August 31, 2011

Proctors-

   August is over!  This week is starting off with a lot more people in town, so that's good.  Like I explained, everyone in Italy just disappears from late July to early September.  I think a good amount of them have returned, although not everyone.  Our District Leader in Reggio Emilia told me they haven't had there bishop in church for about 6 weeks! 

   The backyard concert sounds like it was fun.  It's hard to believe that I've missed the last 2 (and will miss the next one as well).  I have never seen the Joseph play, but Alexa told me she was trying out for it back in March.  I'm sure it was fantastic.  That's too bad about Park City losing to Stansbury.  I hope Jono is okay!  Did him and Brian get that letter I sent them in the MTC?

   We met a guy this week in the park who used to live in Greenville, NC.  He was an Italian (southern italian by the sound of his accent), who lived in Africa when he was little and then moved to the States when he was younger.  He lived in Greenville and evenutally went to some sort of Navy Academy (although not the Navy Academy in Anapolis).  When I told him that my sister and brother-in-law had just moved to Greenville, he got all excited and said they were lucky.  Do Lindsay and Patrick love it there as much as this guy does?

  This week we got to play basketball with some of our members and one of their friends they wanted to refer to us.  It was a lot of fun, but we soon discovered that Italian basketball is kind of like... American pizza?  Pretty terrible but you eat it (or play it) anyways.  We also saw that our own athletic ability had kind of escaped  from us in our first couple months here.  Anyway, it was a ton of fun and we got to bond with some of our younger members.  It's fun to see the Church in it's younger stage here in Italy.  It really is an opportunity to build the Lord's Kingdom on the earth.  You see all of the members and how they were brought into the Church, all of them either being converts, or children of converts.  You get to see this tiny little "branch family" build itself up one by one.  It makes life a lot more worth it when you put your own love, sweat and hard work into the building something great.  I read a chapter in the Book of Mormon this morning that explains how I feel about it all: Alma 12 (especially verses 5-7, 12-14).  Look it up!

Comunque, tutto è a posto adesso.  L'unica cosa che posso fare è di andare avanti e fare fatica ogni giorno di servire il Signore.  So che ognuno di noi possiamo fare quello e ricevere benedizioni bellissime.  Grazie di tutto!

-Anziano Proctor

P.S.  Mom, can you tell Cash he needs to write me back?  He told me that I have to remind him every once in a while.  Also, can you find out if Cole got the letter I sent to him, Max and Kimber?

August 25, 2011

Ciao!

   Hey there all, how's it going?  It sounds like you guys are just having a blast back there in Utah with your lakes and boats and pirate crusades.  It's still hard for me to believe that Searle is back home!  You'll have to read him some of my letters, since I hardly kept my promise to write him on the mish!  Anyways, it was great to hear all of the fun news about Brittany and Katie.  I'll bet that was fun for Katie to come play in her home town.  I always wanted to play in the Salt Lake Valley when I was at Dixie State.  Also, I love hearing about how the PC team is doing, so keep letting me know.  I remembered this week that Matty Moore is a freshman now, and I think he said he was going to play on the freshman team.  Is he?   That's amazing about Alexa!  Tanti auguri a un amica stretta! 

   We went to Verona again for P-Day because Anziano Jolley (our district leader in Reggio Emilia) and my comp Anziano Wilkins had never been.  It was fun to go there again, although I think after 3 times I basically have seen all that there is time for on the mission.  We saw L'arena, which is kind of like Verona's Colloseum, La Casa di Giulietta and Torre dei Lamberti, which is the tallest tower in the city (I think).  It's the tower that I'm on in the video I sent home on my SD card.  Anyways, it was a lot of fun to see all of the street actors that they have here.  All along the streets they have people dressed as knights, gladiators, egyptian statues, etc. who kind of just interact and take pictures with the people and basically act in the strangest ways they can to make money.  My personal favorite is the man who masquerades as a newborn baby.  He has this bright pink stroller that he sits under and pokes his head out of, and has some sort of doll for a body.  He uses some sort of device to make his voice super high like a baby.  It's quite ludicrous :)

   Things are beginning to run smoother here as the month of september comes closer.  Like I'd told you we had been working and working without seeing (or maybe realizing) many miracles.  However, this week we met up with a man we met about a week ago.  His name is Biju and he is a converted cristian from India who speaks english (and who lives in Italy... what a combination of cultures)!  At first he didn't seem super interested, although he was very friendly.  But then we met with him this week, and something changed in him.  He all of a sudden had a very large interest in knowing what we believe and what we do as missionaries.  He said he was struck by our faith and dedication to come here to Italy to share our testimonies, faith being a very important characteristic in the Indian culture (according to him).  He had a lot of questions about Joseph Smith and the First Vision, so we sat down and explained more in depth that he wasn't the founder of the Mormon faith, but that the Church of Jesus Christ was restored through him and that we now have a living prophet on the earth.  Once he understood exactly what it is we believe he told us that it was almost exactly in line with what he believes.  We met with him again last night and he already has faith that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  He asked us how being baptized into the LDS Church would change his life, and upon hearing our response we could see that he was putting some serious thought into what baptism means to him.  He has a wife who is 2 months pregnant who is cristian just like him who we want to teach as well!  Once again, this man kind of just came out of nowhere.  Who knew that Christmas comes 2 weeks in a row?

Sono contento di aver sentito da voi e tutte le buone cose che mi avete scritto.  Mi mancate e penso di voi sempre.  Ma sono grato anche di essere qua in Piacenza predicando il Vangelo di Gesù Cristo.  Sempre lavoriamo and facciamo fatica nella vita di raggiungere le nostre mete, e pensiamo che le benedizioni non veranno.  Ma c'è una cosa che mi ha detto un altro missionario, che forse le benedizioni non sono venuti ancora... ma la parola importante è <<ancora>>.  Se perserveremo e andremo avanti avendo fede in Cristo, le benedizioni veranno.  Il Signore ci ha promesso questo e ci credo.  Comunque, devo andare.  Vi voglio bene!

-Anziano Proctor

June 29, 2011

Hey all-

 

   How is it going this week?  That was so cool to be able to see all of the wedding photos!  So exciting.  It was way strange to see everyone as of recently, namely Chris' short hair and lack of facial hair, Dad's goatee is back, and Pat's hair is gettin' way long.  You'll have to send me some of the photobooth pictures people took.  I'm trying to figure out how to get pictures to you all so you can see my adventures here in Piacenza but I haven't got a chord to put pictures onto a computer, and also my camera is dead.  I got Aj and Ashley's letters by the way, they helped a ton!

 

   This week has been a pretty exciting one.  We've been making a lot of progress with 3 of our investigators towards baptism.  Rosario is that awesome guy from Napoli.  Then there is this hilarious big hunk of love named Winter from Ecuador.  He loves salsa music and blasts it in his car whenever we're with him.  Then a 21 year old Ecuadorian named John.  He said that his whole life he's had faith in Jesus Christ, but that he felt like he was missing a huge chunk of it.  All 3 of them are ultra prepared.  They all just understand and fit perfectly to the Gospel. 

 

   Also, we got our transfer calls this week.  My trainer, Anziano Nielsen is going to Verona to be a Zone Leader and I'm staying here in Piacenza.  Here's the exciting news though:  I'm getting an Italian companion!  His name is Anziano Minà and he's from Sicilia.  So I will be speaking almost 100% italian starting tomorrow afternoon.  We're going to Milano tomorrow to switch up and all that. 

   I heard just now about a film that came out back in the States called "17 Miracles."  It's supposedly about the Martin Willey Handcart Company.  Info please?  :)  Y'all will have to make a list of films/music/news for me when I get back.

 

   I'm jealous about the golfing y'all get to do . . . they have a small driving range next to the missionary appartment in Modena.  It's relatively cheap to go to (maybe €2) but the only problem is what kind of missionary just has a set of clubs?  Haha, none.  Anyways, we've got to go pack Nielsen's bags and and all that but I wanna leave you all my testimony.  Seeing that I haven't done it in italian in a while, I'll do it like that.

 

   Sono così grato di essere un missionario del Signore.  Ho visto delle benedizioni che vengono dalla missione, tutte e due nel campo missionario e a casa mia, a Park City.  Io so che il Signore ha un piano per noi nella questa vita.  Ho scoperto questa settimana che c'é una ragione per ogni cosa.  Non ce sono le coincidenze.  Veramente, siamo amati da un Padre Celeste chi vuole il migliore per noi.  L'unica cosa che dobbiamo fare è di avere la fede in Lui.  Philippians 4:13.  Vi lascio questa testimonianza nel nome di Gesù Cristo, amen.

 

-Anziano Andrew Proctor