Gesso!

Cara Famiglia,

So gesso can mean two things in Italian, either 'chalk' or 'cast' as in a cast you get when you get really injured falling off your bike! Just kidding, I didn't fall off my bike! Sorry to scare you on your birthday mom! Speaking of which, Tanti Auguri! I hope you have a fantastic day and everything goes perfectly! Also speaking of birthdays, say thank you to the Walton and DeVincent and Blake families for their birthday cards! They were much appreciated.

Today we didn't do anything for Pday except clean the apartment and take a nap. It was excellent. It is good to feel rested.

So the reason the subject is 'chalk' is because we tried it out as a new finding method this week. It goes like this: we get sidewalk chalk, go into centro on the main street, and start drawing out the Plan of Salvation. While my companion draws, I talk to people. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be and a lot of people stopped to talk and look at it. It was fun.

Quick other cool note to Elder Goodsell in Germany. His friend Anziano Day is in my district!! I got to do a sweeeet exchange with him, he is an awesome missionary and a funny kid. We found a ton of really cool people.

As far as the most important things go, Valerio got confirmed!!!!! Woooo!!! He is a stud. He said he just felt 'benissimo' after the ordinance. We also gave him the special Liahona issue about Temples and he was really excited to do some family history work.

We also taught Paola again, and she is awesome! She loves reading the Book of Mormon but is a little nervous for baptism. Pray for her!

We also had a cool little miracle this week that shows how bravo my companion is. We got a bidone and so we decided to walk to the train station to check times for a conference we had to go to. On the way through some really empy streets we saw one lady so we decided to talk to her. Turns out she has been going to a lot of different churches and is just really searching for the truth! We have an appointment with her tomorrow morning so pray that it goes well! We are looking for a lot of new people.

Another cool experience we had this week was with the branch, which every year co-organizes a concert with this little city near Piacenza. We got to go and hear it and had a little information table with Books of Mormon and stuff afterwards. It was awesome because some of the people that performed (including one fratello in the ward who is a dang good opera singer) have performed at the Scala opera house in Milano! It was my first time hearing real Italian opera.

This week we had a sweet conference in Verona, and I wanted to share a spiritual thought from something President Wolfgramm shared. He talked about how when Adam was in the garden the Lord asked him "Adam, where art thou?" and "Adam, where goest thou?" He talked about how those are really important questions in our life; the Lord may obviously wasn't asking Adam where he was physically because he knew, but he was giving him a chance to be accountable and make an honest evaluation at what point he was in living the gospel. We could evaluate our spirituality and ask where we are, and where we are going. I'm grateful that Jesus Christ is the way and also the light, which gives us a pretty clear path to follow. I love this work, and I love you all lots!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Andiamo in Italia!

Cara Famiglia!!

Abbiamo ricevuto i nostri piani di viaggio!! Siamo molto contenti! That means we got our flight plans so we're for sure leaving next week to go to Italy! Here's the plan: Leave the MTC ... next Tuesday, Feb. 22nd. [Fly] from SLC [to] Denver ... to Frankfurt, Germany, arriving at 11:35 AM on the morning of Feb. 23rd. [Then we] arrive in Milano at 4:55 PM!!! Woooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Siamo troppo felice! Also we have a huge layover in Germany, something like 4 hours, so I should be able to call at least from there. I got a calling card from the bookstore yesterday so I should be good to go. Also, apparently the Mission President reimburses you for a second checked bag, so I'm probably going to buy one of the cheap ones from the bookstore so I don't have to worry about my bag being overweight. Should be good to go.

Other than that this week has been going great, typical week at the MTC. Italian is still good, we're really focusing on speaking as much Italian as physically possible in the last week. Last night we learned the last verb tense we're going to learn here, which is pretty exciting. The teachers have said that since now all the teachers are 100% speaking Italian they think we're a lot more prepared for full immersion than they were when they went. They said their teachers didn't speak that much Italian to them in the MTC, it was basically all English. But I'm sure we'll still be quite humbled when we arrive.

Music is good in the MTC. They still have the lame rule that you can't listen to any music at all because apparently some missionaries way back abused the privilege. But instead we can just play piano and make music! It's great. Playing piano helps lessen to shock of not hearing music almost ever. However, we do like one of the organists who plays the prelude and postlude music for devotionals. He always plays 'Army of Helaman' in the prelude and we even heard him playing 'Jupiter' by Gustav Holst during one of the postludes. I was so psyched, I wanted to go down and tell him thank you for giving me my soul back! I'm hoping we can listen to classical music in the field, if we can you should send a cd of The Planets.

Thanks everybody for the DearElders/letters I got this week or last week that I didn't mention or haven't written back (I'm surprised at how busy P-Days are even in the MTC!). So hopefully I should be able to write a bunch of letters today. I'm also probably going to mail a box home of some random stuff. Anyhoo, that's about all the news for this week.

So this week I was reflecting on how grateful I was for the MTC. I'm grateful for the scriptures, for the opportunity to have at least 3 hours every day just to study, grateful to have every meal planned out for me, grateful for awesome teachers who I hope I can be like in the mission field, grateful for my Savior, grateful for Preach my Gospel, grateful for living prophets, grateful for Joseph Smith and the early pioneer saints, grateful for my companion, grateful for my awesome district and zone, and grateful for everything else in my life. Non posso aspettare di andare in Italia e condividere il messaggio del vangelo di Gesu Cristo con loro, e io so che Dio ha preparato il popolo d'Italia a ricevere questo messaggio. So che Gesu Cristo e il nostro Salvatore, e mediante l'espiazione di Gesu Cristo possiamo essere purificati dei nostri peccati ed avere la gioia e speranza che solo puo venire tramite Cristo. So che anche il mio italiano non e perfetto, posso portare testimonianza della verita del Libro di Mormon, e che abbiamo un profeta vivente sulla terra oggi. Sono grato per tutte le benedizioni che il vangelo di Gesu Cristo mi ha dato, e voglio che il popolo d'Italia puo ricevere le stesse benedizioni. [I can not wait to go to Italy and share the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with them, and I know that God has prepared the people of Italy to receive this message. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can be cleansed of our sins and have the joy and hope that can only come through Christ. I know that my Italian is not perfect, I can testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon, and we have a living prophet on earth today. I am grateful for all the blessings that the gospel ofJesus Christ has given me, and I want the people of Italy to be able to receive the same blessings.]

Ciao!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Another Week at the MTC!

Cara Famiglia,

Well another week has flown by here at the MTC. It's gotten to the point that everything basically seems the same. It's all just one big blur. And that's not necessarily a bad thing either! Italian is progressing great, we did a ceremony on Thursday where we committed to speak 100% Italian from now until we leave the MTC(Almost a month!) except for branch meetings and district meetings because our Branch President doesn't speak Italian. It's going pretty well, Italian is sweet! Also yesterday we taught the Restoration lesson at the TRC fully in Italian again. It was different because we did intra-district exchanges, so I taught with Elder Murray. We taught these two people that both served in the Milan mission, the girl was from Sicilia and they both talked soooooooo fast, but I felt like I could understand basically everything. The funny part was when I was talking about Jesus and I said 'Gesù Cristo ha soffrito per i nostri peccati' which instead of meaning 'Jesus Christ suffered for our sins' means 'Jesus Christ fried (like fried chicken) for our sins.' So the actual word I should've used was 'sofferto.' The people afterwards told me they almost burst out laughing, but it's better I do it here than in Italy.

Everything else is going well, the district is great. We get to go to the Temple today so that should be good. We are counting down the days until the new Italians get here, there's 24 new coming in a week from tomorrow! And we found out that the next batch that comes in six weeks after that will have 38 Italians! So there will be 62 Italians in the MTC in like 7-8 weeks. Ridiculous! Speaking of Italian, I found out that the best hymn ever is only in the Italian Hymnbook, called 'Mandate Voci di Gioa all'eterno', which roughly translates as 'Send Voices of Joy to all Eternity.' You should all try and find it and listen to it. Also, this week my companion and I and another Elder in our Zone are going to audition a special musical number of 'Come Thou Fount' to see if we can play it at one of the devotionals or firesides. We are also working on the a cappella song 'I Love the Lord' to audition as a Zone. That song is awesome too, it's basically 2 Ne. 4 put to the music of Be Still, My Soul, a winning combination [embedded below]. The Priesthood choir of something sang it a couple years ago in one of the sessions of conferences I think, so you should try and find it on youtube and give it a listen, it's way good. Also, props to the Evans sisters this week, both of them wrote me letters! It was good to hear from them; give everyone in McLean my best.

So this week I was really impressed with Alma 26. It's probably the best missionary chapter ever. Verse 12 is my favorite that says "Yea, I know that I am nothing, as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." It made me think about how the stereotypical thing to think about Italy is that you won't baptize anybody, but if we have faith we can bring to pass miracles anywhere. I'm grateful that a Temple is being built there because I know the Lord is preparing the people to hear the gospel. I've gained a great testimony of the power of the Spirit in conversion and how necessary it is. I know the Book of Mormon is true and I'm grateful for all the blessings the gospel has provided for my life.

-Anziano Benjamin Smith