Weeks 25 and 26

November 17, 2015

You are assigned to labor in... South America?

Ah, what a great week it has been! Transfer day was great. We were at a random stop somewhere and I got to see my trainer Anziano Borner for a second, just before the train left. Then when we stopped in Napoli I was pretty stoked to see my MTC friend Anziano Lancaster and my BYU RA Anziano Friedman! When we finally arrived in Rome, I met my new companion, Anziano Saffer. After we said hi to each other, he told me something like "well we could wait a second for the rest of the missionaries to get off the train so you could say goodbye real quick, but there's no reason to waste time so after that let's get out of here." Right from then I knew we were going to get along! Ha. He's a super good guy. Out of our district of us and four sisters, I am one of just two from America. 

Anyway, referring to the title of my email: I was a bit surprised to see that tons of people here, and especially tons of members, are from Latin America. Particularly Peru. We were in a lesson with our ward mission leader the other day and all of a sudden he decided to just start talking in Spanish, despite the fact that everyone present was perfectly good at Italian. Afterwards I was like "OK. Cool. I understood maybe four words there I guess I'll just bear my testimony now." There are some great people here though. One of them is our ward pianist, who wrote several songs for the Italian hymn book. Needless to say, I was not asked to accompany the music on Sunday.  :) 

The other day I heard through the grapevine that Rome 1 hasn't had a baptism in a year. And to be honest, the work right now is pretty slow. Suddenly I saw an unspoken challenge from President. Leave two young, hungry missionaries together in a bad area and see what they do. Well, you had better believe I told my comp the streak is breaking during our companionship. I don't like how sometimes missionaries say that areas where there are a lot of investigators have "lots of work" while other places that aren't seeing success have "not much work". In my opinion, the latter areas have the most work in the mission, because we have to catch up to others and GET investigators before we start teaching and baptizing them. We started doing this last night, where we took the subway to the Vatican and found our way the four or five mile walk home. 

Quick things: P-day was on Tuesday because we had zone conference yesterday… with my cousin! Didn't think we'd see each other this soon.

A couple guys from Salt Lake City came to church to take pictures. I will admit it was pretty cool to have someone taking a picture of you making a comment in priesthood while someone else in the back of the room is simultaneously translating what you are saying (there are a lot of English speakers here so they have to do that). Well, if yours truly is on the cover of a future Ensign, don't be surprised.  ;) 

The Italian has definitely improved. I now say all of my prayers throughout the day in Italian except my longer evening prayer. 

This week I had the thought that I am literally "walking on water" in a sense. With the experiences we have every single day, I should be SO exhausted, homesick, depressed, and frustrated. It is such a miracle and a huge evidence of the prayers and heavenly support we receive that we can do this work every day and love it. 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon

Fratello Mannino. Incredible guy. African branch president. 

English course 

Famiglia Saccone, Famiglia Mantegna (investigators) and Salvatore  

Eman and his friend Endurance came to see me off at the train station.

First P-day.  Vatican in back. 

This castle we went to was part of the movie 

"Angels and Demons" if you've seen that. 

Zone Conference pictures:

Ethan with his cousin Tristan Spencer!

November 23, 2015

So on Saturday my companion and I had an interesting comp study where he revealed to me certain things about our ward that I hadn't noticed my first Sunday there. For example, right now there are so few willing men that only active members have home teachers. Yes, you read that right - only ACTIVE families have home teachers. And WE missionaries have home teaching assignments.

I could give 31 reasons why this is completely inappropriate, but I won't. We scheduled a meeting with our ward mission leader and kind of vented a tiny bit. He's a good guy. But to be honest I felt a bad afterwards. So I repented and decided that this would take a ton of prayer and faith that the Spirit will guide us to know what we can do and how we can do it to improve this ward, trusting that God knows which situations are best for a "cleansing of the temple" approach and which situations are better dealt with in a more positive way.

And I had a potential opportunity to "break boxes" (Italian slang for calling to repentance) a little in my testimony yesterday, especially after the less-than-desirable welcome our investigator Marco had just received, but I let the Spirit guide me and instead ended up expressing a ton of love I felt and knew that God has for each of them. And we have been blessed.

That day we befriended an Argentinian kid, who’s been home from his mission for two years but just came to Italy and is working on switching his Spanish to Italian right now. Being the awesome RM he is, he told us how where he used to live he would go with the missionaries once a week, "if that's ok". "Yes, yes that's fine with us" I quickly responded.  :) 

But yea we've seen some good success. We should have a couple baptismal dates by the end of this week. I have never worked harder on my mission, or prayed harder for guidance, despite this being the least numerically successful week of my mission. We talk to SO MANY people every day. I absolutely would've gotten up on the front of the bus and started preaching to everyone, instead of wasting time just talking to individuals, if my companion hadn't been a little worried they might get annoyed with us! Ha. 

I will just quickly say, without expounding more than necessary, that my health and physical safety have been pretty miraculously preserved during the past six months (OK, four and a half months - nothing can happen in the MTC). But it's good that we went to the Vatican last week, because we missionaries are now no longer to go over there. 

Well I guess my spiritual thought today will just be that Jesus Christ is the center of all we do. Joseph Smith said that all we have as members of the church - rain gutter regattas, relief society activities, cool "I'm a Mormon" videos about Irish runners - they are all just appendages to the real reason we are here. Jesus Christ and His Atonement. And I can't wait for one more reason to help people come to him as we approach the Christmas season!

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

Week 24

November 9, 2015

I feel like every day in my journal I start out by writing, "Today has been pretty crazy." I guess that's mission life. Saturday was particularly crazy. In the morning we received our transfer calls and I found out I will be going to ROME!!!!!!! I'm so excited! I love Bagheria but feel peace about this transfer. It will mean a big drop in temperature. Every day has been beautiful here, probably in the 60s and always sunny. On Thursday I will take the same train that brought me here right back to Roma. My specific area, Rome 1, includes the Vatican, so hopefully I will be able to send some good p-day pics! My new companion will be Anziano Soffer from Sweden. He will be starting his fifth transfer (out of 16).  I will be starting my fourth), so I'm happy to have another relatively young companion. 

Saturday night was Salvatore's baptism! We were few in number that attended, but the Spirit was strong. He wrote out a three page long testimony to share, which we had to abbreviate a little bit! It was great though.  He talked about God cleansing the earth with the flood, and how he is now being cleansed with his baptism, and some other great, deep stuff that had Bishop raising his eyebrows. More important than his knowledge, however, was his testimony, which I'm sure grew as well when he received the Holy Ghost yesterday. What a happy couple of days! 

I have been overwhelmed the past couple days over the love I have felt for and from the members of this ward. I never imagined that I could have the feelings I currently do about people who I have known for such a little time, and especially talked with so little (remember I came here speaking barely any Italian!) But I got some pictures yesterday and will hopefully send some more next week of the incredible people I've met. 

Let me read an excerpt from my journal September 23rd. "I have never been this physically tired on the mission...We got bedonaed (canceled on) like 5 times today, twice by Giovanni. Well I guess it happens. Though I don't like admitting that I'm not in control of the situation."

September 23rd was the day we met Salvatore. I didn't even write about it because he didn't seem very promising at the time. But I testify that God is in control of the situation. He sees things that we can't, and out of our trials will come blessings and growth that we could never have imagined. 

Finally, from Neal A. Maxwell, “A great indicator of one’s personal conversion is the desire to share the gospel with others." That doesn't mean we aren't afraid, or lazy, or have other problems or reasons we don't open our mouths. But we put those all on the altar and share the gospel anyway if we are truly converted. 

Love you all and can't wait to write you from Rome next week,

Anziano Cannon

Christopher- Palermo 3 branch (African) ward mission leader. Besides wearing the same swaggy tie to church every week, Christopher has really taken Eman under his wing and magnified his calling. (Remember that these Africans are some of the happiest people I know, for whatever reason they just can't smile for a camera). 

Joel- Palermo 3 branch first counselor. This guy would give 40 minute long sacrament talks pulling out insane quotes from D&C and the Pearl of Great Price if President Mannino let him. Such a great guy. 

Samuel- Palermo 3 quorum president. Yesterday Italian and African was combined, so he taught priesthood. I don't cease to be amazed that this guy, who hasn't been in the church for more than a few years, could get up and teach a lesson in front of 20 men in his second language (Italian). 

Week 23

November 2, 2015

Wow, my heart has been so full this week, I can't believe how blessed we've been and I don't understand how we could possibly deserve it.  On Saturday morning Salvatore passed his baptismal interview, which was no surprise to any of us. He got sick and couldn't come to church Sunday (dang it Satan!) but we fortunately live just down the street from him so we will be seeing him often this week in anticipation for the day he has been waiting for for a long, long time.

Later that day our investigator Tomasso came over. He has been in Bagheria for a little bit but was supposed to go back within a month to his home 60 kilometers away. We had just the previous night talked about how it was unrealistic to try and teach him and were planning on probably letting him go, until Saturday when we found out just kind of matter-of-factly that he is moving here permanently! Miracle!

In the past I've thought it best to allow the Italians to have chance to bear their testimonies in fast and testimony meeting, but yesterday I finally decided to get up and say mine, and was really glad I did. I was also there for African testimony meeting at the end of church, and was just blown away as Eman dropped the greatest testimony ever. He's a pretty quiet, closed guy, so to hear him say what he did so openly in front of the entire congregation about how his life has changed and his love for the gospel was just such an awesome experience. I was trying to stop smiling for the next five minutes! Haha. 

On Saturday the Palermo 1 Anziani had a couple baptisms. I volunteered to play the piano for prelude 25 minutes in advance. This turned out to not be the best idea, because the Bishop was half an hour late, so everyone was sitting here quietly while I flipped open to random pages in the Italian hymnal trying to find songs I could play. 

I've been reading "Our Search for Happiness" by M. Russell Ballard again. It is so cool to see how my perspective has changed since I read it in the MTC. At one point he talks about how many missionaries begin serving with the idea that they want to repay God for all that he has done for them in their lives. I bracketed that a few months ago, because that is basically in a nutshell my main reason why I wanted to serve a mission. But Elder Ballard continues that the missionaries will soon find out that we can never compensate God for all he has done for us.  As soon as we begin serving, he will bless us immensely. With my perspective now, I can better see the accuracy of this. This past little while I have worked hard for Heavenly Father, but even for my OWN personal well-being and development, there is NO BETTER way I could have spent the past five months. 

Well I am loving the work here and my companion, I would love to find out Saturday that I'm staying for another transfer!

Love,

Anziano Cannon 

Didn't really take pics this week.  Here's one of the beach. 

And Palermo

Week 21 and 22

October 19

Wow, what an insane week. Yesterday in church I got so confused that I talked to an English speaker in Italian and then immediately afterward an Italian speaker in English. At one point I was "in charge" of helping and befriending three different investigators of ours and the other elders who had no idea what to do and spoke different languages. Our new ward mission leader even had the sister's recent convert teach gospel principles. I just had to hope that our love for the gospel would make up for our inexperience with it.

At the baptism we didn't prepare nearly as well as we should have, so I ended up wearing my suit coat over my wet baptism shirt afterwards. It was a miracle it even worked in the first place because we planned to meet Salvatore at the train station to catch a train that would get us to the church over an hour before the baptism.  But that train didn't come, and then the bus we took had problems, but eventually we met Eman, got to the church and had the baptism. The two talks in Italian and the talk in English were translated for those who weren't bilingual.

As we waited in the bathroom for the sister's baptism to take place, I bowed my head to say a quick silent prayer, and when I looked up, I felt peace as I saw Eman mouthing a prayer of his own. For some reason the water in the font was FREEZING cold, but right as we stepped toward the center the water temperature literally heated way up and felt great. Maybe my dad can explain this using physics, but I thought it was pretty cool anyway. Overall it was a great way to celebrate the road Eman has taken to come closer to Christ, while remembering how much farther he still has to go. He has changed so much and I was so happy to be there to see him take one step further on his journey of discipleship. 

This week we were excited to meet a few new potential investigator families! Helping a family into the Gospel would be great. 

A couple months ago I was a little frustrated that it seemed very hard to get the few members we have in Bagheria to come to teach lessons with us, and I had the prompting that "you can get member present lessons, you just have to baptize the members first" (meaning that we can baptize people and then bring them to lessons to teach other investigators). Teaching Salvatore this week that thought came into my head again as he showed us how he writes these elaborate page-long reflections on his Book of Mormon readings and then puts them into people's mail boxes. I couldn't help but think that if he is already a good missionary now, I can only imagine how he will help after his baptism. 

Sorry for this crazy and poorly written email!

Love you all,

Anziano Cannon 

 For our third transfer pic at zone conference we weren't supposed to 
smile, but as you can see, I couldn't really handle that. 

October 26

Pretty crazy week (as always). I was very blessed to get my "permesso" to preach the gospel in Italy while I was still in my first city, so I don't have to return to my birth city later and get it. This was not the case for Anziano Vrska from Palermo, and I will just say that literally EVERYTHING went wrong for him, so we ended up taking the hour long bus ride to the airport four times over the past few days. Plus a train got derailed going to Agrigento, so many trains that would normally stop at Bagheria have been canceled. Bummer. 

It's been an awesome week other than that though! Yesterday we ate lunch at Sorella Pecorraro's house. She is an older member from Milan who has lots of non-member friends and family here. We basically did a split with her, going to two different "appointments" and teaching 12 people total. The first one went super well, Sorella Pecorraro started crying during the opening prayer so I knew we were off to a good start. It was kind of nerve wracking to teach people in a big group style like that, but our Restoration lesson brought a few of them to tears, so we are stoked for our next appointment! 

Salvatore has still been making great progress, he is WAY too deep into the doctrine for gospel principles so we may need to have him switch classes eventually haha. When we started talking about intelligences during our Plan of Salvation lesson I felt like we might have gone a bit too far.  ;)

Crazy story of the week: we slept at Palermo the night before we sent off Anziano Simmons. We were supposed to wake up at 4 to catch the bus.  But when I rolled over to check the clock it said 5:07. So we called up a taxi real quick to haul us to the airport, and payed him more money than I would like to admit. Unfortunately we paid all of our cash to do that, so we were stuck at the airport where all the ATMs were broken. Thankfully, there was one other guy waiting to take the bus back, and he agreed to pay for our tickets if we paid him back once we got to the ATMs at the station. 

This week I studied the Christ-like attribute of virtue. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that most of what I could find was a bunch of old talks by Elaine S. Dalton. :)  But I know that we all have royalty within us so we should be loyal to it. Especially for those of us who have taken upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ through baptism.  There is no friendship more valuable than our own clear conscience, and our own moral cleanliness. 

Yesterday during sacrament I was just flooded with personal revelation about baptism, repentance, forgiveness and the sacrament. Part of this was something I had already heard in conference, that we cannot wait to repent until we take the sacrament. It has to occur beforehand. Then we are forgiven as we take the sacrament. I don’t know how doctrinal this is but it made sense to me. It was wonderful. I realize now how General Authorities always have such perfect answers; they just have been tutored by the Spirit a lot more than we have so far!

Thanks for your emails,

Love,

Anziano Cannon 

Zone calcio 

The lady sitting next to me was a little weirded out by how 

much I enjoyed the bus ride to the airport. The weather 

has been changing and I love the clouds! 

And some pictures from the Palermo zone conference courtesy of Sorella Waddoups...

Week 20

October 12, 2015

This week was much different from others, marked by strong forward steps from a couple investigators. On Monday night we went and visited Salvatore. He is 70 years old but is very strong and lively for his age. It was maybe the best lesson of my mission! He told us how in all his years of looking through other religions to find God there had always been a hole.  He has never wanted to be baptized despite years of study until now, after knowing us and our church for just a couple weeks. His closing prayer to end the lesson was also very inspiring; his sincerity and emotion were very real and provided a good example for me. 

Eman also passed his baptismal interview on Saturday. I'm so nervous for him because he is so new to the gospel still. His testimony is very strong, but I realized how much I took for granted my 19 years in the church when, on Sunday, I showed him the baptismal font and we spent a couple minutes helping him (and me) figure out the position of our arms, etc. for his baptism. 

The day before my birthday the sisters brought cannoli to district meeting. Afterwards we were busy downloading a video at the church for an investigator so we had to make a 10 minute run to the train station, all with me holding a plate of cannoli. I seriously almost dropped the cannoli on the ground, as crazy as that might seem, so I could run ahead and keep the train from leaving without us because it would have been such a disaster to miss it, but thankfully we got there just in time. On my birthday we happened to have had an exchange with the zone leaders planned, who happened to have just been to Rome for a conference and gotten the mail, so I ended up getting my family's birthday package all the way from America on the exactly perfect day! We've also been SO blessed to get a ton of rain- during church, at night- basically whenever we are inside. When we leave the house it has almost always been beautiful and also perfect weather for tracting. 

This week I had a strong spiritual experience with D&C 64:33. In running, if you focus on the improvement you make each easy run you do, or the benefit of each individual extra hour of sleep you get, you will never be motivated because you cannot see the results from the small efforts you make. Likewise, as missionaries and disciples, the "well-doing" we do- each extra person we talk to or act of kindness we perform may make little or no difference, but if we focus on the "great work" that we are laying the foundation for, we can be motivated to continue to do these little acts of goodness, knowing that miracles will come eventually. 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon

We walked into the above church and there was a wedding being performed! 

Fratello Saccone works at some kind of food place and brought home this for me.

Week 19

October 5, 2015

General conference is the best. I'm not going to even put that in caps, because no words can accurately describe my feelings for it. But I will testify that the veil between Heaven and Earth can be very thin during experiences like that.  A member left early because he was "too tired to watch another session". My feeling was that I was too spiritually tired to NOT watch another session. And come on, the music was PERFECT. Come, Come Ye Saints, The Spirit of God (using the arrangement that starts out with just one person), Redeemer of Israel, and I was sweating, shivering, and my eyes were watering with the Spirit as we stood and sang How Firm a Foundation. 

On transfer calls day I said goodbye to Anziano Borner, and then carried out my plan to take two other missionaries, both starting their third transfer like me, to Bagheria to do missionary work there, since we had nothing really to do while we waited. I was really nervous since we all just finished being trained and here I was basically in charge of them of my own accord, but the Lord really blessed us. We had an awesome time and got some great work done before the new missionaries came that night. 

Anziano Andersen and I have done some good work already. He is much different than Anziano Borner, and as always, I have learned a lot from him already. His dad is a general authority and his gospel knowledge is pretty deep. He is the youngest of nine siblings and his immediate family picture is about as big as either one of my extended families.

Salvatore has a baptismal date now and enjoyed conference very much, as did the other Salvatore (am I confusing you?).  Unfortunately Eman didn't make it to conference.  We are working very hard with him right now because he is very ready for his baptism. 

We had such a cool experience getting to the train station after conference Saturday night, when a guy told us the train to Bagheria had been canceled. So (maybe due to inspiration) I looked at the train schedule and found that if we RAN to another station 15 minutes away, we could catch a train there instead of waiting another hour. By "we" I mean legitimately ten of us: a biker, some Italian teenagers, a family with a young baby, and a Polish tourist couple. It was really fun and yielded some good gospel conversation after we made it safely to the station. 

I encourage you all to place value in the inspired words of the prophets! They will guide us safely home! I know it! 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

 Teatro Massimo, biggest theater in Italy! SO COOL!

There was insane flash flood Tuesday. We ran home (about 2 minutes). It felt like running through a water park. So then, with umbrellas, we went to an appointment where an amazing member gave us new shirts to wear. Unfortunately mine didn't have a pocket so my name tag was a little weird for the evening, including here at Marco's birthday (the 11 year old). 

My last district 

Teaching gospel principles a few weeks ago, place was packed! Not sure why everyone loves hearing the Bagheria missionaries teaching so much ;) 

Week 18

September 28, 2015

Ah! I love seeing Emanuel's progress! Anziano Borner gave him a new white shirt which he looked so good in on Sunday, along with a nice looking vest of his own that he wore over it. He was happy to tell others about his baptism and even wanted to welcome a "newcomer". 

This week was interesting as both Elder Richard G. Scott and my uncle Layne Williams passed away. I had interesting spiritual experiences regarding both. For some reason I really wanted to give the spiritual message in district meeting on Tuesday, so Anziano Borner let me. I decided to talk about personal revelation using two talks I love by Elder Scott. So when I found out he died that day I had an oddly warm feeling inside. I also read a talk about the things that matter most to us as members of the church and had a very emotional and spiritual conversation about it in regards to my uncle's situation earlier this week with Anziano Simmons while I was on a scambio [exchange]. 

On that scambio we also got to teach a really awesome referral. He was full of questions and I was glad to take Anziano Simmons' approach of slowing down and waiting for the Spirit to speak through us (that is something I could definitely learn from). I was really surprised and happy because at one point he straight up asked "was my baptism (in another church) valid?" It was a very blunt question and when I explained it he was miraculously completely ok about with my response. 

I have never felt as inadequate as I do right now on the mission. There are so many ways I need to improve. But at least I can catch glimpses of ways I have already changed a lot. I remember the last time we lost water for a couple days I felt like it was so difficult and stressful but it happened again this week and at this point the only reason I really cared is because I didn't want it to interfere with our work. 

Oh yea transfer calls were this week. I'm staying in Bagheria and will get a new companion, Elder Anderson. He's only been in Italy for about six months himself, but that is no surprise because our mission is so young right now. As of a couple months ago, 1/3 of the mission was in its first three transfers. Anziano Borner is leaving to be a Zone leader in Cosenza. I'm sure he'll do great! 

Couple random notes: I had an insane bloody nose that lasted for about 20 minutes the other day, it was more blood than I've ever lost in my life. And I also had the most amazing brioche EVER. They usually cost 2 euro and include a ton of gelato stuffed in a sweet roll. This time I picked a chocolate gelato that had apricot flavoring. It was heavenly! 

We had a few other miracles this week. Lorenzo made it all the way through his fast and said the experience was "bellissima" [most beautiful].  We haven't met with him since then but are very excited to do so! We taught three Africans together again the Plan of Salvation. We did this because two of them hadn't yet heard it.  Our investigator, Alex, was the other one there and even though we taught it to him just a couple weeks ago he basically wanted to teach the lesson to the others by himself! Still trying to get a ride to church for them.

Then we met a Jehovah's Witness named Salvatore who loves studying. We think he's read through 2 Nephi since our first lesson the other day.  During our phone call to set up another appointment he said the Book of Mormon was truer than anything anyone else has, so that's cool.

When you are learning a language you learn not to get flowery with your testimony, but I think that's ok. So here you have it in English: The Plan of Salvation is real. The Holy Ghost is real. The prophet and apostles see and communicate with Jesus Christ himself. I know God lives! 

Love, 

Anziano Cannon 

Zone calcio [soccer] in the rain is life! 

Africans have great smiles, they just don't use 

them when taking pictures! Alex on the left.

Someone decided to light fireworks right outside our house!