problem I’m finding in missionary work is not that people don’t want to believe in God, or that they don’t think God can help make their lives happier. They just don’t care, its apathy. They believe in
God and Jesus Christ, but they are too lazy to do anything. They honestly believe that the gospel can bring them happiness but they always say that they are fine with the way things are. Nobody cares, nobody wants something more, something that will last. So one thing I have started saying in contacting work when we talk about the Gospel is that it can bring happiness that can last. Happiness that doesn’t come and go like the things of the world. Drinking, smoking, sex, money, partying, all these things bring such a small flick of thrill
to someone’s life. Not happiness, a thrill, a rush, a delusion of happiness. They leave us just as fast as they came. And they leave us wanting more and the more we do them the more we want and the more we
cant satisfy. But the Gospel...oh the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that will never leave us if we choose to hold on. It will never cease to be a source of unending happiness. The happiness we find in the Gospel lasts for Eternity, the Happiness that we find in true happiness that fills us up and lifts us up to a higher plane of living. I want the people to see that.  
Anyways, I love them and am so happy to be here serving them. I know that there is SOMEONE In Alessandria that the Lord wants us to find and teach and baptize!!!
 
Love you all and miss you all SOOOO much.
 
LOVE,
 Anziano Memmott