Happy Birthday to Alyssa

Caro Presidente,

This week we were able to get a ton of new investigators, and that was really thanks to the members of the branch here. First off, right after Zone Conference on Thursday, we had a lesson with Sorella Pistidda (that we had been trying to set up all last transfer after calling her son-in-law from the Area Book), and her daughter (Cristina), the daughter's husband (William), and S.lla Pistidda's son (Carlo) and his companion (Vanessa, they are not married yet) all became new investigators, 3 of which is for a second time (the companion is new). They were all super receptive, asked good questions, and understood what we were going for. We had an appointment set for Monday, but they had trouble with that, so they said to call for this next Monday, but we just learned that we might be able to see them this Friday, so hopefully that works out.
The next 2 new investigators were referrals from Simone Ibba, a member on a mission right now, who apparently emailed the Sorelle, and they passed on the information to us. The referral was for his dad (Salvatore), and then the companion (we forgot the name) decided to listen too. They're able to see us Sundays, so they told us to call ahead to make sure. They weren't quite as receptive, but that may be because we were beat (we had just got out of a long member lunch literally 1 minute before he took us to his house), and he talked a lot. We're hoping to plan well for this week, though.
The last 3 came from a referral from the Elder's Quorum President on Sunday, who said a less-active member (the wife, Sabrina Leone) had requested a visit for a blessing for her husband (Agostino), who we learned at the visit that night has a tumor, and went in for chemotherapy Monday. After that, we were able to give a spiritual thought to the whole family (which includes two daughters, Francesca and Martina) that the Elder's Quorum President suggested on the Spirit, and how they could feel that more powerfully and consistently in their lives. They were all open to it, and responded they would like to have that, and said they would try to come to church Sunday, although it would be difficult after the therapy. But Sabrina said she wants to get back to reading the Book of Mormon, so we gave that as another commitment as well, and we said we would call to see when we could see eachother again later in the week, and see how the therapy went.
[Rest of letter, didn't copy]

Thanks President!

Anziano Walker

 

 

Hi!

 

Man, last week was full and busy. I loved that. It's so great to have purpose to the day. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see Gianni and Sara this past week (we didn't have the car), but we invited them to the activity. They understood it, however, to be the day AFTER it was, which was kind of a bummer. But they wanted to come. We're looking to see if we can find some space this week to go see them and then keep working in Capoterra, which would be good. However, President at Zone Conference emphasized that we should keep work centered in the cities where we're serving, because lately missionaries have been spending too much time driving to and from outlying cities, where they could be finding investigators close to members. So, we'll visit them occasionally, but seeing as they weren't making huge progress, and the other potentials we had dropped us cold a bit ago, we are probably gonna leave Capoterra be somewhat. Maybe have a day or two every time we have the car.

But thanks for letting me know I'm learning something enough to be said in Sacrament meeting! Or at least making it shown in letters. I've been kind of wondering about my letters lately, and how they sometimes make things probably seem worse than they are. I don't like that, and that is a part of my personality I feel like I need to adjust. (****And I'm taking the steps to do that, that counselor has called a few times, and each time I've learned something new and worked on applying it. And felt a lot better. I hope I haven't cast kind of a dark shadow on the mission thus far, I just get so stressed and expect so much of myself a lot that it drives me nuts. But I'm kind of glad it is. When I get back, it'll (hopefully) be cakewalk, the stress that I dealt with in the past! :) )

I'm glad to hear that you're all having fun, and I'm still jealous of the canoe. Oh, and we officially start the English lessons in September (although you guys could check out the site for kicks, www.missioneitaliana.info), although we're gonna do a kind of a practice one this week, to just get started with it. And I have not seen Sorella Rossell or Anziano Cicon in the mission yet, although I've met people who've met them. Anziano Ostler laughed when he said I knew her, last transfer. He thought she was hysterical.

 

Thanks guys, love you!

Anziano Walker

We Are Home

Ciao Presidente!

This week has been pretty good, we've just been making sure to work the best we can. After that call yesterday for Anziano Loertscher, he was doing a lot better, and we got right back out once we learned he would be fine. Although, we made sure to be a little more reliant on buses for the next little bit. He's doing great now.

We had a scambio between us and Oristano last Friday, I went with Anziano Rasmussen, and Anziano Loertscher went with Anziano Adams. They seem to be working very well together, and Anziano Rasmussen is doing very well for his 2nd transfer. He is doing well with his Italian, and is working hard to improve, he bears meaningful and simple testimony in lessons, and is able to work and enjoy himself at the same time. It looks like they're doing a good job in Oristano as well, which is good. 

