It's really faith that brings the miracles

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