Bikes Stolen

Ciao Tutti!

Wow... this week was another interesting one.  To begin, the baptism did not happen.  We were super bummed but when everything gets sorted out he'll be ready to go.  What ended up happening was we were filling out all of his information THE DAY BEFORE the baptism certificate so he could be put into the church file and as we were asking him questions like, when and where were you born, what's your dad/moms name.  When was your wife born and he's like wait a moment, I need to ask my wife so he went to ask her came back and told us and then we asked okay when were you married?  He's like we're not married... I was like uhh... what do we do?  But unfortunately we had to post pone the baptism for another day.  We were bummed but we need him to be completely ready!  Other news last Wednesday our bikes got robbed!!  I was like nooo.... are you serious.  Everything was locked up and when we came out after an appointment they were gone.  Nothing.  So we went to the police station and filed a police report.  It was irritating that there are people out there like that and we were without bikes for 3 days and it was really difficult it was funny though we would be walking and Anziano Mustafaraj and I would just start busting up laughing like haha are you serious?  Torino is wayy to big to not have bikes.  Even taking buses is hard.  Anyway we finally got new bikes and things are going a lot better.  Something else that happened this week was we had a super powerful lesson with one of our new converts.  He's been having a hard time and we had such a good lesson with him.  It was cool I was able to tell him two stories about my mission and it really helped.  He's such a great guy and hopefully we can help him as much as possible.  Our investigator Evan is doing great!!  The funniest thing happened in Church this Sunday.  In Gospel Principles we were talking about baptism and the teacher asks, okay.. who needs to be baptized?  Like in general.  He looks around and raises his and and says <<I DO>>!!  Haha everyone was laughing he's such a great guy and we are working with him the members are helping out a lot!  We also had a conference and it went well the mission is pushing on teaching 15 lessons and right now we are doing pretty good hopefully we can keep it going.  Things are going well today it was rainy and today we went to the market that's huge as well as La Mole.  Which is what Torino is famous for.  Inside is a movie museum and at the end we went to the top and saw the whole city.  But yeah things are going well here keep praying for the work here and the people in Italy!  Love you all!

Anziano Thomas

Anziano Mustafaraj & Thomas

Anziano Mustafaraj found his passport.  He is outside the Albanian consolate.

Ben in Milano

Miracles!

Ciao tutti!

Well this last week we've had a few miracles! I'll start from the beginning. This week we went to milano for Anziano Mustafaraj passport appointment. We got there and the Albanian embassy is right in front of the Milano Duomo. So we walked in and I only knew a few Albanian words so I would try talk to Anziano Mustaferaj in Albanian and he was like oh my gosh just be quiet haha it was funny trying to act Albanian. Anyway he asked what he had to do to redo his passport and they said he would have to translate some documents which would take forever... and also it would cost a lot of money. He asked if there were any lost Albanian passports he could go through and they are like yeah right here. So there was about two boxes and he just starts going through them and all of the sudden he ends up finding his passport!!! It was lost in Genova and he ends up finding it in Milano! MIRACLE haha! We were so happy finally enough with traveling around. This week we will have a baptism by the way! With Austin! He's from Nigeria and we've been teaching him since I've gotten here and he's ready! The senior couple the Petersons from Bergamo came here and interviewed him and he's ready to go! He's so excited to be baptized and I can't wait. It's going to happen this Saturday at 6! Also we set a new baptism date with Evan. He's Italian and he's met with the missionaries only once before and in the end he was like thanks guys but I'm going to stay catholic. Well some things have changed in his life and one day we were riding home to go to lunch and I see this guy sitting on the bench outside our house. He waves at us so I ride over and we start talking and we sit down and talk about the plan of salvation. It went great. And he became a new investigator. The first lesson we had with him we gave him the baptism preset. The baptism preset is where at the beginning of the lesson you tell the person, at the end we are going to give you a baptism date and we were a little nervous but he understood and at the end he accepted it! He came to church this Sunday and loved it as well! He's super cool about 40 years old and has told his whole family about baptism already! But we're looking forward to it. Things are still going great with Anziano Mustafaraj. We are still laughing everyday and doing some great work. The zone is doing really well also! Hope your all doing well Love you all!

Anziano Thomas

May 15, 2013

Ciao from Genova!

Today we are in Genova.  Like I told my family on mother's day we came back to Genova to work on the passport issues for Anziano Mustaferaj but as of now things are not looking too well hopefully we'll be able to figure something out.  Anyway this past week went really good.  Our baptism date Austin looks like he will be baptized for the 25 of May so we are super excited about that!  We had a lesson with him and it went great, we explained the importance of baptism and told him how it was the first step to open the door toward eternal life.  He's super excited as well.  He brought his wife last week, Sofia to church and they really liked it.  It's cool because they are married with a little boy about 2 years old so it would be great to see a family get sealed!  We found another cool investigator this week also.  His name is Evan and he is half Italian and half Sri Lanken.  Really cool guy looking for some love in his life and I know he'll be able to find it in the church.  Funny how we found him, it seems like every time we're about to go home something like this happens.  Right as we were about to go home Evan waved us over and we had a conversation with him about the plan of salvation it was a really cool miracle!  Here in Genova we also saw another cool miracle.  So we got here last night and in the morning we had to do a few things for Anziano Mustaferaj's passport and all of the sudden we bump into Dritan!!  Dritan is also from Albania and I met him here when we were in Genova with Anziano Webb.  What had happened was he had nothing here no work and was sick.  We started teaching him and the ward took him under their wing and in the end they helped him return back to Albania.  The crazy thing is he's back here in Genova because someone from his country gave him work and now he's working has somewhere to live as well.  It was such a cool miracle because he was only in Genova for one day and we just so happened to meet each other the same day.  He was so happy he grabbed us and pulled us into the nearest bar and bought us a soda and a brioche (cream puff)  he told us how he was so thankful for our help and was soo happy to see us haha he lives far away from the church now but as the church grows he'll be ready to accept.  He's upset that he's not able to come to church though.  Super cool! 

Mother's day was great as well.  I skyped at our bishops office.  I was the only one that was able to skype because Anziano Mustaferaj's family was in Germany getting sealed in the temple!!  He was a little bummed that president didn't give him permisssion to go though.  He'll get another chance!  Skype was great it was great to talk to the family and also talk to Daniel.  It sounds like he's doing good and he's learning Swahili pretty good as well.  I was glad to see my mom and was happy to thank her for all the love and support she has given us as kids!  Things went well though. 

Before mother's day was a little stressful though.  Last Wednesday we ended up getting locked out of the house because one of the locks we had somehow closed and we didn't have a key for it. So we tried every little way to get it and we were almost to the point of breaking a window to get in but in the end at 10 30 at night we took a bus all the way to the other side of Torino.  That night we were super tired and stressed because the next day we had conference that we were in charge of and all of our notes were inside the house.  Anyway that morning I called a locksmith and we met him at our house and he told us it would take 2-3 hours to take care of everything and also it would cost us about £150-200 .  I thought it would take 20 minutes to fix, just making a spare key but he's like nope I'm going to take everything out the whole lock so we were like no we have a conference in 1 hr we have to go then he tried to charge us £50 for coming but we settled everything out and were okay.  We got to the conference and it went pretty good for not having notes we were lucky because the people in our Zone participated and it ended up being a good experience for everyone.  So after we were so tired finally we said enough lets break the window.  We get to the house and just as Mustaferaj lifts up his foot to break it he sees some nails around the window, takes them out, lifts up the window and we get in!!  Haha broke into our apartment.  But I was so happy to be home.  This Thursday we should be heading back to Torino but I'm loving Genova I can't believe I back here again so nice but hope you're all doing well thanks for the love and thoughts!

Anziano Thomas

May 8, 2013

Ciao tutti!

I'm sorry I wasn't able to write last week but we were running around all day.  These last two weeks have been great!  For those who don't know I have a new companion!  His name is Anziano Mustaferaj and he's from Vlore, Albania!  I knew him in the MTC and we were in the same apartment as well in Genova. When I got the call from president he calls and says, <<Well I'm going to put you with someone you know really well, in fact you were in the same apartment with him>>  Haha I guessed a name or two then I was like I give up.  He goes Anziano Mustaferaj hahahaha I was speechless.  Because I couldn't believe it but I was super excited we got along great in Genova and would always laugh.  He always said we would be companions and it happened.  I was a little worried at first because sometimes he can be a little stubborn but it's fine he's always laughing so so far we've been getting along great, like really well so I'm having fun.  My favorite part of him is that when we are doing finding work it's hilarious he's kinda got a smart alek personality it's hard to explain him maybe this mother's day my family will meet him.  Also something we'll probably have to do soon is go down to Genova because he has to do some documents.  Work has been doing really good as well.  Right now we are teaching a ton of lessons.  In fact yesterday we had 7 so we were busy all day.  Our investigators are doing good right now we're in a weird stage with them just we have some investigators with weird situations and its cool because Musta and I are always talking about them.  We had a cool miracle the other day.  We just had got finished with the day and we were coming home and just as we are about to walk into the door, some guy whose a little drunk straggles up to us and is like can I have 2 euro (while smoking a cigarette) and we're like sorry man we can't as missionaries).  Anyway we start talking and he's says he's like I'm tired of life and why are there so much wars!  And we talked about free agency and he's like wow you guys stumped me on that one.  We told him God loves him and he started crying and we got an appointment with him.  It was cool he has a tough situation though but I'm excited to help him he's from Iran (he said he's cool with Americans though) but yeah.  Today we ran around saw two museums.  One was a body museum with human body parts and the other was a criminal museum which was interesting.  Things are going well I'm excited to see my family this Sunday!  I want to wish my mom a happy mothers day and that she's the best mom in the world.  Really.  Love you all!

Anziano Thomas

P day!

La Sacra di San Michele
It is built into the rock and is right near the Alps!

May 1, 2013

Ben did not have time to write this week, he only sent a few pictures.  He said that they were very busy.  Tomorrow is transfers and it looks like he will be getting a new companion- Anziano Mustaferaj from Albania.  Mustaferaj was in the MTC with Ben and Ben says he is crazy and fun.  Oh boy!

Ben's companion Anziano Pitt.  They ate with a new convert Tirso from the Philippines.  Such good food!

Ben's talk about Daisy our Dog and Ben is Playing the Piano!

Ciao!

This week blew by!  We had a lot going on this whole week it seemed like we were constantly in the train!  But anyways this week we had a scambio and I went to Vercelli.  Vercelli is a small city west of Torino and is known for it's rice fields.  But it went well.  I went with Anziano Lloyd he is from a small town of 300 in Idaho.  He's a pretty quiet guy but we ended up having a lot of fun talking to people.  Also this week I gave a talk about faith to the ward.  It went really well.  I used Alma 32 and also I talked about Daisy and how when we were younger during a storm she got out and ran away.  I talked about how our family made fliers and prayed that we would be able to find her.  And because of our faith we were able to find her!  I went into a bit more detail how  we need to show our works if we are going to see miracles and we need to show God all we can to see a miracle.  It went really well.  Something funny that happened during the talk was I accidentally said that in Arizona is rains raspberries haha but I knew the mistake as soon as I made it.  But it went well the members came up to me after and told me that they liked it a lot.  Also Sunday we had a baptism of a 8 year old member in our ward.  We came because we had an investigator in church and something funny that happened was I ended up playing the prelude music before the baptism haha it's weird but on the mission I've gotten SOO much better at playing the piano.  I can play a lot of hymns now.  The baptism went well and our investigator Daniele liked it alot.  Something else cool that happened as well this week was that our other investigator Giorgio went to Utah so hopefully he had a good experience.  He went for work but he also went to church there.  We see him tomorrow so we'll ask how he liked it.  Yesterday we went to Milano to see Elder Callister from the Presidency of the 70.  We all walked around and shook his had and he talked to us about the plan of salvation.  It was a super cool experience.  He was simple but at the same time he just was shooting out scriptures from his head.  Also Elder Texiera talked to us as well as well as his wife.  Really cool experience.  As for our investigators we are still teaching alot of people right now they just need to ask God.  The week flew by and next week is transfers so I'll find out if who my new comp will be.  I'm pretty sure it will change because Anziano Pitt has been here for so long.  But hope all is going well with you at home love you all!

Anziano Thomas