It's been an exciting week for Anziano Leavitt and I down here in Pesaro! It feels like the days have become 3x longer than they were when I served in the office (luckily they aren't terrible days). On a non-spiritual related note, here are a few of the memorable moments from this past week:

1.     Anziano Leavitt's face when our zone leaders broke it to him that they weren't Italian. Since we arrived here in Pesaro, they've been pretending to be Italian (they both have Italian last names and speak really good Italian) and they broke it to my companion this week that they were Americans.

2.     I said a quote from the TV show Monk and for the first time in my life, someone actually got knew where it was from ("it's a gift... and a curse"). Mom and dad remember, when that used to be our show? <3

3.     My companion gave a KILLER 10 minute talk in sacrament meeting and even busted a couple tears. I was a proud father.

4.     I got a little old grandma to turn a brilliant shade of red when Anziano Leavitt and I were doing an unorthodox proselyting method; we were standing next to an old river in Pesaro breaking the ice with the people by saying, "Hey, doesn't this river look like the river Jesus was baptized in?" 

Now, spiritually speaking, God has definitely been showering his blessings upon the Pesaro Anziani. It's cool having Gospel vision where I'm able to see a natural man's "coincidence" as God's hand in my life. For instance, earlier this week, Anziano Leavitt and I planned to input Pesaro's old paper area book records into our digital area books at our church building. To make this tedious process a little more bearable, we planned a quick trip to the local supermarket before heading over to the church for some cookies and milk (yummy food can make anything fun ;)). When we got on our bikes to go to the supermarket, we felt like we should bike to the church, leave our bikes there, and then WALK to the supermarket (a decision that doesn't make a lot of logical sense). Upon arriving at the church building, there was a man named Paulo that happened to be waiting outside who wanted to know more information about our English Class. We don't know how or where he learned about our class, but I don't think it was any coincidence that we felt like we needed to park our bikes at the church. 

Speaking of our area book efforts, they weren't in vain! In the area book, missionaries record all the lessons they've had with investigators. So, Anziano Leavitt and I spent several hours this week inputting this information into the new digital area book that the church released. This information helps us and future missionaries find old investigators that might be more ready to accept the gospel now than they were in the past. We've been passing by the homes of these old investigators this week and seeing if any of them have a renewed interest in our message. Many of the people have moved since they were last taught by the missionaries, but we did manage to make contact with an old investigator named Angelo!

Angelo's area book record said he was 71+ years old and was taught one lesson in 2009, but had no other information other than that. Anziano Leavitt rung the intercom of his apartment complex and Angelo buzzed us into the building without asking who it was. When we walked up a few flights of stairs and arrived at his door, he was waiting for us.

After Angelo found out we bring a message of peace and happiness and wanted to present ourselves, he broke down and kind of angrily yelled, "My wife has been in the hospital for 15 days. My mom died when I was three. And my daughter died when she was 15. How is that for happiness?!" Considering he was yelling those things a few inches from my face, I was scared. It was apparent that he wasn't interested in our message so we asked him if there was anything we could do for him and he declined. We left him with a restoration pamphlet (we were out of plan of salvation pamphlets) and bounced! After we left the apartment building and were walking to our bikes, I was really shaken up. All of a sudden my message of peace and happiness didn't feel very real. 

Luckily, we felt that we needed to go back. We walked back up to the apartment building and rang his intercom again. This time, he answered and asked who it was. We told him it was the Mormon missionaries again and bore a little testimony. He let us back into the apartment building. After we got into his house, we let him vent to us for a long while. Then, one of his daughters arrived home named Antonella. Antonella is 53 years old and fairly disabled (she is in a wheel chair and has limited use of her hands). We then proceeded to talk about faith and the reality of Jesus Christ's mission. It was awesome! Angelo welcomed us back later this week for a follow-up appointment. It was a really special experience for me getting to see an 85 year-old's anger transform into peace during our short time together.

Before I close, I just want you to know that I love being a missionary so much! It's been really great being back out in the field. I'm learning a ton from Anziano Leavitt and hopefully I'm teaching him a thing or two. New missionaries have a drive that I think a lot of older missionaries lose. I really appreciate being around someone that is ready to work and is trying to live in a way where he can have access to the Spirit. Tonight, we're super stoked because we are meeting with a woman named Selhina Gomez (pronounced SELENA GOMEZ)! 

1. My handlebars fell off my bike while I was riding it the other day. Luckily, I wasn't hurt and Massimo (our bike shop friend) repaired it free of charge and gave me a wink when I was leaving.

