1/29/14

Hey everyone! Did y'all have a good week? I sure did!

Bergamo's been getting a bit chilly, although nothing compared to Ohio from what I've been hearing! We're supposed to get snow today, but I doubt it. I've still only ever seen snow once in Italy! I figured there would be some since I'm in the mountains, but alas, I remain snowless.

This week at church was one of the best Sundays I've had in the mission. We had two investigators come and they loved the whole thing. The talks that were given were very inspired and well delivered. The topics went along directly with what we had been teaching one of our investigators, so I think he was especially excited to hear some additional testimony about the principles he had been learning. The Sunday School class was just as exciting. We were a bit concerned at first because the lesson that day was on something we hadn't taught yet to either investigator. The sisters taught a great lesson though and both investigators accepted it like it was yesterday's news. By the end, they were both bearing testimony about something they didn't even know about an hour before.

Speaking of testimonies, I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. We've been teaching several people who are having trouble gaining testimonies. Some aren't yet members and some are. I had an example come to my mind. I took a Book of Mormon and said, "Let's pretend this represents our testimony." Then I held up three fingers and said, "These represent the three things that are vital to us receiving a testimony: Reading our scriptures, praying to our Father in Heaven, and attending church." I balanced the book on top of my three fingers. "When all three of these things are being put into practice, our testimony is balanced and able to grow" I said. "If one of them is missing [I removed a finger and the book fell] then so is our testimony. Our testimony needs all three to be able to function."

Ether, a Book of Mormon prophet, wrote, "Ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith" (Ether 12:27). If we don't take steps to grow our faith, we will never have it! God can only do for us what we can't do for ourselves.

That's my weekly update for now. Have a great week I love y'all! Love, Anziano Simcox

Segui lo Spirito! - 1/22/14

Howdy y'all! Woops sorry. My American slipped out there for a second.

This past week has been a busy one. I've settled into my new home. From day one we hit the pavement and kept running. There's a lot of teaching going on around here lesson-wise. Of course, we should always be teaching in whatever thing we do.

I've had two experiences this week that I thought I would share.

Last night I was on a bus. To begin with, I already don't like crowds. Public transportation is everywhere in Italy though, so I've had to learn how to deal with it. It's actually really useful though because using public transportation you can get almost anywhere in the country. Talking to people on public transportation though has always been a bit difficult for me. I'm not scared of it. I've been talking to strangers every day for almost a year now. Something else though makes it hard for me. I don't know. Anyway, last night I felt an urge to talk to the man standing next me. Immediately I thought to myself that he wouldn't be interested in what I had to say, but the prompting just kept getting stronger. I pushed down the natural man and opened my mouth. What do you know... He wasn't interested at all. Bummer. I then said to myself that there still must have been some reason that I received the prompting. Immediately though, a man behind this other man leaned over and said to us "What does Mormon mean?" We were able to have a nice conversation and leave him with a pamphlet and a much better view of the Church. Always follow a prompting, even if it may yield no immediate fruits.

Second, the biggest thing I think I enjoy about the work in Bergamo is the willingness of the members to be involved. Last week we had a lesson at a member's home with an investigator. He is an older Italian man in his 60s who is very intellectual. He loves to analyze little details and he LOVES to talk. He comes to church every week on his own. He doesn't wait for us to invite him---he invites himself! This last lesson we had at a members home was very spiritual and uplifting for all of us. Usually he loves to talk, but there in the member's home we were able to invite the Spirit in such a way that when we were testifying, he was silently listening to the Spirit. I think the things that invited the Spirit the most were the members' testimonies. They were able to connect with him in a way that we never would've been able to do, but they were also very careful of the balance between them bearing testimony and us teaching. They love our investigator and are fellowshipping him wonderfully.

I hope all is well. I appreciate as always your letters, emails, and prayers. Every week I love opening my inbox and seeing your names and knowing that you've "got my back" so to say.

Love, Anziano Simcox

Bergamo - 1/15/14

Buon giorno tutti!

Hello! Here I am in Bergamo. What a beautiful city! I wish I had a picture to give you. I'll make sure to have one next week. This is a huge change compared to Milano. I liked Milano, but it definitely wasn't very high on the natural beauty scale. This city is awesome though. It's built at the base of a mountain range. Part of the city is built literally on the mountain. They call it "Città Alta" (High City). Most of the inner part of the city and all of Città Alta has still maintained the old architecture and street layouts that you imagine when you think of Italy. E.g., cobblestone streets, mismatched houses, shuttered windows, colorful walls, man on the street playing the accordion, etc. The people of the city have their own dialect called Bergamasco. It's completely different than Italian and I don't understand a word of it. Luckily, most people speak Italian too. Although my accent must be just right because someone on the bus a few days ago mistook me for a Bergamasco and started speaking to me in dialect. I just smiled and nodded.

