Week 89

February 13, 2017

This week was so good. Yesterday, a mom and her daughter came to church from Switzerland. They are super cool and into missionary work and tonight they are taking us to a buffet dinner with them and our friend O at their fancy hotel! So cool! I feel kind of guilty :/

Yesterday was super crazy though. We had to do member splits because we wanted to be in seven places at once. In primary we joined the circus and gave everyone personalized name tags. The idea came from little M, who told us he would listen to our lesson with his mom on Tuesday if we would give him one of our name tags to wear. My companion then taught gospel principles while I snuck in a Preach My Gospel lesson with O and a member. He is so awesome. This week people have been looking around for a hotel to baptize him in on March
1st.

We were so happy that H came with her kids because she almost didn't come! She is going through really hard stuff right now and it is a miracle that she is reading the Book of Mormon when she can't sleep, trying to tranquilize her kids at church, and being the one to set up appointments with us.

Saturday, we went to Gozo [another island in the Maltese archipelago]! It is sooo pretty. It's unreal. It was a huge miracle that we found one of the two members on the island on the ferry ride there! We were able to teach her during the boat ride.

Sometimes we feel like we are on a different planet (Tatooine, for example). It's just funny cuz there is a famous type of fish here and when our friend O first said the name it just sounded like we were really living in Star Wars.  It's pronounced "lampooki". Just repeat that and tell yourself again that Malta isn't really that far away.


We went back to our Maltese family and met two other family members.  It's so fascinating how sometimes you will tell some people about the restored gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ being on the earth again and they'll say something like "thank you. Yes. It's so true."  Sometimes it’s because they're not listening; other times people will just not understand. But these people show incredible comprehension. One of the kids (who are all in their 20s), told us something like "this could change our lives". And I was like "um yea it could! Thank you!"


Love,

Presbiteru Cannon

The aforementioned scene

Week 88

This week we had the zone leaders down in Malta for a scambio! They came all 700 kilometers to get here from Rome. The whole two days were packed with miracles. As we boarded a bus during our trip to the airport, we saw M. and HER MOM! M. is the very mature 9-year-old who has been coming to church for a while now. We were so excited to finally meet the mom, now we can go back and start teaching them finally.

We also brought A, who recently received his call to go to the London south mission. We recognize that we are going to play a major role in his mission preparation, and took us with him the whole day. He did SO WELL. We knocked on a few doors and kept asking him when he would take a turn to introduce us. Finally, he got up the courage to do it, and from there he sped walked around the street, talking to person after person as fast as he could find them. What a champ! That evening we were let in and taught a mom and her adult son, A and B! They are so cool. She doesn't speak any English. Holy cow I am so grateful for every word I know in Maltese. A and I did our best but Anziano Ridd didn't speak ANY Maltese, so it was a little chaotic, because either with the language or mission experience, all three of us were greenies in some way or another, but they were so happy to learn from us and I can't wait to go back.  We also got to teach H. It was super good. She felt like God called her back to Him when she met the other elders on the bus.

Well, there is a lot of pressure on us here to baptize! Our branch president discusses where our throngs of investigators will go to for Sunday school.  The church facilities management has offered to pay for a hotel whenever we baptize here (which should be the end of this month by the way). And the First Presidency themselves have at least evaluated but not gone through with the idea of a Maltese Book of Mormon. These things are all related to us finding new people to teach! Wow! Good thing all we must do is "talk to every living soul (we) see" as a friend put it. And then we've done our job, which PS is a super cool job.

I learned a good life lesson this week. It's hard to tell, because I love every area I have been in, but I would say that Bari and Malta definitely take the cake as my two favorite areas ever. What makes it interesting is that those were the two areas that I was devastated when I got sent to. It's really cool how God is a whole lot wiser than we are.

Love,

Anziano Cannon
(It is SO hard to write in Maltese. Apple doesn't have a keyboard for it!)

Scambio Magic!