2. I spotted the bike that I SHOULD be driving around Pesaro (please notice beautiful logo written across the frame of the bike).

3. I have a new hobby: putting candy hearts on Anziano Leavitt's morning pancakes and making him feel uncomfortable. Hehehe.

It's been a lovely last couple weeks with lots of happy moments accompanied with some sad goodbyes. After receiving the news that I was going to be training in Pesaro, my last few days as an office elder flew by. We scheduled a lot of farewell appointments with member families and got fed an unholy amount of food. On the Tuesday evening before I left, we had two member appointments scheduled. Our second member appointment was for dinner so we made it very clear to the first member family that we couldn't stay for dinner. To our surprise, when we showed up to the first appointment, the mom of the family was cooking dinner. Personally, I was a little worried and remarked to the mom, "It looks like you guys are going to be eating good to night" (hoping with all my heart that the food was for their dinner after we left). After hearing that, the mom proudly said, "Yes Anziano, WE are going to be eating good tonight." HAHAHA, NOOOO! By the end of that night, my companions and I had all grown some nice food babies. 

I love the members in Lodi so much and after 6 months as an office elder, it's going to be really weird not seeing them anymore. That being said, my new branch in Pesaro has some of the most faithful Latter Day Saints I've met in my mission! 

It was a little weird being at the meetinghouse 5 minutes beforehand on Sunday and being the only members there! With our attendance, Anziano Leavitt and I grew the Pesaro branch by 20%. There is literally seven active members that attend the Pesaro branch (two of whom are primary aged boys). Their faith and kindness astound me. Being raised in a ward with 250 active members makes me really admire these faithful saints as they diligently serve in multiple church callings (not to mentions the fact that they have to give a talk every other week in church). After the three hour block, the members prepared a lunch to welcome in the new missionaries! 

You would think that the members may be a little sick of us after spending over four hours with us today, but that didn't stop them from agreeing to let us pass by each of their houses this week. Anziano Leavitt and I have plans to help the three families in the branch to implement a mission plan. These guys may not be part of the Willie Handcart Company, but they are without a doubt modern pioneers! I already love them all so much. At the lunch today, they all agreed that I must be ill because of my pale face. Little do they know, I'm always pretty white. ;)"

Now that you know how great our seven members are, I can brag about my companion a little bit. My greenie is named Anziano Leavitt and he's such a stud (and I'm not just saying that because he's from Washington). He's a cross country star, he was the second seat violin player in a fancy orchestra, and was captain of his school's knowledge bowl team!! He makes me feel a little under qualified to be his trainer with my major accomplishments being found on the high-scores of Runescape.com. ;)

Considering we don't have any investigators and have been doing quite a bit of street proselyting, I've developed a new hobby: making Anziano Leavitt feel as awkward as possible. I thought he might peel over from embarrassment a couple nights ago when I offered a Jesus pass-a-long card to a teenage couple making out. Unfortunately, they weren't interested... Luckily, a super sweet Peruvian lady that we met right after was! Her name is Berta and has already attended a Mormon church service with her brother in Peru. She gave us her phone number and told us she'd come to church on Sunday!

Right now, Anziano Leavitt and I are focusing on becoming friends with the local shop owners. It seems like all the local geleteria and pizzeria owners are familiar with the Mormon missionaries, but don't really know what we believe. We have plans of developing our friendship with all of them over the next couple weeks and then gifting them with a Book of Mormon with invite to hear the missionary discussions. Last night, we gave a Book of Mormon to a local bike shop owner named Massimo. He seemed very grateful and promised us that he'd read it this week! I don't want to say Massimo is elect, but he WAS wearing some sporty camouflage pants and we all know that camo is the celestial kingdom's color scheme (I've developed a slight passion for camouflage on the mission).

1. Sister and President Allen with my new companion Elder Leavit
2. Saying goodbye to Lodi members :( #YouMakeSomeGoodMexicanFoodSisterCruz
3. Who wouldn't want to accept a Book of Mormon from two Washingtonians like this? 
4. Taking advantage of some beautiful architecture thanks to the Catholics 
5. Embracing our inner Instagram-selfs before delivering Valentine's Day goodie plates to our neighbors

My big news this week is my transfer news... I found out on Thursday night that I'm headed off to the Pesaro next week! I couldn't have imagined a more exciting next city. Pesaro hasn't had missionaries for the past few transfers and I'm going to be reopening it with a greenie!! I just talked to the branch president of Pesaro yesterday to find out how Pesaro life is and he told me that there is less than 15 active members that attend the branch. Pretty weird, right?? I hope my greenie likes tracking because we've got some work to do. ;)

I'm definitely ready to get thrust back into normal missionary life, but I also have grown to really appreciate being an office elder. I really have had some good times serving here for the past six months. I've been able to experience a side of missionary work that most people don't get to enjoy. We get to work side by side with President, the Hoopes, and get to do weird office adventures. Not very many missionaries get the opportunity to have a super personal relationship with their mission president. But, last night, President Allen was literally making fun of me for not knowing how to give up an un-awkward hug! HAHAHA, I love him. Side note: remember when Grandma stopped giving me hugs and started greeting me with handshakes because she knew how awkward I got? LOL! I'm going to give you a big ol' hug next time I see you, Grammy! 

My last full week here in Lodi treated me really well. We extended a baptismal date to Choice and he's going to be getting baptized with Charles on the 25th of February!! Unfortunately, the cool Romanian family we've been teaching won't be getting baptismal dates any time soon... This week, they dropped us! :( On a happier note: we went over to the Diaz's house for lunch early this week and it was the definition of great member missionary work. After lunch, instead of presenting a little spiritual thought after eating, Lili and Raiza took US on a tracking adventure. We walked around the local neighborhoods visiting all of their friends. It was the funniest thing ever! Lili is so bold about sharing her testimony. There was one point in the adventure when we walked into a nursing home and Lili introduced us to every single one of the old people there (she had no idea who they were)!!! 

January 28, 2017

As it sounds like you've already heard, there has been a few changes
in our missionary lifestyle. There was a worldwide broadcast that we
tuned into earlier this week where the missionary department announced
that the missionary schedule would have some modifications...
Basically, nightly planning has turned into morning planning and there
is a lot more freedom given to each individual companionship in
planning out the logistics of their day. I really like it. I think
that by giving the freedom to the missionaries, the obedient
missionaries will be able to use their time more effectively and get
more good done!

The missionary department also announced that instead of nine key
indicators, there would now only be four. What that basically means is
that instead of submitting how many lessons you taught each week, how
many less activates you met with,et. But now, there is
only four things that get reported: how many baptisms/confirmations
you've had, how many baptismal dates you have, how many investigators
attended sacrament meeting, and how many new investigators you got.
This is very, very different! I think the obvious benefit I see from
the system is that we're going to be more focused on bringing new
investigators into the church rather than the lessons. The only con I
really see with the new system is leaving new converts/less actives in
the dust because you don't get any fancy number for meeting with them.

I want to rewind in time a little bit to the afternoon before hearing
the big announcements. There was a huge leak in a sewage pipe in our
building and the mission office's basement got flooded with poop
water. So, sadly, we had to clean up some of the affected areas. The
whole time I was thinking, "WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE HAPPENED 
TWO WEEKS LATER?!" I'm just kidding! Despite the grossness of the situation
(I'll save you from the details), we actually had a really good time
cleaning. I feel more prepared to be a dad now that I have more
hands-on-poop experience.

Okay, now, I want to fast forward to the morning after the big
announcement. I woke up feeling terrible! The first 12 hours of the
day consisted of me feeling like I was going to die. I'm not sure
if the spontaneous sickness was related to the cleaning from the
day before or not, but that's what I'm chalking it up to be. At the
peak of my misery, I prayed to God and asked him to help me feel
better and in return, I would eat healthier (something that I haven't
been really good at). Fortunately, we have a God that answers prayers!
And unfortunately, I guess that means I need to clean up the way I eat
a little bit...

On a happier note, Anziano Hogan arrived and he's great! I'm happy
that I get to be with him for the next couple weeks and I'm even
happier that President Allen called an Elder studley enough to fulfill
the office clerk position. ;) It's been hilarious living with Anziano
Hogan for the past few days because he is a HUGE germaphobe and has
been making me use hand sanitizer like 12 times a day! I thought he
was going to have a heart attack last night when he discovered a dried
up booger next to his bed.

I love being a missionary! It's crazy knowing that I'm coming home in
6 MONTHS FROM TODAY! We set a baptismal date with Charles this week
for the 25th of February and I also got the pleasure of seeing a
baptismal picture come into the office email this week of Robert, a
man baptized in Livorno that Anziano Freckleton and I found. The
church is growing!!!

The non-missionary related highlight of the week was taking a day trip to Switzerland! There was an elder that came to the office for a few days because he was doing pretty bad medically (random seizures). So, this past Monday, President Allen "made" us go to Switzerland to take him to some fancy doctor. I think the trip was successful because I returned to Italy with a load of Swiss chocolate and a healthy elder by my side.

