Mailing address

Ben's mailing address at the mission home:

Anziano Charles Ben Thomas
Italy Milan Mission
Via Antonio Gramsci 13/2
20090 Opera MI
Italy

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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Daniel's Mission Predictions

Daniel (Ben's brother) has sent in his mission papers and we are waiting to hear where he goes!  We are now writing down all the predictions.  Ben & Dan are only 13 months apart.  Since birth they have shared the same room.  With missions overlapping they will not see each other for approximately 3 years and 2 months.  Here is Ben's prediction:

I say Daniel goes to France. State side I say he goes Florida.
** If you have a prediction for Daniel please email Kimberly at Runningmom1052@yahoo.com

Anziani Thomas & Treadway


August 29, 2012

Ciao tutti!
It was another good week here in Bergamo still loving it! Last P'day was great we went to Brescia because it was the last week of transfers and we knew that there would be some changes so 6 of us missionaries got together. I ate the best pizza I've had so far in Italy it's called "O sole Mio" (oh my sun) it was super good. After we went to Stelio (an Italian clothing store) and I bought 12 stelio ties. It was a fun p'day! So this last week we had transfers one Elder from our apartment went to Udine and now we have a new elder named Anziano May from Seattle Washington super good missionary! We have a really fun district. This Sunday was great because we had our investigators Paul and Richard come to church! We had translating equipment for them since Paul speaks a little Italian while Richard is almost none. So we translate for Sacrament. It was great to have them in church! What was cool about this week was we found this new guy named Mareno! Super cool how we found him. So when we do nightly planning we schedule what we will do for every hour of the day and when we schedule finding work we try to picture what kind of person we want to see. For example, one day we could plan to try and find a South American woman with a daughter. Well that night we planned to see an Italian man with Sunglasses and a button up shirt. That day we had to take a train way out to a cittadino called Roman di Lombardia and we started doing finding work and bump into this guy whose wearing sunglasses with a button up shirt and it was Mareno! He's super cool yesterday we took him to the church and walked around and he had a ton of questions and was very interested. It was great! Miracle! So it's been great we've been meeting aton of new people they're just popping up everywhere. Also we had another good lesson with Fausto (the one whose already read 80 pages of the Book of Mormon) we brought a member and talked about the plan of Salvation! Yesterday we had lunch with the Bello Family and it was great we talked about our favorite Book of Mormon character and talked about how we can apply them to our lives! 1 Nephi 19:23. It went great their family is hilarious Fratello Bello really wants to learn English so he kept trying to practice with us! Things are going great loving life right now! Today since Anziano Treadway and May has not been to Città Alta we will probably go today! Thanks for all the prayers!
Anziano Thomas

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Some Silly Pics

Anziani Pectol (from Utah), Hess (from South Cal) , & Treadway- Ben's roommates

Pday Ping Pong

This is for Emmy

This is for Hailey - Go Toros!

This is for Daniel & Joe

August 22, 2012

Cara Famiglia!
It has been another great week in the great city of Bergamo! This week we are having transfers and nothing is changing between me and Anziano Treadway we will be together for another 6 weeks and I am grateful for that we have so much fun together I love it! But with the other coppia that lives with us Anziano Hess is leaving and going to Udine and Anziano Pectol is staying here and getting a new companion so we are excited for the changes tomorrow! This Sunday was great! I gave a talk and the theme was "being born of goodly parents" and I was a little nervous because the first two speakers went really quick so I had 30 minutes for fill since I was the last speaker. But lucky for me, the stake president was there and was able to talk for 10 minutes. But I thought I did well and the members came up and told me that they liked it. After we went to the Guidetti couples home for lunch. The Guidetti's are the funniest people you will ever meet. Just immagine that grumpy guy from the movie up and that's Fratello Guidetti and his wife Jolanda is funny as well. They are both 72 years old. It was awkward though. They invited a relative over and Fratello Guidetti started going into some deep doctorine, like how we do baptisms for the dead and temple marriges. But Sorelle Guidetti made some of the best pasta I've had so far! After we got home and rested for a bit and picked up this 18 year old Bolivian named Daniel and took him to church with his ward. Daniel was baptized in Bolivia but when he got here he was just inactive because he didn't know the language. One day he was looking out his appartment window and he saw two mormon missionaries go by in his appartment complex and he couldn't believe it. So since then we've been friendly with him and we invited him to come to church at 4 this Sunday! He came and loved it because everyone is the city of Bergamo who are members are all Bolivians so he could understand them! The members were great and greeted him so hopefully he gets active!
Right now the nights here in Bergamo are soo humid I woke up and was just drenched in sweat! But about the work we have this new investigator that we met the other day and when we rang his house and he let us in and we briefly explained the Book of Mormon and the Restauration of the church. Four days later when we came back to Fausto's home and he had read 80 pages of the Book of Mormon!! We talked a little bit about what he read and taught him how to pray if it is true. He is a very interesting guy. He's Italian, married to a Nigerian woman and reads all the time. We are bringing a returned missionary to our next appointment so we are looking forward to that! Pray for us! Today we are going to Brescia and going TIE SHOPPING! We are going there and then checking out the castle as well! Things are great here loving missionary life and my comp. and I are having fun everyday! Thanks for the support love you all!
Anziano Thomas

Monday, August 6, 2012

Ben's foot after being operated for his ingrown toenail

Anziano Treadway & Anziano Thomas serving in Bergamo

Ben made lasgana from scratch- yea!!!

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Ingrown Toenail & teaching the Restoration

Famiglia!
This week was interesting. We had to go to Milano twice for my toe. I had an ingrown toenail and they had to remove it. So yesterday I went to Dr. Frielich an American doctor from Chicago and he numbed my foot and I got to watch him do a little surgery on my foot! It was great because I watched the whole thing and there was soo much blood but it was fine because I didn't feel anything. So these next few days I'm going to be doing missionary work in Sandals and socks to give my toe a break! Right now it's a little sore but I'm glad I got it taken care of because every time I bumped it against something it was the worst. It was funny also because we did get to Milano a little early so I got to pass by the duomo and we got to get pizza at a sit down restaurant!! It was so good and was pretty cheap. This week I made my first lasagna from scratch and it turned out great! I'm making it again this week so I can perfect it and I'm going to try to make the ragu more sweet! With the work things are continuing to pick up! We taught Natacha the Gosple of Gesù Cristo and it went great! The only problem is she will be leaving to France for two weeks but that's alright she's super excited to meet with us and appreciates everything that we do. I love her she is hilarious and her family is great! We are teaching a few guys for Ghana- Richard, Kingsley, Fouston, and Kent. We taught them the Restoration and right after Richard walked us down stairs and pulled out about 40£ and was like I've been going through a tough time take this money and pray for me. And immediatly we pulled our hands back and we like whoooaah.. Richard look we love doing this, our payment is the change we see in the lives of others. He really loved that. We are teaching them and have given 2 of the 4 dates for Sept. 15 but we'll see how serious they are about wanting to change! Another funny thing that happened this week was I had my first "bible bash". But really it was just some guy trying to attack our doctrine. He was a pastor for a Evangelical church and was from Ghana. We told him about the Restoration and he just went off. He used Rev. where it says there shall not be anything book written after this. But we were able to defend everything and we were not even attacking his church. After it was funny because I felt great because for some strange reason it strengthened my testimony that this was the true church! Missionary work is great! Grazie per il sostegno! Sono grato per l'oppertunità di essere un missionario della chiesa vera qui sulla terra! Continuate di pregare per me!
Vi voglio Bene! Forza Italia!!
Anziano Thomas