April
17, 2017
It was a good week! We started out doing a
scambio with the Sassari, I was with Anziano Velardi. He has a huge desire to
learn and become a better missionary and it's just awesome! Whenever you do a
scambio there are always Scambio miracles, that's just known. So when you do a
scambio you just expect miracles and go into it knowing something cool is going
to happen. But it's really faith that brings the miracles. So that's one thing
that I'm now making a goal to do; go into my missionary work knowing and having
faith that I will have success and see good!
So with almost every miracle it started out
with something going unplanned. When Anziano Velardi and I got to Olbia our
neighbors had a problem with their house so we went to help them and it took a
good while. After that we could have just stayed home and had lunch but we
decided to go back out and do some finding with the little time we had. So we
went out and just let the spirit guide and we ended up at this apartment complex.
We didn't want to disturb people because it was pronzo time; but we saw an open
window with someone right there and decided to with them a good pronzo. Next
thing you know we're teaching the restoration and having an awesome gospel
conversation. After the closing prayer he said we could come back, so 3
days later we did. We taught him the restoration in better detail and he
understood everything and accepted baptism! His name is Giuseppe and he's about
60. Giuseppe has a broken leg right now so he couldn't come to church; but we
were able to give him a priesthood blessing and exercise the restored
priesthood power which was really cool. I'm happy to be a part of helping
Gueseppe finding the truth.
Easter Sunday was good! I gave a
talk on the atonement of Jesus Christ and I think it went well! We usually go
and have pronzo with the branch but since it was Easter everyone was with
family so we were actually alone haha. But today we did Pday all together.
Today is Pasquetta Lunedì del Angelo, basically just another holiday after
Easter, they do the same thing for Christmas. Anyway, back to yesterday that
night we were out finding and just No one wanted to talk at all, it was pretty
upsetting. We didn't know what to do so we just hopped on a bus and hoped to
talk to people there but no one was on the bus either. So we talked to the bus
driver and had an awesome conversation hitting a lot of points of the gospel.
He was happy to take a pamphlet. There's a scripture in Alma chapter 26 that I
really like "27. Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to
turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren,
the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto
you success." I like to take out where it says "the
Lamanites" and insert "the Italians". Sometimes being in the
mission there's a hard day full of rejection. But I know that through the
comfort of the Lord and power of Christ
we can bare our afflictions and find success. The power I have seen come from
Jesus Christ is a testimony of his existence. I couldn't do this myself; I'm so
great full for a loving God who provided this plan for me, that through my
imperfections I can be successful in sharing the light of Christ!
Visit voglio bene!
Buona settimana!
Anziano Ruiz