Anyway, this is a great city and I'm grateful to be serving here. There are two wards (congregations) and one branch (little congregation). Anz. Hansen and I, along with two sisters, are assigned to the branch. There's about 40 members, so it's actually a decent sized branch. There's a large majority of Italians too, which is more uncommon than you would think. Italy is very demographically diverse, especially in the Church. There are so many South Americans in the Church that I can actually understand Spanish now too just from being exposed to it so much. Some people hope to serve in South America, or Africa, or Asia, or Europe, but I get to serve in all four places at the same time!

There are so many wonderful people that I've met here already. We are teaching a decent amount of people now, which was a pleasant surprise for me when I arrived. Yesterday we had dinner with an Italian family that let us in while we were ringing doorbells. That's a rare occurence, let alone to be let in by a family! They were so awesome and such a beautiful family. They were a true example of what Christians should be. Plenty can have faith, but in the end only those who act on what they believe are those who are profitted by their faith. Another neat investigator is an older Italian man who stopped the missionaries in the street. Usually we're the ones who do the stopping! He came to church on his own three weeks in a row and has already started to make friends with the members. He sure likes to talk (typical Italian), but he loves the church and the ideals that we practice. Another great family we are teaching is from Bolivia. A few weeks ago as they were teaching the family about the Word of Wisdom (Mormon health code, e.g. no coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, or drugs) the wife listened very intently. After they were done teaching, she said "If it's a commandment from God, we should follow it!" In that moment she vowed to give up her tea and coffee. That takes a lot of faith to make a life change at the drop of a hat.

That's the work for now. There's A LOT to be done in Bergamo. I've been busier than ever this past week, but I love it. I wouldn't rather be doing anything else.

Recently, someone referred to us missionaries as "angels." Now I'm nowhere near even kind of on that level, but I was touched by the compliment. While I definitely don't measure up, the comment did get me thinking. Who are the angels in our lives? "And it came to pass that the angel spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the heavens open again, and I saw angels descending upon the children of men; and they did minister unto them" (1 Nephi 11:30). God loves us. He won't leave us alone and so often, he sends down his angels. An angel may be a friend, a missionary, a teacher, a parent, a sibling, or any other number of people in our lives. God sends all sorts of help and guidance especially for YOU because YOU are his child! The other part of this though is just as humbling. God sends angels to you, and He also sends you to be an angel for someone else. Look out for those opportunities. Often you might not even notice them, but if you are keeping your life in line with the will of God, you will be that angel for someone around you.

I love you! Love, Anziano Simcox

Hello everyone! Happy New Year! It's been quite a while since my last legitimate weekly update. Sorry about that. Here I am though!

Christmas was fantastic. We visited a friend of ours who bought us lunch-- Turkish Kebab. It was the only shop that was open. Plus, I like kebab anyway. Then we went over to a member's house. She fed us LOTS of filipino food. Oh mamma mia it was soooo good. The night before we went to the Duomo and saw all the lights and music and what not. It was raining a bit, but it actually added a bit of fun to the night. I made so many memories this Christmas that I'll keep forever: caroling with our district almost every night, eating roasted chestnuts (which are actually pretty good), visiting the members of our ward, eating SO MUCH FOOD, our little tiny Christmas tree and the one strand of tinsel over our door, watching the Emperor's New Groove on Christmas morning after opening our little stack of badly wrapped presents to each other, going to give service, the mountain of panettone (Italian fruitcake) in our kitchen, and so many more great times. I am so blessed that I was able to serve in Milano at Christmas-time.

With that being said, the holidays have finished and so has my time in Milano. I spent the morning packing, because tomorrow I'll be moving to Bergamo. Bergamo (Bear-gum-oh) is a city in the mountains about 30 or so miles away from Milano. I'll be living in the mountains! I'm so excited. I've heard it's a great city. Also, I've been called to serve there as a zone leader. I feel really inadequate and a bit nervous. Luckily, my new companion, Anz. Hansen, has been a zone leader there for three transfers already. I look at it really as he'll be re-training me in a sense. I'm really excited for the new opportunities and challenges that lay ahead of me.

Before I get into the spiritual stuff, I figured y'all would appreciate a little language humor. Each foreign-speaking missionary has those moments where they make a blunder in the language and get laughed at for the rest of their life. I was pretty proud of myself because I've been going almost a year now without a super memorable one. No more. Hehe. I laugh at myself in retrospect. Here's some quick Italian grammar so that this will make sense. To intensify a word, you can add suffixes. The letter -one make the word bigger. Example: "porta" means door, so "portone" means big door. You get the picture. Since the word "capo" means boss, I assumed that adding a suffix would make it mean the big boss. I found out that it doesn't work in this case... I used that in a conversation with an investigator and was puzzled by the look of confusion on his face. Later while looking through the dictionary I found that instead of calling his wife the boss as I intended, I referred to her as a castrated chicken. Why those words are so similar, I'd like to know.

Anyway, aside from that, life is going great. I love my mission and will be forever grateful for the lessons that I'm learning and the experiences that I'm having. In leaving Milano, I will be leaving a part of myself behind. There are so many people that have influenced my life for good here, and I hope I've been able to do the same to them. Serving a mission is definitely the best choice I've ever made, despite the difficulties and challenges it contains. I am so excited for this new year ahead of me and this new opportunity to serve God's children in Bergamo. Wherever I am called, I know that it's where God needs me. I know the work that I am doing is from God and I feel his guidance in everything I do. It is an experience like nothing else to put myself completely in God's hands and let Him direct all of my actions. This is His work, not mine, and I am humbled that He has chosen someone as imperfect as I am to do His work.

I love all of you. As always, I thank you for all of the love and support you send me from afar. Without you, this would be near impossible.

Happy 2014. Until next time, Anziano Simcox.

Buon (quasi) Natale!

Who's excited? I am! Although you all know that by now. This past week just flew. Il tempo è volato, as the Italians say. Really though, I feel like I was just writing emails an hour ago. I can't even think of what to say right now. Ok... Update of the week: Caroling, no snow, long bus rides, getting lost, teaching Seminary, really cold, lots of service, Grandma's cookies, piano playing, preparations for Ward Christmas Party, speaking Italian, and occasionly sleeping. 

Service. It turns out that Christmas time is a great time to do service! Whooda thunk? We spent Saturday painting, dusting, and deep-cleaning a house. One of our members knew a family who needed some help; an elderly woman that lives with her two children who have some medical problems. We were able to bring the Christmas spirit to them and give them a big hand with stuff that really needed done. I found a new proficiency in toilet-scrubbing that I didn't know I had. The job still isn't finished. We'd like to go back and finish before Christmas. The second big service we did was yesterday. It was definitely a memorable experience, that's for sure. We were helping one of our new converts move. He was baptized the week after I got to Cimiano. Anyway, he is moving to a different apartment in the city so we came over to help him and another member came with a big moving truck. He told originally that he just had some books and a few shelves. "Some" books was a bit of an understatement. We moved the contents of an entire library and we haven't even finished yet. We walked into his house and I was shocked. Every space of wall, quite litereally, is covered by books. The hallway, the living room, and the bedroom were full of books. There were even some in the bathroom. It was hard to walk down the hall because of all the books. We spent several hours moving stuff out of that apartment. We went up and down that elevator with so much stuff. The other tenants were getting mad at us... I wasn't about to carry a library down five flights of stairs though! Anyway, we're going back tomorrow to finish up the job. I respect him. Books are great, just not when the missionaries are moving you out of your apartment! Hah! That definitely made for some fun memories.

Tonight our new convert is taking us to a Nepali buffet. That should be exciting. Seeing his conversion in the past few months has been awesome. I'm sorry I talk about him so much, but he's just such a miracle. We were out caroling with him and we started talking with one man in the piazza. He bore his testimony to him in perfectly understandable Italian and then said "Lei è sempre benvenuto nella nostra chiesa (You are always welcome in our church)!" SO COOL! We were smiling the rest of the night.

"And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things. And he spake unto me, saying: Yea, and the most joyous to the soul" (1 Nephi 11:22-23). I love being a missionary. I love teaching people about the love of God. So many people don't feel the love of God in their lives, including those who profess belief in Him. He is literally our Father and He literally loves us. I'm so glad that everyday I have the opportunity to share this love with all of my brothers and sisters. Remember, especially this Christmas season, that you are loved. That's why God sent His Son Jesus Christ especially for you.

I love you! Merry Christmas. Love, Anziano Simcox.

Buon Natale a tutti!

It's almost Christmas time!! Who's excited? I LOVE Christmas. The Christmas Spirit has started to shine a little bit around here. The gatekeeper of our apartment put out a tree in front. It made us really happy this morning. Our little tree is still thriving. Anz. Sexton has been writing the 25 poems of Christmas, so every night we hear a reading. Sometimes they're inspiring, sometimes they're a bit cynical, but overall they make for a good laugh.

We had our Christmas zone conference on Monday. President and Sister Dibb made Christmas dinner for all of the missionaries. There was ham, potatoes, marshmallow salad, vegetables, and apple bread! Yummm. It was a great meal and a great conference. Afterward we all sang some Christmas carols. One of the sisters in my district did a musical number, so I played for her. I didn't do all that fantastic, but I enjoyed playing something outside of the hymnbook. I usually get recruited to play the piano at missionary meetings. I thought everyone was joking when they said I'd be using my music skills on my mission.

Speaking of Christmas (I'm in the Christmas Spirit lately as you can tell) the missionaries in my district along with some of the Young Adults in our ward have been going caroling. It turns out that's SO much more effective than just stopping people on the street. Now, they stop for us and all we have to do is smile and sing. I feel like that can define my life since freshman year of high school. Smile and sing. We've been able to spread a lot of  Christmas cheer and even find some people to teach!

We've been having several experiences lately where we've been able to water a few seeds planted by others. It seems like many of the people we've been contacting lately have had contact with the church in the past. One man we talked to in the park knows a member of our ward and he has taking lessons from missionaries in the past. Two Sundays ago, someone walked in off the street and stayed for all three hours of church. He knew a member family in Bergamo and they always invited him, but he never went. When he moved here a few weeks ago, he saw the church and felt guilty for never going, so he came Sunday morning! The most fruitful experience was a man we talked to on the Metro. I had been talking with someone else, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye listening in. After that man got off, I sat down next to this second man. Before I even tried to say anything, he said to me "My father is a Mormon." His parents, siblings, and relatives are all members, and his father was a branch president in Peru. He said that he just never got baptized, but he told us "maybe one day I'll get baptized..." We of course were glad to help him with that goal and we took his number. Tomorrow we have an appointment at his house with him and his wife!

And to wrap it all up, how about a Christmas scripture today? "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people" (Luke 2:10). I'll assume that most of us have heard this. Christmas is a time of rejoicing! Why are you sad?? Christ was born, lived, died, was resurrected, and lives now all to grant you eternal life! It's yours for the taking if you come unto Him! Rejoice and be glad for Jesus Christ lives and loves you.

Love, Anziano Simcox.

Buon Dicembre!

Happy December everyone! We (finally) got our first snow last Saturday. It was great. Anz. Parker was not as thrilled as I was. Winter is my season! We decorated the apartment! Anz. Parker's family sent him some tinsel and we found a little Christmas tree in the cellar. We put all our presents around the table, plugged in the tree, and it actually turned out to be a nice little reminder of the holidays! I love Christmas!! It's a little different here in Italy. It's definitely not as commercial as it is in the States. Not as many people put up lights. I guess it's a little harder when everyone lives in apartments, but we've seen a few strands hanging from balconies. I miss a lot of the things I'm used to around this time of year, but I'm trying to experience Italian Christmas as much as I can and see what I can add to my own traditions.

It's been a cold week mostly. It finally went below 0°... Celsius that is. Don't worry. Still, that's decently cold I think. I'm tired... like... all the time. I'm finally not sick though. I had a cold the whole last transfer I think. I'm glad that's finally gone. Our district went caroling at the Duomo (big white cathedral) this week! It was actually really effective. It's much easier to start conversations with people when you're singing as opposed to asking "Have you ever seen this book??" People need some Christmas cheer. Anz. Sexton asked one man "What do you like about Christmas?" to which he responded, "Nothing." Ouch...

The challenge lately has been finding people to teach. The cold is scaring people off I think. Nevertheless, a couple new people have surfaced. We had an appointment yesterday with someone we met on the Metro. We went to his house and taught him a bit about the Book of Mormon. He was pretty quiet most of the time. We were asking questions, trying to get him to open up. We could tell there was something, but we couldn't quite get it. At the end we asked if he would pray with us. After a few awkward sentences and some silence, he looked up and told us his problem: "I don't know how to pray." It made me realize the importance of the simple things. Here we were focusing on bigger things, without even checking up on the simple things first. It was a good lesson to me to always pay attention to the little things and not take for granted the knowledge that is available to me.

Prayer is a conversation with God. It's something I've definitely learned how to do here on my mission more than any other time in my life. That's not to say that I didn't pray before my mission, but I definitely do it better as a missionary. Missionaries pray all the time, together and privately. One week, I should count how many times we pray. That'd be an interesting statistic. The beautiful thing about prayer is that it works both ways. We talk to God and He talks to us. We don't need a single thing except for our hearts. We talk to God exactly as we talk to any other person, for He is literally our Father.

In the end, remember that there is always someone praying for YOU. He is Jesus Christ. He is your Savior.  "And it came to pass that Jesus departed out of the midst of them, and went a little way off from them and bowed himself to the earth, and he said:... Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me" (3 Nephi 19:19, 23). 

Con amore, Anziano Simcox

The pictures are our Christmas tree and our Thanksgiving dinner.