Weeks 38-40

February 15, 2016

So we were waiting for English course to start in the foyer of the church on Tuesday and in to the church walk the stake presidency and area 70, accompanying Elder Hallstrom and Elder Kearon of the 70. Serving in Rome 1, you become less star-struck as time goes on and that happens more often. They had come to see a stake service project the youth were doing for the refugees. The next morning, we had an amazing training that they did for the missionaries here. 

It's super cool how they can just GO for it, no notes or plans or anything, and they'll give you an insane spiritual experience. There was one part where Elder Kearon said something to us, like "you know who you are. There's not many of you, but for those of you who..." It was pretty crazy how well he spoke exactly to me. But one thing we all learned is that we should ALWAYS bring specific questions to meetings, and probably especially when they seem mundane or usual. If we want specific revelation, we should ask specific questions. 

Liu is doing well. Fratello Salerno started snoring really loudly in elders quorum, but it was ok. From what we hear from the sisters, the Relief Society is way worse. Um... I'll leave it at that. Use your imagination. He won't make the 27th, but a couple weeks later should be good. 

We finally saw Jean Pierr and Eva again. Didn't leave too much in the way of commitments, but we will be able to see him again, and that's what we came for. 

This week I had one of my best scambios [exchanges] ever, this time with Anziano Mika. Both of the zone leaders came to our house, which is TINY, and it smelled awful by the end.  Poor Anziano Mika, who plays basketball at BYU, is 6'10" and I'm not sure exactly how he fell asleep on the cot we gave him. He's a really great, hard thinking missionary. In the last branch he was in he got 60 referrals doing a super hard core, intense program with the members that involved fasting, praying, and every day contact. 

So this week we've been really getting our member game on. We have a huge ward, and honestly, if there's member work to be done in any area in the mission it's here. One small thing that we have done is to make a list of all the birthdays of members.  This morning we called a certain woman whose name I didn't recognize, and when we asked if we could sing her a song for her birthday, she responded "HOW CUTTTTTTEEEE!!!!!" Ha-ha so I think we'll continue doing that. 

On Saturday we had a family night in church. I was feeling kind of bad because no members ever come.  It's almost always just us and investigators, until a miracle happened! Roger and his wife are from Peru showed up; she has been in Italy for a while but he just got here. I think they liked it a lot and today their friend Monica is going to talk to her about meeting with the missionaries! 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

Normally we wouldn't do p-day with the sisters, but this less active needed help. She came to church for the first time in a long time Sunday, so I guess it worked. 

Zone calcio today. Pray that my ankle gets better! 

I ate this and was still hungry afterward. Shrimp pizza is pretty good here. 

February 22, 2016

Such a miracle filled, Spirit led week. We had just said our prayer to start companionship study and I looked at our names board and Harry's name jumped out at me. I thought "we need to call him now!" So we did... No answer. But then we were on the bus to go do some service and he called back. He is a referral from the Philippines. But his wife is against the church so we hadn’t been able to meet. Things didn't seem much better on the phone, but after I hung up Anziano Saffer told me "you know we are driving RIGHT by where he lives, right?" So we decided to ask him if he could meet us right then, and he said yes! Miraculously we were able to find him in this crazy Filipino apartment complex that looked like it came straight from Tattoine. But it was good and we hope to see him again with some members this week! 

I took Elder Hallstrom's advice to go into meetings with a question- so I went to church with a desire to strengthen my testimony of the Spirit's power to convert people. What I got was NOT what I expected. The stake presidency came to basically sweep all the dirt out from under the rug, so to speak, during Sunday school with the entire ward. Yes, I actually learned new things myself as we discussed Joseph Smith's wives, new church policies causing people to withdraw their records, and being open as we talk to our children about morality. The answer to my question I think was how the stake president showed we can receive personal revelation to resolve the questions we have, which was pretty cool. 

Immediately afterward we did a mini scambio where my companion went to give a blessing to the sisters' investigator who was considering getting an abortion, and I was left to take the rest of our investigators to priesthood, where I didn't have much time to talk about what had just happened, as I had to translate for Elder Memmot, who was just reading the New Era while I looked over his shoulder. I think I saw a gray hair in the mirror this morning :) 

We also are pretty excited for tonight, we have three appointments. One is this guy from Egypt who just showed up at church yesterday with his less active friend. Our zone leaders gave us a special weekly key indicator to report - how many people we invite to church. No one we invited other than investigators came, but Maged did! Then we also have Valerio. The other week I said a prayer and then went through the area book to find someone we should meet. I came to Valerio, a contact who the missionaries met five years ago. Well, we're seeing him at 7 tonight, so I can't wait!