I need to get my sad news out of the way so I can get to the happy stuff... Remember the Romanian family of five we started teaching? Well, we had our second appointment with them this week and they hadn't read in the Book of Mormon. :(  Fortunately, it would've been an even worse situation if we weren't teaching the family with Mirko. We showed up to the past lesson with plans to watch the 20 minute restoration video, but when we arrived at their house, we realized we had forgotten the video!! Luckily, Mirko came in clutch and ran over to his house and grabbed the video for us. I felt pretty undeserving of my Eagle Scout being so unprepared for my teaching appointment. 

We have been showing up to church every week with a big crowd of Nigerians. There is a big Nigerian refugee camp right next to the church and so quite a few of the men there have taken a liking to our church. It's been pretty fun teaching them lessons during the week since we aren't allowed to enter the refugee camps. So, Anziano Simmons and I bring have been bringing the big mission van to our lessons with them. When we arrive at their house, we just call them up to tell them that we arrived and load them on the African bus. LOL! There are two particularly elect Nigerians named Choice and Charles that have been reading in the Book of Mormon and definitely will be baptized in this upcoming transfer. Unfortunately, the two other very elect Nigerians live in a different refugee camp and don't have a ride to church yet.

Salvatore is also doing really well too! He got his hours cut at work (boo) and now can come to church on Sundays (yay)!! He still has a law of chastity problem, but has such a great desire to follow Christ. I definitely think the newly formed friendship with Fratello Diaz (the member that helps us teach Salvatore) is going to be a huge help to Salvatore's conversion.

My companion and I are about to go a member's house to learn how to make a good pizza!

Switzerland

Some miracles from this week as recorded in my journal . . 

First...

"We didn't have a planned lesson after Charles and this is where the real miracle happened. We decided we wanted to do a pass-by (I'm not sure if it was out of laziness or the Spirit) and went to the house of an inactive member of the church named Abrahan. When we arrived at the house, we didn't see his name on any of the entry phones. So, we rang an entry phone without a name on it (hoping that it was Abrahan's) and got buzzed into a big courtyard. The person that buzzed us in thought we were someone else and quickly shooed us away. We decided we would knock on the remaining doors that surrounded the courtyard hoping to run into Abrahan. No luck. 

As we were leaving the courtyard to go back to our car, there was a woman pushing a baby through the entry gate. Her eyes lit up when she saw us! It turns out, she was the wife of Abrahan and had been outside going for a little walk. She isn't a member of the church, but seemed more than happy to let us into her house to meet Abrahan. Plot twist: we had no idea that their door was even a door at all and hadn't knocked it before.

Abrahan happily sat down with us to chat when he saw us. We ended up sharing a little message about Jesus and during the thought, Sister Rosano called him (the sisters have never even mentioned him before to us). Sister Rosano asked him if he was going to come to church and Abrahan politely made up some excuse about not having a ride. After the phone call, Abrahan confessed to us that the real reason he wasn't going to come to church is because he didn't want to. We were then able to help him realize the benefits of church and which lead to his firm commitment that he would come to come to church."

And...

"I wish words could adequately describe what happened to me at the Diaz household today. Anziano Simmons and I were excited because they invited us over for lunch. And on a fast Sunday, a meal appointment is a little tender mercy. However, when we were at the table eating, I was apparently drinking a little too much water... When I went to refill my glass, Lilly screams "STOP" (in English) and then grabed the bottle of water out of my hand. She told me that I couldn't drink anymore until I finished my food. HAHAHA, WHAT?!! 

Besides from that awkward moment, the miracle train pulled into our station tonight. We passed by Cristian's house to take the sacrament to his sickly mom and then headed to a nearby city to pass by a random less-active member that we were thinking about. When we got to the less-active member's house, she said that she was too busy and shooed us away. So, with no more lessons planned for the night, we started knocking on doors and talking to people around the city. We were planning on going to the office at 6:30 to catch up on some office work, but our plans quickly changed when we met Mario at 6:27. 

Mario was smoking a cigarette in front of a bar and didn't seem super interested when we first started talking to him. However, after a few minutes of shmoozling, he offered us a café from the bar. We declined the café and let him buy us a cookie instead. After a few more minutes of talking, he asked us if we wanted a special tour of the city's Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini museum (a revered woman in the Catholic Church who served a mission all over the world). We politely agreed and within minutes, one of Mario's friends was leading us down the street to the museum. At this point, the museum's visiting hours were closed, so the tour really was pretty special! And at the end of the night, Mario's friend gave us a free Francesca book from the museum gift shop and Mario gave us his phone number and said we could meet some other time to talk about our message of Jesus Christ!"

