Anziano Hutchinson!!!!

Benjamin's email this week:

Ciao!

 

So Anziano Hutchinson is my new companion! He is a stud, he was in the group above me in the MTC and is super cool. He's from Bountiful, Utah, and got 5th in states in HS Wrestling in the 119 weight, after being ranked 2nd (look out Elder Dickson!) But yeah he is a really cool guy and I am looking forward to working with him this transfer. He came from Prato, a city right next to Firenze, and says Modena is a prettier city. Today in Modena for P-Day we also have the Anziani from Siena who stopped by on the way home from a permesso appointment in Mantova, and the Anziani from Mantova also came to spend P-Day here. It's fun stuff, especially since Anziano Portellano from my MTC district is here, he is the man.

 

Our investigators are going good, we have some solid ones that I'm feeling really good about that are progressing well. Michael should be baptized on June 11 if all goes well and he gets to church a couple more times. We are working well with him and he is a really good guy. Also Paolo is great, even though we couldn't see him this week he assured us he would read the assignment we left him. We are hoping to teach him a good lesson about eternal families this week to really help him see the potential of blessings that are awaiting him. Also I don't know if I mentioned this last week but we are teaching this lady named Gabriella who is Italian and believes basically everything! She has all this Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic art and stuff literally covering her walls at her house. We're trying to get her focused on figuring out the gospel as the one way we can return to live with Heavenly Father.

 

Also, I don't if I mentioned before but they re-aligned our district this transfer to include Reggio and Piacenza, so now there are 10 people in our district! It is huge. And yesterday at the District Meetings the Zone Leaders came too, so it was packed. We are also holding some cool mission Zone Meetings here next week for the Firenze and Bologna zones, so that should be good.

 

Spiritual thought for the week is appreciation for the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This morning in companionship study Anziano Hutchinson and I listened to this awesome talk Jeffrey R. Holland gave to mission presidents a couple years ago where he basically says "We obviously preach the Atonement as the single most important event in human history, but we shouldn't shy away or try to teach around the Restoration for fear of offending people! The Restoration is what gives us and all of God's children the access to the Atonement that is necessary to return to live with Him!" I'm not as good at saying it as Elder Holland unfortunately, but it was a really good talk. I was also really struck again by the section in Doctrine and Covenants that talks about the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. I am constantly impressed by what he did to help bring this gospel to light and that he had enough faith to go and pray in a grove of trees almost 200 years ago. I know that Joseph Smith really was a prophet of God who saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, who was called as a prophet to help bring all of God's children to salvation. I know the Book of Mormon is true and testifies of Jesus Christ. I know that this work is the work of the Lord!

 

Lots of love! (especially for Mom!)

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Still in Modena?????

Cara Famiglia,

 

The answer is yes! I am staying in Modena. Anziano Kimball, however, is not so lucky, as he is being transferred to GENOVA!! He is going to be training again aaaand opening a new companionship! Pretty intense! He is super excited though, his brother served in Genova in the Milan mission about 10 years ago. My new companion will be Anziano Hutchinson, who is one transfer above me, I knew him in the MTC and he's a really good guy, so I'm looking forward to serving with him.

 

This week was pretty exciting. The first thing I would bring your attention to would be last Thursday. Guess how many lessons we had planned? Answer: 9. Guess how many fell through? Answer: 9. Buuuuuut, it was still an awesome day because we taught three new lessons and picked up three new investigators, two of which are now progressing! And one accepted a baptismal commitment! And they were all even Italians! So even though that day was kind of rough it ended up being dang good. Also, for the second time in my mission so far, a family invited us over for dinner after knowing us for only about 10 minutes. It was great, but unfortunately they weren't really interested in the gospel. But we did get a nice Italian dinner. Our other investigators are doing well. Paolo is an awesome guy who is the companion of a sister in our ward, i.e. they are not married but live together with a kid. He's known the church basically his whole time being together with this lady but only just recently said he'd be interested in learning about the gospel. I don't know if I've mentioned him in previous emails since we've only taught him two or three times, but he is a stud, really sincerely wanting to find God in his life. At our appointment on Sunday after church, he showed us that he had taken a bunch of notes on the Alma 32 reading assignment we left him! It was awesome! I loooove when investigators keep commitments. Our other investigators are doing great too, progressing along pretty nicely. Pray for them!