Boy is it a roller coaster with Jean Pierr and Eva. Yesterday we went over there with Fabio (afterwards I asked him how the lesson went - Fabio was crying and both of the investigators seemed to be very touched, but obviously I only understand Spanish so well ;) But we did a repaeat of the Restoration since Eva hadn't been there the first time. They both said they would get baptized, she just needs to sforzarsi [make an effort] a little bit to find out if the message is true. 

Mauro is leaving in April to go find work in Ecuador for a month. His wife Rosa wants us to help him decide whether to be baptized before or after the trip. Thankfully he will be with her family who are members during that time, but we'll have to pray for some guidance. He seems to be finally coming around, HE FINALLY READ. We took the patriarch, Brother Salerno, with us.  He is one of my favorite people in Italy, but holy cow he needs ZERO invitation to just go for it.  They made one comment about how he looks young and he talked for ten minutes about the blessings of the Word of Wisdom. Ha. 

Got some more surprises for next week, really cool people who could turn into miracles. I like how in the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord challenges people to replicate even one of the revelations Joseph Smith received to show that they truly were divine. I feel the same way with missionary work. Neither I nor anyone else could do this work for just one day without the Heavenly aid we receive constantly. We really do have angels on our right and left out here! 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

St. Peter's! The ban got lifted for missionaries! 

February 29, 2016

Well the biggest thing that happened this week was Maged!!! (Muh-jeed) We aren't allowed to teach people living in the immigrant camps, and since he was Egyptian, we were kind of suspicious going into the first lesson on Tuesday, but it turned out great. He doesn't live in the camps, but did just come back from Germany with his less active friend Awad. He has been Orthodox his whole life, but I guess stuff just happened in Germany because he apparently has felt the Spirit really strongly regarding the Book of Mormon and even dreamed about getting baptized, though he couldn't because he had to leave Germany for document issues. So we were pretty taken aback by the end of our Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson. 

The next time we brought Hanim, this lady who's been a convert from Islam for 17 years, and is a HUGE help because Maged's English isn't incredible, so once in a while she steps in and translates into Arabic. At the end of the lesson, I told him "reading the scriptures and praying daily will help you be ready to be baptized. Will you prepare yourself to be baptized on March 27th?" Then he started talking to Hanim in Arabic, and I thought "oh no, was I not clear enough?" But then Hanim told us "He means to say, how did you know the 27th? That was the same date the missionaries in Germany had chosen for him to be baptized."  That was a cool experience, especially since we hardly ever do baptisms on Sundays anyway, it just kind of worked out like that since we didn't want to run into Mauro who we had planned for the 26th and Elder Christofferson who is coming the Saturday before. 

We kind of goofed teaching Liu, at the end of our short prophets lesson, he asked us what exactly do these modern prophets ask us to do? Dang it. It's ok; we are teaching the Word of Wisdom tonight, that'll help clear it up pretty well. 

Teaching families is not easy. Mauro's kids have immune systems the strength of a cheap umbrella from a Chinese store, so they were sick this week and we couldn't see him. 

Couple of weird experiences: the elders quorum president invited us to bring investigators to an activity on Friday night. He had also invited the high priests and young men, and we received a couple confirmations and some maybes. We were supposed to start watching "Ephraim's Rescue" at 6. But by 6:30, it was just us elders, Brother Aprea, and this old (and a little crazy) member named Sylvio. We had ZERO material there, so I wanted to leave, but poor Brother Aprea had brought a ton of food and was all ready - he had even spent 12 HOURS the previous day working on doing the Italian subtitles himself! We didn't want to leave him alone with Sylvio. So we stayed, and, a couple other people ended up coming including our less active Francesco. 

Second is this Pakistani guy we talked to at the bus stop who forced us to let him buy us lunch when he found out we were missionaries and wants us to come to his restaurant this Wednesday. 

Thing I learned (again) this week is what faith can do. When I was on my exchange the other week with Anziano Mika, he told me offhand about a girl who they were teaching whose parents wouldn't let her get baptized. "But we'll fast and pray together soon and get permission and she'll get baptized". This morning the zone leaders sent us our zones weekly numbers. The zone miracle of the week: this girl had gotten permission to be baptized. 

Also, when we went to teach Eva and Jean Pierr last week, we literally talked to ONE other person on the bus. Somehow Fabio got his number. I was super skeptical about his potential, but then yesterday Fabio sent us his number and said when he had called this guy had seemed super interested. When we called, sure enough, he was super positive and we are seeing him tomorrow! The work reflects your attitude, not vice versa! 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon