Week 86 - Faith is for the Future

by Unknown 9:29 PM 1 comments

Hi,

I hope you all had an eggcellent Easter and our egger for an
eggceptional week! Despite not having an Easter egg hunt, this past
week has been incredible. I have a huge breakout on my face (meaning
there was adequate chocolate eaten this past weekend), wasn't featured
in the Pesaro newspaper and my companion, but am very happy with this
week nonetheless. Backstory on that newspaper business: Anziano
Leavitt and I attended a community service event last Saturday and
helped clean the beach... There were photographers there, I was
looking super photogenic that morning, but somehow didn't make it into
the newspaper with my companion! 💁🏻

I have a dismal story to recount about Marina. For those of you that
don't remember, Marina is that super sweet Russian lady with the
alcohol problem. Yesterday, we went over to her house and found out
she has more than an alcohol problem-she's not going to have a place
to live in two week! Apparently her and her roommate are being kicked
out of their house in a couple weeks due to them not paying their
bills. Marina has no idea where she's going to go. She is going to be
a homeless alcoholic, not a very good combination. I'm not sure how
much is the alcohol and how much is the psychiatric pressure, but
Marina was out of it yesterday! When Anziano Leavitt and I were saying
goodbye to her yesterday, she kissed my shoulder and kept calling me
Andrei! Please remember her in your prayers.

On a happier note, Ursula is doing awesome. I've always kind of joked
around with my companions that one day I want a wife that graciously
accepts my sweaty hands... But, I've here in Italy, I've find
something almost as good as an eternal companion that accepts my gross
hands- an investigator that does! Ursula loves my sweaty hands,
doesn't mind being seen with the Mormons in public (even when we are
being laughed at), and is the most humble person ever. I was a little
bummed she couldn't come to church on Sunday because she was up in the
mountains with her boyfriend. However, she's been reading the Book of
Mormon and has agreed to be baptized when she receives an answer from
God that it's true. This woman knew very little about Christianity
before meeting with us and now she's literally reading a book that
testifies of him on every page. I love her! She eats up every word
that comes out of our mouth and respects us so much. She literally
calls us in between appointments to check up on us! I don't think I've
ever been better friends with an investigator.

Can I tell you about another group of people I love? Marta's family!
We went over to their house earlier this week and made some banana
bread with the kids while their parents were out shopping. Then, the
parents came home and we had a killer lesson where Corrado (Marta's
husband) really opened up to us. I'm super excited because he's found
a better job and will now have weekends free.... Meaning Sunday
mornings free.... Meaning that he can attend church! I really do think
that their family is going to be the future of the Pesaro ward (I say
WARD instead of branch because we aren't going to be a branch for long
;)). All of them definitely have different problems that they need to
overcome and areas of their testimony that they need to build, but
they all have so much potential. I'm grateful they are all committed
to reading the Book of Mormon; I truly believe regular Book of Mormon
reading is the key to overcoming a lot of seemingly unrelated life
difficulties. I don't think it was by chance that the few words our
prophet spoke to us were about the Book of Mormon!

Last night, Anziano Leavitt and I got to bare a fat testimony of the
Book of Mormon to a few Evangelists. We had our first appointment with
a lady named Maria last night and when we showed up we realized it was
a trap! Maria and her husband Fabio had invited their minister to the
appointment too. After some small talk, we jumped into the  message of
the restoration and it went extremely well. They were all very
respectful and never talked over us. By the end, they were trying to
throw some Bible verses at us to try and disprove the validity of our
message, but we bore our testimonies of the validity of the message
and the Spirit was so strong! The cool thing about our message is that
we aren't pushy about it. We don't need to be. One could say that the
proof is in the pudding. We bore our testimonies, brought the Spirit
unto their hearts, and left Moroni's challenge with them. I walked out
of their house last night feeling pleased. Tonight, we are eating
dinner with Stefano and I am excited to see if him and his wife have
read in the Book of Mormon since our first visit!

I hope you all have a fantastic week. If you have some free time and
your daily Book of Mormon reading is complete, I'd highly recommend
delving into Church History in the Fulness of Times. It's so much fun
reading about Joseph Smith and the other latter day studs. A lot of
early saints sacrificed a lot, but they were also blessed to see a lot
of magnificent miracles thanks to their unwavering faith.

I loved the way Jeffery R. Holland put it when he said, "Faith is for
the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there.
Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and
that Christ truly is the 'high priest of good things to come' (Hebrews
9:11)."

As we put our faith in Christ, we can augment our capabilities more
than we thought possible while still being uniquely us. I love it!

Vi voglio un sacco di bene,
Anziano Anderson

1. Banana bread selfie!
2. Easter picture with my Peruvian homie!
3. I'm not sure if the doctor gave us these masks for our protection
or for our patient's protections, but we took advantage of the
situation.