This week, at church, Gino Mura came, who we haven't seen for a while. Evidently, he was in the hospital for a few weeks, but now that he's out, he's completely willing to meet with us whenever it works out, and he said he's gonna come every week to church. It may be slow going with him (he had a few ideas against the Word of Wisdom lesson in Gospel Principles), but he seems to be willing to try this out for sure. He's also going to be coming to a Branch Activity this Friday, a sort of barbecue, it sounds like. And Gianni and Sara said they would come as well, with their daughter who's visiting, so we're gonna do our best to have members help out with them, make friendships and such.

I can't think of anything else at the moment. Looking forward to Zone Conference tomorrow!

Ciao!

Anziano Walker

Hey, sorry this is late, and it won't be a long letter at all, the place is about to close. The computer place closed on us last time, and our schedule was completely messed up with Zone Conference yesterday. But that went well, and it was a very powerful Zone Conference for me. Pres. Waddoups is an AMAZING mission president, and I learn a lot from him, not just when he teaches, too.

I'm working a lot on trying to be more consistent with good habits I'm trying to make, like excercising every morning (which I got a full 30 minutes almost every day this week!), and how to teach better.

Fun fact, I WOULD have written back yesterday after Zone Conference, but that would have taken us away from a member lesson we had scheduled and had tried to get all last transfer. As a result of that one lesson, we got 4 new investigators here. 2 young families. And the member is the Mom. Super great! We have an appointment this upcoming Monday, too, so they are pretty dang solid, it looks like!

Well, love you all, and hope you have a great week! And yes, Italians DO love Americans. I especially love saying I'm from California, because when that comes out, almost without fail, they say "BELLA California!" (beautiful). Really fun. :)

Ciao, love you!

Anziano Walker

P.S. - We got the new english course, and we're probably gonna start it next week! =D

Oh man, the internet lady here is super nice, and let us stay an extra bit of time so we could finish writing our families. Oh man, I love the little miracles!

One thing that prompted that little bit for Pres. Waddoups was on Wednesday, at English Course. He had just got out of a meeting they had at the church, and we were just finishing up too. So he decides to drop in on our classes real quick, because (he told us later) he had never been to see an english course yet in the mission. He had seen the presentation for the new course several times already from past Zone Conferences, so he wanted to put that into effect with us. He walked into the class Anziano Prete and I were teaching (we were doing a mini scambio because he had the car from Olbia, and I knew where we needed to drive to. We had 10 Anziani in Cagliari that night, at our apartment)(by the way, "Prete" pronounced prehtey, means "priest" in Italian), the intermediate/advanced for the night. He walks in, and the 7 students see him (he's tall, easily Jared height, maybe taller), and you could just feel his presence. He made sure to make the entire exchange in english, and pushed them to say their names in a sentence as he shook their hands. It was crazy, you could just feel the respect they had for him, it was kind of funny! And as I was giving the spiritual thought, I mentioned "prophet", and he stopped me, and asked them if they knew what a prophet was. And then, he taught them a phrase in Italian that he got them to translate to english, one by one (a prophet is a man who talks with God). Great example, AND a wonderful teacher.

And then, I had a personal interview with him right before he got taken back to the airport for his flight, and to open up, he asked me to say the prayer. Realizing the time crunch, I gave a quick prayer, and we got started. Then he gave the closing prayer, and it was exactly like a conversation with some other person. Taking time, not only going through saying thankful's and asking's, but giving thoughts and understanding. That in and of itself was a huge example to me.

Ok, I'm probably gonna go now. We just had weekly planning this morning, and this week is looking to be a solid week, with purpose every day, and I really enjoy that. It's hard to want to get up and out without that kind of goal in mind. We do it, but maybe not as eagerly as possible. Just something I'm learning here. By the way, Dad, in training and talking with Anziano Loertscher, I've been learning a lot how to teach, what to teach towards. I've narrowed it down to what we want them to know, feel and do. Thanks for teaching me that, and I'm just bummed that it took me this long to get it right! -ish. :)

Thanks guys, I'll write on time next week!

Anziano Trey Walker

First P Day Being 20

Ciao Presidente!

 

This week, we've been working hard. We managed to see Gianni and Sara again, this time with some members that live nearby their house, to try to explain the Restoration. The members, the Floris family, did wonderful. The hard part was Sara, who tried to contradict what we believed. With things that didn't relate at all. However, there was evidence of the spirit being felt at times, and especially with Gianni. We tried to invite them to baptism in the lesson, but it somehow just didn't get understood, and then the Floris' kind of took over from there. Oh well. But Gianni specifically said at one point "You guys are planting seeds with me right now", which I thought was kind of cool. He seems to really want to understand us, and helps us explain to his wife what we mean when she doesn't get it. And he explains it well.

 

There was also a new investigator from last week, Gino Mura, who came to church. He's progressing in that he follows through on commitments really well, but we're kind of wondering where understanding of lessons and importance of the doctrine is. He has said he wants to make improvements in his life, and we try to help with that, but he kind of explains his own thoughts and then doesn't allow for any intervention, unfortunately.

 

Other than that, we have (these past few days especially) really made a push to find appointments, especially from the Area Book. We've been calling people from there and visiting their houses a ton. We have, if nothing else, been able to talk to people on the street and get them thinking about the Church a bit.

  

Thanks Presidente!

Anziano Walker

 

 

 

HIYA!

 

Ok, so you DO know about the blog. I heard about that all of a sudden from all the Anziani at Zone Conference, saying that their parents have all commented on that and how good of a job Sorella Waddoups is doing keeping it up. I had no idea if you guys knew about it. But now I do. So...... yeah.

 

Comunque, I'm 20!!! We didn't do a heck of a lot special, but Sorella Waddoups called in the morning to say Happy Birthday, and the Sorelle here made me a cake. Funny, I just realized that the only people involved in celebrating were sorelle...... Oh well. Va bene. I did, however, wear a fantastic tie, one of my favorite power ties that I bought here. Hot pink. Oh yeah. Conservative? Probably not. But it's a birthday tie! :) We also had a mostra again, we have one or two planned here for every weekend this transfer. It's different here than in Messina, cause here it's only a 2 1/2 hour thing in the evening. I feel like that's a little nicer on Anziano Loertscher, who is still having a lot of difficulties with the language. But we're still making sure to do language study together to try to address that.

 

And to address your last question: no, they haven't distributed it out yet, although they're pretty sure we'll have it by this Zone Conference, as all the materials are already in Rome. And they explained it in Capi Conference, and we are all SUPER PSYCHED for it! It's got consistent lesson plans, super simple and effective at teaching (geared more toward conversation than grammar), and is COMPLETELY a finding tool, with a lesson being about 20-30 minutes (they found that works better than an hour), and having the option to talk with people more in depth about the spiritual thought. And what's cool, if people can't come, it's easy enough (and maybe even better for learning) to go to their house to teach them english on any other day. They've been trying it in Rome the past few months, and they said one time they had a 20 minute english lesson, and a 2 hour discussion of the Gospel! It's so freakin awesome, and what makes it even cooler, we're the first non-english mission to put it into practice, so people at church headquarters want to see how this goes. Sweet!

 

Ok, but enough about advertising. If you can't tell, I really love doing English Course. And I'm psyched for this program. But this week, after being inspired to work better and more diligently from Capi Conference, me and Anziano Loertscher have decided to use the ex-investigator section of the Area Book to have a little more direction to our work here. These past few days have been long and tiring, but really good, because we felt like we had a more substantial goal than "knock on this many houses, and hope for the best." We've also decided to stop complaining that there's no work in the summer, and if nothing else, get referrals for other countries (what with the tourists). I even met some people from Denmark that were pretty cool.

 

So that's what's going on over here right now. Really trying hard to find those people that are looking for the Gospel. One thing people have been saying to us over and over while looking for those ready is really annoying, when they almost all say "Well, there's one God for everyone, so we're all good." This morning, I decided to look up how to respond to that. While talking with Anziano Loertscher about it, I realized a few things: 1. Those people probably wouldn't be the ones we're looking for anyways, and 2. A way to respond may be "Yes, there is one God, yet no one says the exact same thing about Him. Obviously, very few people really know Him as He is. We go around to help people understand how to know that for themselves." I haven't had a chance to try that yet, but that sounds like it would make people think a little bit. Funny, this helps me to clarify my purpose here for myself. Funny how that works, huh?

 

Anyway, gotta go. A few things before I do: I would like to suggest a fun little thing for later: a Book of Mormon in Braille. We found one in the appartment, and I spent the past few days (only my absolutely free time, though, like before bed or a few minutes after lunch) learning it, and I literally cracked the code for it. It's awesome! :) Let's see, what else... oh, I may or may not be using that birthday money to buy a new suit (it may require more than that, even with the sales), seeing as I'm down to one. The blue one had a fight with the corner of a chalkboard, and the chalkboard won. Unfortunately. ****Also parents (I'm gonna put asterisks before things I'd want you to take out before blog), a counsellor for missionaries called last week, and he helped me out a ton, to figure out how to prevent bad moods, instead of focusing on getting out. It's been super helpful already, and I'm hoping to keep improving.

 

Ciao! I love you guys!

Anziano Walker