 

This week in studying for Paolo's lessons we were reading about faith and I was really impressed with the Hebrews 11 and Ether 12 team-up. They both just give a run down of amazing miracles all throughout scriptual history wrought by FAITH! It was literally awesome, to see how much Faith is a principle of power. It is also good to know how to increase your faith based on Alma 32. I still always remember the quote I think from Sister Hekking who wasn't even my seminary teacher, but who says 'great faith has a short shelf life.' I know that as we read and hear the word of God, and pray, our faith will increase! I've seen it go up a lot since I've been out here, and every day and night I pray that I can have enough faith to work miracles here in Italy. And it works! I challenge everyone reading this to improve their faith every day, it makes life much better.

 

I love being out here in Modena! I love Italy! I love being able to wake up and go out to spend 100% of my time serving the Lord, without having to worry about school or anything! I know Heavenly Father answers prayers, even if it's not always the way we expect! I love you all!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

The Saga of the Fridge Lives on!

Cara Famiglia,

 

Sorry I keep mentioning the fridge in the subject line. Let it be known that even with being fridge-less for 3 weeks now we are still working super hard. But yeah, they said it should be ready today, so we are really hoping and praying it is so we can get some real groceries again.

 

The work is going good in Modena! We are continuing to work with Michael towards baptism, although he is a little flaky on appointments recently. We will probably have to push his baptismal date back to early June. But one cool thing is that we recently picked up an awesome investigator named Bouba! He is a Muslim guy from Guinea who doesn't speak Italian very well (apparently they speak French there), but after reading the Book of Mormon and praying he believes in Jesus Christ being the Son of God and wants to be baptized! The only problem is he doesn't want to do it anytime soon because if he does his brother will kick him out of the house and he doesn't have anywhere else to go. Pray for him! He is super solid. Fortunately one of the recent RMs speaks French though, so we will be taking him to most of our lessons with Bouba.

 

Other than our major investigators we are doing a lot of finding work. Also, this is my week to be Senior Companion for this transfer! It is kind of nerve wracking since I am still by all standards very young in the mission making calls and setting up appointments and stuff, but I am learning a lot. Anziano Kimball is a great example of a missionary too, so I don't have to pull things out of the air as to what the Senior Comp. should be doing.

 

Recently in district meeting we had an awesome discussion about the 'Bear Testimony Frequently' section in Preach my Gospel (Pg. 198 in English). It has some really great stuff about why testimonies are so powerful and how to use it. They taught us a lot in the MTC about how our testimony is the most powerful thing we use to teach, and I have definitely found that to be true. I would encourage everyone to read it and think about how you can strengthen your testimony by bearing it frequently! It really works. I'm grateful for the testimony I have that the Book of Mormon is true, God is our loving Heavenly Father, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It feels good to bear your testimony all day, every day, no matter what the results are. I know that this work is true and is led by God. I really liked the simple remark from Marcel's letter where he talks about how everybody, no matter what their circumstances, needs Christ. It's so simple but true! We run into people all the time who say 'Oh my life is good right now, don't worry about it.' And I just think 'ahhh but there is so much more!!' I'm truly grateful for this wonderful opportunity to be a servant in the Lord's vineyard, and to help bring about the Lord's work daily.

 

I love you all!

 

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Food poisoning! And another broken fridge!

Cara Famiglia,

This week was pretty interesting. It started off good last week, when we got our new fridge! But it only worked for an evening, so...still waiting on the repairs for it. Hopefully it arrives either tonight or tomorrow morning. Modena is still great though, the weather is awesome and we are picking up the pace with finding work since a lot of our potential investigators aren't panning out. We have a couple awesome ones though, including a surprise one who now wants to be baptized, named Eric! He's tight. Also we have Michael who should be baptized on the 28th. Pray for them both!

To explain the first part of the subject, let it be known that over the weekend about 150 of the Young Single Adults (GANS) in Italian came to Modena for an activity. They had a dance Saturday night and then a Sacrament meeting Sunday morning, so the regular ward meeting was pushed back to 4:30 in the pm. After church on Sunday, some of the ward members pushed some food off on us, including a rice meal. Naturally, as polite missionaries, we gladly took it home. Fast forward to Monday lunch time, and we're like, "Hey, let's eat this leftover rice from the GANS activity for lunch! Good plan, Anziano!" So we each heat up a bowl. Anziano Kimball wolfed his portion down, but I only took a bite cause I wasn't feelin it. I ended up just eating chips and some other random stuff in the kitchen for lunch. An hour later the party began! Anziano Kimball succumbed to food poisoning, and so we ended up staying in the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday. It was rough on him, although he didn't seem as bad as when I had food poisoning in High School. He's feelin about 90% now though, and it's P-Day so we should be ready to get back on track tonight and finish out the week strong.

This week since we were inside for a couple days I got to read and study the scriptures a lot, which was pretty enjoyable actually. It kind of felt like being in the MTC again, where you just have a ton of time to study. I was really impressed by another verse about the Stripling Warriors, in Alma 53:20:

And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.

I love reading about the stripling warriors because they are examples of absolute obedience, unrestrictive of time or place. The example they set for us is ridiculous! But the blessings the received are so true. I know that obedience is the key to success here on the mission, and I'm grateful for a trainer and companion who helps with that. I know that this work is true, and that Heavenly Father prepares his children to accept the Gospel. I know that Jesus is the Christ, and he leads his church today through living prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is true!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Buona Pasqua with a Broken Fridge!

Cara Famiglia,

This week was full of events! From the subject you might have realized that last wednesday our frigorifero(one of my favorite Italian words) broke. So last week we got all non-refrigerated groceries i.e. no milk, yogurt, cheese, meat, or veggies. This week our meal of choice at lunch was pasta with red sauce. Good times. We got out new fridge today, and it is great. We are looking forward to being able to eat cold things again. Also, apparently this week was Easter! The holidays really creep up on you here in the mission because you don't have all the decorations that build up to it usually. At least not in our apartment. It was good though, during Sunday School we watched the 'Finding Faith in Christ' movie which I hadn't seen in a looong time. I think it's really cool that they do it from Thomas' perspective. Then in Sacrament Meeting there were some good talks about the resurrection and the risen Christ. They also had a special musical number that I know is one of the CDs that Dad plays every Sunday, in English I think it's called 'The Lord is my Good Shepherd', but it's not the 'The Lord is My Shepherd' that's in the hymnbook. We also had the great idea to go around and give out copies of 'Il Cristo Vivente' to the people we talked too. We probably could've used the week before Easter a little more to our advantage, but oh well we will do better next time.

We had a couple good referral lessons this week, one was a referral from Napoli. He lived in a little town called Crevalcore (which reminded me of Zoppola!) that is about an hour away on bus from Modena. We gave him a Book of Mormon with a dedica from the guy who gave the referral and had a lesson about it. He seemed really interested and was an awesome guy, notwithstanding the fact that his accent was quite different. But he's moving back down to Napoli this week so we're hoping the missionaries there pick him up. We also went to lunch at a member lady's house on Pasqua and her companion (I dunno what the proper term would be) who isn't a member was apparently interested in learning more about the church, so we taught him a lesson about prayer and the Restoration. His name is Paolo and he's a really cool guy who lived in the USA for a while, so we're going to teach him some more and hope he progresses. Israel is still a stud, he is actually coming to church this week! The big hurdle is getting him to commit to not just come this one Sunday, but to covenant with the Lord so he can receive more blessings by coming every single week! Unfortunately, his mom kicked him out of the house last night, so he is currently out of living arrangments. Pray for him!

The music-ness never stops, fortunately! Since Sister Willey who is in Modena is amazingly awesome at cello (she played in the Orchestra at Temple Square for a couple years) our ward is holding a music fireside on Sunday May 8th! She is playing a couple of songs, and I even get to accompany her on a version of I Am a Child of God! I also get to play piano for Anziano Kimball singing Come Thou Fount, the same version that Anziani Bushman and Scheurn sang with me in the MTC. It's gonna be awesome, and we're giving out people flyers for that too.

This week we taught a cool lesson to a less-active member about the Liahona, and so we were planning on following mom's idea from when I was in Primary to spray paint this baseball in out apartment gold and decorate it like the Liahona. Unfortunately, all we could do was color it yellow with a marker and then we forgot to even bring it! But we still had the lesson, and I was impressed by 1 Nephi 16 and Alma 37, where much of the information on the Liahona comes from. It is a great allegory, being such a small device that works great miracles, of daily scripture study in prayer. I particularly liked the last four verses in Alma 37:

44 For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land.
 45 And now I say, is there not a type in this thing? For just as surely as this director did bring our fathers, by following its course, to the promised land, shall the words of Christ, if we follow their course, carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.
 46 O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever.
 47 And now, my son, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea, see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My son, farewell.

I know 100% that the little things are the most important. I am incredibly grateful for the Book of Mormon because every day I open it, read it, and feel the spirit while learning something new. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that it answers our questions while at the same time bearing testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ. I know that my redeemer lives, and that this work in Italy is being directed by Him. I love you all!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Doin[g] Work in Modena

Cara Famiglia,

 

This week has been pretty good in Modena. The work has definitely slowed down compared to when I first arrived, but it is still going great. We had a big breakthrough with Israel this week where he agreed to just go in and tell his bosses that he couldn't work anymore on Sundays so that he could come to church and then be baptized! It only went okay though, the boss is apparently making him come in one last Sunday before he lets him not work on Sunday anymore. We'll see how that goes. Pray for him! He's too ready for baptism to miss out. Anziano Kimball and I are also liking doing this thing in our mission called 'Venti Inviti', or, 20 invites. Every day outside of scheduled proselyting work the mission goal is to invite 20 people to hear about the gospel, basically when you're in between appointments or finding areas. We usually kind of struggle to do it, which is a bummer. But recently we have been a lot more diligent! It is great, whenever we do the venti inviti everything in the day just seems better. Another great thing about the mission is that we just instantly start teaching and testifying when we talk to people, we almost never even introduce ourselves! It is awesome even when no one lets you in all day. You feel great because you spent your day bearing your testimony 100+ times!

 

Today we had a fun P-day where we went slacklining with our new convert Castro. Basically you string a really tight line between two trees maybe 20 or 30 feet apart at about waist height. Then it's just like tightrope walking! It was really fun, I definitely want to do it on some other P-days, and I'm attaching some pictures [included below].

 

 I very much enjoyed Dad's email about the things learned in Sunday School. I've always been impressed with the bread of life analogy and such. It reminds me of these awesome scriptures in 2 Nephi 26: 25 and 27:

 25 Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price. ...
 27 Hath he commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but he hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance.

Jesus is alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllways waiting for us. All the time! It's like how I was just in the post office waiting for my number to be called so I could mail a package, except it's always your turn. You just have to walk up to the desk! The atonement is such a miracle, it's so simple but unfathomable. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from all time fromBelieving Christ: "Mercy, by definition, is only mercy if we don't deserve it." It's amazing to think that for all the justice that everyone deserves, it can all be swallowed up by the mercy of the atonement! I'm grateful for the knowledge that Jesus Christ is my Savior and suffered, died, and was resurrected for everybody! We just need to come unto him. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and truly testifies of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His church. I know that the Lord is directing this work and I love being here to spread the gospel 100% every day.

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

Working Hard

Famiglia!

 

This week has been a good week in Modena, the first week of this transfer. Anziano Kimball is still adjusting to being District Leader but he's doing a great job, he's a stud missionary. Today we had interviews and training stuff in Verona so that was cool, I should be going there on a scambio tomorrow or so. The work here in Modena is doing very well, we are basically going through our massive list of contacts we've gotten from talking to tons of people and finding out who is really interested. The other day we had a cool experience where we had about an hour free so we went to this park type area. We talked to the first person we saw sitting on a bench and he was super cool, a guy named Degraft from Ghana. We taught him a little lesson and got his info, so we're hoping to keep that going. Then, we biked like 20 feet to the next bench, and had another awesome little lesson with these two Peruvians! Their names are Amelia and Giorgio, Giorgio doesn't really speak Italian but we were able to throw some Spanish in there to help him understand. Thank you MHS for your four years of Spanish classes! They are really cool and we met them again in the park a couple of days later to give them each a copy of the BoM in Spanish. Anziano Kimball has a Spanish Preach My Gospel so we are working on getting the baptismal invite in Spanish for them haha. We also knocked into a kid named Michael the other day, also from Ghana. He is really interested but his Dad is really not interested to put it lightly, so we can't really teach him. But! He turns 18 on May 5, so we may re-start teaching him then. Also, keep praying for Israel to find work so he can come to church on Sunday, or just that he can put his faith in the Lord and come to church anyway!

 

I love this missionary work of helping bring people to Christ! We taught a lesson about parables to a recent convert the other week and it was really cool to learn about what a master teacher Christ was. Even from simple stories of stuff we can learn great and fundamental principles. It is truly refreshing how simple the gospel is! I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that it helps us become so much closer to Christ. I know that everyone on the earth is a child of God, with a Father who loves them unconditionally no matter what experiences we have on earth. Affliction is just an opportunity to show our love back!

 

Ciao!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith

P.S. Also, happy birthday to Kevin! I wrote it down in my planner so I wouldn't forget to write in the email! Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours! Also I'm sending a present home for him.