Hey! Sorry this weekly update is a bit later than usual. It's been a hectic day. Preparation day is supposed to be relaxing. Mica tanto! Ah well. Life goes on. My English is getting worse and worse. I might as well just starting writing these letters in Italian ormai. Have your pocket translators handy.
Life is great in the office. This week went by so fast I hardly had time to realize what day it was. I was constantly busy this week. While we were driving this evening I was making a couple phone calls and one person said, "I don't hear you very well! What's going on?" I said, "Oh, we're in the car right now. We had some downtime, so I figured we'd give you a call!" He goes, "Your definition of downtime is being in the car?!" And I said, "I know right?! Crazy."
On the utilities front, I've been working on shutting down the old apartment next to the mission office. I did some magic and closed the electric contract. It was great to walk in there, flip a switch, see nothing happen and go "Yah, I did that!" Unfortunately (and this has been the cause of most of my stress this week) for whatever reason our garage was attached to the same electric meter as the apartment. I'd like to know whose bright idea that was. That wouldn't be terrible, but the garage door and the gate to the driveway are both electric and can only be opened that way! The garage is basically impenetrable without electricity, believe me I tried. You should have seen me out there trying to get into that garage. A hammer, paperclips, clothes hangers, a flashlight, fold-able step stools, a letter opener... These were just some of my accomplices in this project. Nothing worked. That garage has now been named Fort Knox. Normally that wouldn't be a big problem, but unfortunately that's where our ENTIRE stock of copies of the Book of Mormon is... Yah. I made some phone calls and we have an electrician coming first thing Monday morning. No one could come any earlier because the holidays are still going on... So, there are a few zones that will just be a little short on copies of the Book of Mormon for a few weeks. I did all I could do.
We have a great investigator we've been teaching since before I got here. He's doing wonderful. Like any Italian, he loves to talk, so our lessons get a little off-track sometimes. He likes the church though. He's getting to know people too, which is great seeing as our ward is pretty big. It can be hard to get to know people if you're new. We had a lesson planned with him a few days ago. When we got there, he was already there playing with the kids who were running around. One of them asked if he could come to our lesson with us. He had the attention span you would expect out of any eleven year-old, but he was a great addition to the evening. He was just baptized earlier this year, so we asked him a few questions about how he felt at his baptism and the difference it made. It was nice for our investigator to hear a testimony like that coming from someone so young. At the end, we asked the kid to say the prayer. In effect, he said something like this: "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us here today. This lesson was pretty boring for me, but I probably would've been more bored if I had gone to English class, so thank you. Anyway, the important thing is that this guy is getting baptized. I really have to go the bathroom. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." All of us were cracking up in the middle of the prayer. It was so much fun. It helped our investigator loosen up a bit. He feels a little nervous sometimes in church because he doesn't know a lot of people yet. Anyway, he's still preparing for baptism... not next weekend, but he's hoping for the next weekend. He's just trying to quit smoking. It's been a little hard for him, but he's honestly trying. We actually ran into him today at the market. He's finished his last packet of cigarettes today and he says he's completely done. I think he's really done. He has a good desire.
We've been able to have an office miracle this week. It was Tuesday afternoon and we were going about our office work. The intercom rang and we didn't think much of it because we get at least four different mail carriers coming each day. We opened the gate and were expecting a mailman, but up the path comes walking a younger girl in her twenties. We talked with her for a while and she talked about how she had been going through some difficult trials in her life and she saw the sign and thought maybe someone would be able to help her. We told her we didn't have many resources as far as employment goes, but that we do have the Gospel and that sure can help with a lot of problems in our life. She agreed, we talked to her a little more, and we set up an appointment for her to come the next evening. Sister Dibb was there too, and even though she didn't understand everything, she got the gist and was super excited. She declared that she and President would be there the next night for the appointment. So the next evening, this girl showed up and we had a beautiful lesson in the lobby of the mission office with her, Anz. Stewart, myself, and President and Sister Dibb. It was a really neat experience, and of course it was a neat experience to teach a lesson with President and Sister. They were really excited to have an investigator! It was a great lesson, she was grateful to receive a Book of Mormon, and we're hoping to see her again.
My thought string lately has led me to think about what happiness means, especially in the context of the Church. I read a great article in one of the Church's magazine a few weeks ago that I really enjoyed. It talked about one new convert's experience with obedience. We know from the scriptures that true happiness comes from being obedient to God's commandments. This woman talked about how she assumed that when she joined the Church all her problems would disappear, or at least that she would be able to happily deal with them, as long as she was obedient to the principles she had learned. Instead, it seemed as if she was less happy and her trials were increasing. Looking back, she said she cam to call this mentality the "bubble gum machine mentality." At the beginning of her conversion, she thought that the Gospel was like a bubble gum machine: You obey and you get a blessing, just like you put a quarter in and out pops a gumball. Instead, it's not always like that. Obedience will of course ultimately bring blessings, but that doesn't mean that we're going to automatically receive a blessing each time we're obedient! Even if one is living a righteous life, that doesn't entitle that person to constant happiness. Difficult moments come in life. Trials happen. We are subject to mortal frailties. However, that doesn't mean that God doesn't love us or that we are doing anything wrong. I've been guilty myself of this mentality, especially in my mission. It's easy to think, "I'm not 100% happy right now... There must be something I'm doing wrong." It's important to realize the broader scope of things. Sometimes, things just happen. Our job in mortality is to take it, roll with it, get as much good as we can out of it, better ourselves because of it, and then keep going. A lot of people miss the whole "endure to the end" aspect of the Gospel. It's also not enough to endure. We need to progress to the end.
Those are my thoughts for now. TTFN! Vi voglio tantissimo bene.
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