Battaglia, Campania, Italy

Rain, an American and the Fire Department.......


April 24th-

A rather cold week in Brindisi. It started with a  big rain storm on Monday, we continued to have colder weather. It may have been stormy outside, but there was sunshine in our soulls!! ;) And you wont believe who we came across today. Remember those kids we met last week?? Oh yea, and they even  did some missionary work with us again! This time we gave the kids a phamplet. Hopefully they will take the good missionary work they have been doing with us back home. They said they told their parents to call us, but we never heard anything. Hopefully we'll hear back from them this week!
Then Sunday night we were walking around doing some finding when all of a sudden we hear someone yell MISSIONARIES!!! We turn around and this man is walking towards us with a big smile. Turns out he is here from the United States working and says that he always says he sees missionaeries in Italy when he comes and loves talking to us. Turns out he is Catholic, and just thinks we are really nice. He even asked if he could watch us do some finding for a little bit! Haha, it was fun talking to someone from America. 



Then for P-day we went and played volleyball with the whole zone. It was a blast to see everyone again! I do need to work on my volleyball skills though haha.
The best place to go for advice is the scriptures! Especially the Book of Mormon. In 2 Nephi 32, Nephi says "feast upon the words of Christ".  This little scripture doesn't say "snack upon the words of Christ", NO it says to "feast"!! Through feasting on the words of Christ, really searching the scriptures, we not only strengthen or build our testimony, but we can find help in every aspect of life. In the scriptures we can find answers to difficulties, prayers, questions and many other things. I challenge everyone to not just read the scriptures, but feast on them! 

Anziano Andersen 🚀
Romans 1: 15&16    🌍

May 1st-



This week was an interesting one....P-day was nice and Tuesday started out pretty normal. Exercised, ate, did studies, all that good stuff. Then it came time to leave our apartment, but when we go to open the door and it doesn't open. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure how we were gonna get out. We even started  tying bed sheets together and to repel out the window, no lie! Well, unfortunately, we didn't have enough sheets to repel out of our 6 story apartment, so we called fire department to come and rescue us. I guess Satan must have not wanted us to go out that day.  We hit the usual finding grind for the rest of the week. It's been a little slow here, but hopefully we can change that real quick! For P-day we went to that festival we were supposed to go to a couple weeks ago. It was pretty fun, it really brought a lot of people from Brindisi together and that was way cool to see.



One of my favorite scriptures is a scripture in Matthew, and it says "He that findeth his life shall loose it: and he that looseth his life for my sake shall find it." (Matthew 10:39) It's when we forget ourselves and go to the service of others that we can find ourselves. Pretty cool the joy we can get from serving our friends, neighbors and family. Thanks for all the love and support you show me, couldn't thank you guys enough. Have a good week!

May 8th-

 

It was an eventful week to say the least! We had Anziano Jensen join us in Brindisi for a couple of days because his comp finished his mission so he headed up to Rome a little earlier. It was fun being in a trio again. I even got to give him a haircut!! I think I did a pretty good job ;) Then last Monday we had transfer calls. This is where it gets fun! So we all thought that I was going to be transferred out of Brindisi and Anziano Bellini was going to stay because he just got here, but it ended being the exact opposite!! He ended up getting transferred and I am staying. I am pretty excited to be staying. There is alot to do here, and the work is starting to pick up again. 

My new companion is Anziano Jackson. He is an absolute stud. Working with him is going to be a blast! It will be cool to see what unfolds this transfer. Then for  P-day we headed to Monopoli and Polignano a Mare again. Even though I have been to Polignano before, it is still just as breath taking as it was the first time. 

I was reading in Mosiah this week when King Benjamin was addressing his people. And he said something that was really cool, talking about our Heavenly Father he said   (He)"is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another" (Mosiah 2:21). It's easy to take a lot of things for granite, but when you look around you and see all the little things we have, how can you not just be grateful?! Thanks for all your love and support!! I hope you guys have a great week! 

May 15th-

What a week! I'd say this has been one of the coolest weeks I've had. The work has picked up so much. For one of our lessons we talked about how the Bible and the Book of Mormon testify of each other and how they go hand in hand, and it was so cool to see how it just kind of clicked in our investigators head. He even made it to church yesterday, and after he said that he thinks he is going to start coming to church with us! In our lesson with him on Sunday we had our recent convert talk about his baptism, and his experience he had. You could just tell that he brought the spirit with him when he was bearing his testimony. It was awesome. Then a couple days ago we were making some calls and we came across this one guy who sounded very excited to hear from us. Well we met with him Sunday night and he told us how he met the missionaries about a year ago and lost contact with them. But now we have a lesson set up this week and I'm excited to see where it goes. Then for P-day we went to this place called Ostuni! This is the place you think of when you think Italy! It was so cool!

 

David A Bednar once said "Ordinary people who consistently do small and simple things that are right before God will bring forth extraordinary results". Doing the little things like reading the scriptures and praying are some of the best things we could possibly do. It keeps us on the path that we need to be on to make it back and live with our Father in Heaven! Love you guys! Have a great week!!

May 22nd-

I love the Jasmine! It smells just like my grandparents in California.

The weather is starting to warm here in Italy. I'm not so used to this warmer, humid weather, but what can ya do. This week was quite a busy one, but good. So Tuesday night we headed to Bari to do our interviews with president, then have zone conference the next day. It's always fun to head down there and see everyone. On our way back we had quite an adventure. We rode back with the Anziani of Lecce as usual, but when we got off the train we realized we didn't have our phone. We had left it on the train. As soon as we realized we didn't have the phone the train started closing its doors, so I sprinted to where they were sitting, knocked on the window and pointed to our phone. Sadly we weren't able to get our phone in time. So that night we found a train to Lecce and stayed the night there. It ended up being alright because we made some banana pancakes that night.

Saturday morning we were able to head over and do some service for the sweetest lady in the world. They are moving back to Texas this following week and needed some help moving some larger furniture so we headed over and got to work. We had a lot of fun doing it. Then she fed us a delicious American meal, fried chicken, potato salad and beans! Haha it was good to have a little American food again. