Pride is a Sneaky Thing

Dear recipients of this letter,

So this week was a little harder than last week. It was filled with a

lot of talking to Italian strangers about Jesus and most all of them

not wanting to listen. I mean with all the rejection I guess when I

get home and lots of girls say no to dates I'll be able to take the

"no's" a lot better. This is just practice haha.

Anyway, so this week besides just going door to door and talking to

people on the streets we did some other stuff. On Wednesday we had a

worldwide mission training session which was pretty cool. Basically

the people in charge of missionary work for the church, including Neal

L. Anderson, David A. Bednar, and Dallin H. Oaks talked to us about

how we can basically be better missionaries. It was pretty cool even

though the Internet at the church was slow and it took an extra hour

to watch a 2 hour broadcast, it was still cool.

Let's fast foreword to Sunday. After church Sunday we went to a

members house and had lunch which was cool but the cool part was that

we played a game of monopoly and I won so I'm basically the champion

Entrepreneur. Swag. Then Sunday night had some good fun. We did dinner

with our landlord Danilo. He told us the week before that he wanted

some American food so last night we made Barbecue Bacon Cheeseburgers.

We like that. We found some cheddar cheese for the burgers, some thick

cut bacon, we caramelized some onions, and then I made some of that

good barbecue sauce cuz I'm that good. But lemme tell you what, them

burgers were #freakinggood. Honestly I'm pretty proud of how they

turned out haha

Speaking of pride though, I've been thinking about it a little bit

this week. Honestly, going from house to house to talk to people about

Jesus is a little tiring. People aren't super excited about it usually

and then sometimes you disturb them because it's 7:30 PM and way to

late to be knocking on their door so they yell some mean words at you.

Which happened and after tbh I got a little pissed. I was like "I'm

literally trying to help you right now, lady. I came all the way from America

to make YOUR life better and ya don't even want it?!?" Then I sat down

and realized that God might be letting these people tell me I need to

humble myself.

That's the thing about pride. It's sneaky, it comes upon us even when

we are trying to do the right thing. But I guess we need to more fully

understand what pride is, according to Ezra Taft Benson:

"Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit,

boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of

the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing.

The central feature of pride is enmity--enmity toward God and enmity

toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a

state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign

over us."

To be honest for a moment and a couple moments after I had a little

bit of enmity toward that women but I quickly learned something,

"Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. “How everything

affects me” is the center of all that matters--self-conceit,

self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and

self-seeking." I was selfishly sitting there in my own self-pity

trying to tell myself it was her fault. In the end pride is sneaky,

it'll getcha if you're not careful. So watch out. Anyways, love you

all. Hope you have a good week :)

Burger Night with Danilo

Truth is Different Than Belief

Ciao Belli,

So we had a pretty cool week. The highlight of the week is our new

Miracle, Yolanda. So Wednesday morning we were just getting ready for

the day, doing our studies all that good stuff and then we get a call

from this lady. So I answered and we talked for a bit, in the end she

was interested in our English Course (because she found some

advertising poster that we put up) but she is also interested in the

church. So we met her that day in church to talk about it.  She

is on a search for the truth and wants to find a church to join. We

were like "uhhhhh...... Well our church is pretty neat" so we

basically taught her some stuff and left her with a BOM. She came back

the next day for English course saying she loved the book and had

already read most of 3 Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni and was asking

us questions about it (if you don't know what I'm talking about go to

www.mormon.org/BookofMormon) and I was more than ready to help her out

haha. So in the end she is what we missionaries like to call a "Golden

Investigator." There is only one potential problem. Her and her sister

have a house here in Catanzaro but the family lives in a neighboring

city Crotone. So we don't know if we are going to teach her or if the

Anziani in Crotone will but either way it's still a cool story

In other news, it's cold here in Catanzaro. Got down into the high

30's, which is pretty cold for Italy. It should warm up next week.

Today and tomorrow will be the coldest days haha. Also, this week me

and my comp bought some cheddar cheese which is hard to find here in

Italy and we made grilled cheese so that was neat.

So another story that goes basically the opposite of the one above

would be this time we were doing some "Casa-in-Casa" and we knocked on

this dude’s door. He let us up and ended up being a Catholic

Missionary. He sat us down and said something to the effect of "your

church isn't the true church, I'm going to convert you" and I was like

"uhhhhhh..... What?" So he wasn't really interested in what we had to

say but tried really hard to get us to believe like he did. I mean it

wasn't a terrible experience but there were a lot of things that I

asked him that he couldn't answer, questions that we have the answer

to. Also he kept bringing up Padre Pio which made me confused and

surprised all at the same time, but it helped me grow my faith in

knowing that what I'm doing out here is right. I left this dude’s house

with a question though; "How can people believe, whole heartedly and

with good intentions, claim to know something is true, but believe two

different things?" And I guess in the end you gotta ask yourself;

"What is truth?"

As Dieter F Uchtdorf once said "...truth is different from belief. It

is different from hope. Absolute truth is not dependent upon public

opinion or popularity. Polls cannot sway it. Not even the

inexhaustible authority of celebrity endorsement can change it... We

can say west is north and north is west all day long and even believe

it with all our heart, but if, for example, we want to fly from Quito,

Ecuador, to New York City in the United States, there is only one

direction that will lead us there, and that is north--west just won’t

do."

This man we talked to said he was 100% sure he knew what he believed

to be true, but I feel the same way. How do we know who is right? The

fact is, is that we need to go to the person who knows all truth.

Obviously that's not my earthly father (love you, dad) but my Heavenly

Father, no matter how much my dad here on earth thinks he knows,

(AGAIN, love ya pops) God knows everything. So the thing is, if any of

us have a question or want to know the truth we can go to God and he

will give us the answer. I can honestly say this is something I've

done and I will continue to do because we get our doubts sometimes,

but I know God hears us and answers us. If any of you reading this

email have a question about anything, ask God, and he will listen and

answer your prayers. So then y'all can find a little bit of truth too.

Love ya and have a good week!!

Ciao ciao

Catanzaro

Photo Shoot on the RR Tracks

I Love Pizza

My Future Castle

In Krotonlandia

Hard Work is Good

So this week I've been studying a lot in the New Testament in Acts and

I've been reading about Paul (Saul) and I'm just saying, this dude is

swag. I recommend studying about him. He like raised a dude from the

dead who randomly died during church and he also was preaching to

people that wanted to kill him which is the definition of no fear. He

also went to Rome and other parts of Italy so that's pretty cool too

cuz Italy.

Speaking of Italy. My week here was pretty cool too. Though I didn't

raise anyone from the dead or had anyone threaten my life, some cool

stuff did happen. One of those things would be a nice little exchange

that I did with my swag district leader Anziano Kelly. Went to his

city of Crotone and we did some teaching. We had a lesson with this random dude but he ended up being really weird and creepy so that wasn't that cool. But we did randomly see a castle which was cool. None the less it was a good exchange except for thepart where I had to go running with him 

But this week back in Catanzaro we got to teach this swag couple named

Ketty and Mario who wanted to hear about the gospel. So we like that.

We went and taught them and hoping to go back this next week so let's

hope for some miracles. Honestly this week was probably one of our

best weeks here in Catazaro when speaking of missionary work. We

really "put the shoulder to the wheel" and hit the grind. I also

started working out more because I realized I'm gaining weight

but I started eating more vegetables so let's hope we can

change that.

All in all something I've been able to really start applying and

learning better is the principle of work. The fact that when we work

hard everything else seems to fix itself. For some reason missionaries

have a lot of worries and stress out a lot and in the end the best

cure for all of that is work. "Victory is brought to pass by one’s

personal diligence and commitment to hard work. The view of a

champion, and the glory that surrounds him, must never be overshadowed

by the long process of becoming one." (F. David Stanley,The Principle

of Work, Apr. 1993) In the end victory over any goal you wish to

achieve can and only will be achieved through hard work. I'm sure the

best athletes in the world will confirm it too :) Anyways hope y'all

have a great week and stay safe :) love ya

Catanzaro

Krotonlandia

The Squad

When locking the door isn't enough