And finally...

"So, tonight, Anziano Simmons and I started teaching a family of five. Yes, FIVE! Mirko's neighbor turned out to be a cute little family from Romania. They have lived here for over 10 years and speak the language well. We were able to teach the restoration to them and it was a PERFECT lesson (the type of lesson that you start jumping up and down for joy when you exit the investigator's house). They seemed to understand everything really well and were excited to read the Book of Mormon. After kneeling in prayer with the entire family at the end of the lesson, I wanted to scream out, "This is what missionary work is all about!" Teaching a family is something I haven't done thus far in my mission, but it's definitely something I hope to continue. 

The good feelings didn't stop there. After our exciting family lesson, we headed over to Lucky's house. Lucky is an African refugee who we met on the streets a couple weeks ago. We didn't know what to expect going into the lesson, but were pleasantly surprised when we showed up at his house. He lives in a government owned refugee camp and when we arrived tonight, we were pleasantly greeted by a dozen enthusiastic Nigerian men. We taught the restoration lesson to them too. As the lesson wore on, more and more of the Nigerian men lost interest and started doing their own thing. By the end of the lesson, only two attentive listeners remained: Lucky and Silvester.

Lucky's faith is probably a little more simple than Silvester's, but they are both really great. Silvester is extremely intelligent and cited at least 15 scriptures from the Bible during our time together. There was one point during the lesson when he used the word bona fide and I was wondering to myself who in the world we were teaching (that definitely is not a word in my vocabulary). There were a few specific moments tonight where I could recognizably feel the Spirit. I love this church!!"

There are a lot more miracles that I experienced than the ones listed above... we are truly being blessed! Thank you for the consistent love and prayers you send me way.

Looking Good!  

Following an adventurous New Year's eve night, I started out the New Year right.... IN CHURCH! Sadly, there wasn't a lot of people with the same idea. Besides from the Mormon missionaries and the people giving talks in Sacrament meeting, there wasn't a ton of people that showed up to church. On the bright, we had four investigators come: Gladys and our three Nigerian boys (Charles, Choice, and Godspower). It was exciting having some investigators in church, but I was a little bummed that Salvatore didn't come. He worked on Saturday night and was planning on coming to church as soon as he finished his shift, but he just didn't feel up to it.

After church, Gladys invited us over for lunch. That woman is a saint. She works as a caregiver every single day of the week, all day long. Her only time off is from Sunday morning to Sunday evening. If you're not catching my drift, she used her only free time to come to church and make the Mormon missionaries food! If she understood Italian better, that woman would be baptized! Last Sunday, she told us that her goal for 2017 was to build a stronger relationship with God. ....Honey, we can help you with that and offer a whole lot more! Tomorrow, we are going to meet with her and a member that speaks Spanish. Then, next Sunday, we are going to have an awesome single lady in our ward invite Gladys and us over for lunch.

We had an interesting visit with our ward missionary leader this week. Our ward missionary leader is a single man in his 40's that looks very similar to John Schmidt. He told Anziano Simmons and I we could come over if we made him some Nanaimo bars. We weren't sure if he wasn't kidding or not, so we whipped up a batch of some of the most unhealthy things you could possibly eat and ran over to his house.

His house looked like it should be abandoned and was freezing cold. Mirko is jobless and gets by on money given to him from his parents. Up until last month, he was baking cookies in his kitchen and selling them door to door. After two years of his undercover cookie business, the cops shut him down.

We spent the majority of our time talking about his love life. He is obsessed with a Mormon girl that he's never met in person, but only lives a few hours away. From what it sounds like, they had a one week flirtationship and then she got bored of him. He's been messaging her daily messages over the past month and she's been ignoring him. I'm not sure if the message is adequately getting across, but this man is in a SAD situation.

That being said, HE IS INCREDIBLE. He is so happy and works so hard! He shares the gospel with everyone and has a great outlook on life. I know there are people who have it a lot worse off than Mirko, but his situation is a good reminder for me to always find the happiness in life. Life gets really hard sometimes, but we are so blessed. Mirko doesn't have a lot of things that I aspire to have (a beautiful wife, kids, and house). But, he is still happy because he has something better... The gospel! There is no reason to ever be pessimistic when you think about the significance of what we have access to.