Zone Leader Conference

Pizza in Napoli with Anziano McMullen July 2012

Attending Zone Leader Conference July 2012

Hello Family! This week has been great! We flew up to Rome yesterday, and today we will be driving down the car to Gela. I think we are going to stop in Naples and get a pizza! I hear that the drive down is beautiful, and then we will spend the night in Cosenza with the Anziani there. Tomorrow morning we will finish the trip. Zone leader conference was great! We are all really excited to go back to our Zones with this new energy and sense of urgency. That Sister got her answer!! She told us that she prayed and she was walking and right after she ran into us on the street and she new that God had put us in her path and that, that was her answer! So she talked to Bishop and is preparing to go to the temple!! It was a miracle! But I will still give her your letter! Thank you so much for writing it! Im sure it will reassure her.
Our investigator is going to be baptized this Saturday. We have other investigators that were supposed to be baptized on this day but we had to change their baptismal date. Sounds like you all had a great 24th of July! I hope you always send them my love. I love the BBQs that our families do. No, We aren't getting the car. The car is going to Gela because it is a small city and they have no buses. In Palermo we have public transportation. Anyway I don't have much time but I love you all! Thanks for writing and have a great week!  Hey Dad! Thanks for writing! Haha I am up here in Rome and we are just doing email before we drive down the Italian coast. I hear its going to be a beautiful drive! We are also looking forward to stopping in Naples to buy a pizza. Then we are going to sleep in Cosenza over night with the Anziani there and then in the morning we will finish up the drive. Zone leader conference was great! We ate some great food and feel like we have been refueled with a new energy and a new excitement about  working hard and getting other missionaries excited. Sounds like you all had a great week with the 24th of July! I miss the whole family. Sounds like you all ate well and had a good time golfing. You will have to say hi to the Allens for me! How are they doing? did they just come down for vacation. Sorry I'm not such a great emailer. I feel like as the mission goes on we don't have as much to talk about, and It is really hard to do all of my emailing in an hour and 15 minutes. I have to email you and mom and then Presidents letter that takes more than half an hour especially now being a Zone leader because we have to report on a bunch of things every week to president so that takes up most of the time. Then reading the emails takes a bit of time. So it only leaves a little bit of time to do the emails to you guys. There are two rules that I have really tried to keep in the mission. 1. Do internet in an hour and 15 minutes and 2. Don't mention names of investigators in emails and don't be to specific about it. They are two rules that not a lot of missionaries follow but I know that the more obedient in the mission that I am the more in tune with the spirit I will be, and being in a mission where everyone hates to hear from us, I feel like I have to try to be extra in tune with the Spirit to be able to find those people. I know you might think it's lame that I would follow lame rules like this but I have seen so many times in the mission when you truly try to be 100 percent obedient to the rules you find tons of blessings in the work. Maybe it's not always finding new investigators or setting tons of baptismal dates but it is more energy throughout the day and more self control. Ohh yeah it's not for sure but President Kelly said I will more than likely train in October or November so that's cool. He also said that I will probably stay In Palermo for 1 more transfer! That's so crazy! I have been there forever! But if that's where the Lord needs me that's where he needs me! Anyway better run! Love you tons!!!

Teaching Tithing

Hey! Thanks for writing. Yes, Anziano McMullen and I are excited to be together another. We are hoping that we can have a lot of success this next transfer. Being zone leader and district leader is a bit of a task. As a district leader you have to prepare a training for district meeting every week and then as a zone leader we have to do a training for the zone and do exchanges with all the missionaries in our zone. So it will be a lot of fun! I hope that we can do it all and still stay on top of our investigators. So, this week we are not having zone leader conference it will be next Tuesday. We will be driving a car up from Gela on Monday and then we get to drive the new car down on Wednesday after zone leader conference. We get to spend a little bit of preparation day in Rome so we are really excited about it! It should be a really good conference. Thank you for writing that letter! I'm sure it will help a lot! She is great and we have been talking to her and trying to help her a lot. She keeps telling us that she just needs to pray about it. Which is good! We know she will get her answer. Every time she talks about anti mormon things the Spirit leaves immediately and she just tells us how sick inside she felt when she heard that stuff, but it was sad to see that slowly, little by little she was becoming ok with that stuff and it was hard to see her becoming comfortable with a thing that is so evil and spiritually killing. I think that it is the same with any sin. I remember when I was little growing up in a family where bad language was never used. As I was little I remember hearing those words gave me that terrible feeling inside, but slowly, little by little being around that language in middle school and high school it becomes a thing you accept and a thing that is normal and you no more feel bad about being around it. Wow I can't believe he wrote you all a letter saying all that stuff! Is he sure it is a smart idea to risk dragging other souls into that evil stuff because he started questioning?! I think that is a very bold step for him to take in his life just because he questioned his own faith. I don't think I would want to risk that if I had some doubts about my faith! I would not want to risk dragging others down a path that very easily could be a path made by satan unless I was completly sure of it. It's too bad to see that. Well he has a chance to change! Let's hope he does! Anyway, it was a great week! We had a lot of success. We are preparing for 2 baptisms next Saturday! Let's hope everything goes well for them!  That's good to hear Connor is having a great mission. It's so weird that over a year ago we were in the MTC together. He is a great kid! Anyway I better run! Have a great week! Love you tons!!! Hey Dad!  Thanks for writing me about that experience. That is awesome! I think teaching tithing is one of the best things we can teach as missionaries. I love teaching it. There are so many blessings that we receive from it. I think that a lot of missionaries get nervous teaching it to a family who is struggling with money. I love teaching it to families who are struggling with money! I have seen miracles with tithing here! It is amazing the blessings we recieve from it. Cause those familes who are struggling with money the most have need the most of the blessings of tithing. I love to go into those lessons and just explain to them how happy and excited  I am for them to be able to pay tithing to the Church of Jesus Christ because they are going to get straight up wrecked with blessings! It is sweet! This week has been kind of draining. I had a two and a half hour lesson with a Jehovahs witness. I showed him in his Bible that Jehovah is Jesus Christ with a ton of scriptures and he was surprised and didn't know what to say. So He told me I knew the Bible very well and that I would make a great member of there church.. Haha I told him he would be a great member of the Mormon church. Then he tried to attack a bunch of our beliefs.  I told him that I know our church is true because I prayed about it and asked if it was the true church of Jesus Christ and I got an answer. He told me he did the same thing with his church and got the same answer, so I called him out on it. It was pretty funny! Anziano McMullen was pretty depressed that night cause he felt a little athiest because he didn't understand how God could give that guy that answer. haha it was funny. So we all had to reassure him that that guy was full of it. The next morning Anziano McMullen was really embarrased about feeling atheist for a little bit. Haha it was great! Anyway Battling Antimormon doctrine, slaying Jehovah witness' teaching all our investigators and doing it all in the sun is starting to weigh on me a bit. Haha Not really it's great! anyway Hope you had a great week! Love you tons!!!

Staying another with Anziano McMullen

Hey! Sounds like you all had a great vacation! Glad that it wasn't as crazy as the St. George trip haha. Anyway, I guess you want to know what is going on with transfers right off the bat.. I am staying another with Anziano McMullen!! That really caught us off guard but we are happy! We are the zone leaders again and now I am district leader too. So that will be fun! Transfers are today and tomorrow so we are trying to help out with that and next week should be zone leader council in Rome but we aren't sure what day it will be yet. Also Anziano Miller and Marengo are staying together and the sisters in our district are staying the same. Anziano Shipton is getting transfered from Trapani to Naples zone and there are a few other changes to the zone but not huge changes. On Friday we did an exchange with the Gela Anziani. Anziano Cardinet and Anziano Nelson, they are really good missionaries. They are very good at finding and just really positive. I learned a lot from them. It is soo true the longer out in the mission you are, the faster it goes. That transfer was too fast! Sunday was great! The Africans in our ward are just bringing friends every week to church! We had 4 African investigators that our members brought to church. It has also been fun translating for them. It really helps you get better at the language. So we are trying to keep up on seeing our investigators this week and visit all of the new ones we have. Hopefully we can set some more baptismal dates and work with the members better. We have 4 baptismal dates right now. Two of them are looking really promising but the other two have been struggling coming to church. We will have to work with them a bit more. We have also been going to the members houses a lot to try to get them pumped up about missionary work. So we have had dinner every night this week with a member. It is so good but they feed us too much! ha it is great! The Sicilian dishes down here are amazing! They know how to cook! Well today I don't have a lot of time cause we have to go pick up the Trapani Anziani from the station and get them sent off to their new city. Love you tons!! Have a good week!

Exchanges with other Missionaries

Hey family! Agrigento was great! We did an exchange with the missionaries there on Thursday. I went with Anziano Migliori, who is from Peru and Anziano McMullen went with Anziano Andersen. It was a great exchange. Anziano Migliori is a very nice missionary and I feel like I learned a lot from the experience. Agrigento is a really pretty city and the members there seem to be really great! The next day we went home and unfortunately there was a funeral of a member from Palermo 1 who was in a coma. That has been the 3rd funeral in 2 transfers! Other than that we have just been busy with finding investigators in the sun and going to appointments that end up getting cancelled on us. Anziano McMullen and I have felt really good about the investigators we have found lately. We just set a baptismal date with one of them and hoping to set more soon. We now have a member of the church living in our apartment named Brother Pastanno. He is staying in our house to repair all of the broken things and to repaint the apartment. He got back from his mission a few years back and now he is doing this. He is a really nice guy and we have been trying to help him out with everything. Today we went to buy a bunch of new things for the apartment and we went to eat at a pizza place from Naples.. It was unreal! So good!! Today has been nice celebrating the fourth of July. We haven't done anything too fancy but we sang the national anthem together and tomorrow at English course we will have a party after to celebrate by eating American food and playing games. How was Idaho? I love Yellowstone. I still remember it from when we were little. Are you going to go to all the hot springs and Old faithful (Alfalfa). Did you set off any fireworks? This week Italy played in the finals for the Euro cup against Spain. Unfortunaly they lost 4-0 so all of the members and Italians have been a little upset but Italy is great anyway.  Anyway this week we will do our last exchange with the Anziani of Gela! Anziano Cardinet, my old MTC companion, and Anziano Nelson. They are great missionaries and we are really looking forward to do theis exchange with them. Saturday we are getting transfer calls! So we will be on edge for that. Better run. Love you tons! Have a good week! Hey Dad thanks for writing! How is Idaho?! Happy fourth of July!! How was Yellowstone? I hope you all had a great time with each other. What is a MLM company?? Sounds sweet! Haha Wow I can't believe there was a fire in Alpine! Did any houses get burnt down? Hope not. This week  has really been hot. It is kind of hard to keep going hard in the sun sometimes, but you find strength when you push through. How has the Colton been doing. When is he going to start his papers? Because it's going to stink if we overlap each other by exactly 2 years, so it would be nice if he left in October or right after I get home, But if he left  at the beginning of March that would stink. but he should definitely go when He feels ready. How is the new calling in Church going? are you enjoying it? I sure am on edge for transfer calls this week. I kind of think that I am staying here another one. I think McMullen is going. But I guess we will see. Well I better run. Love you tons!!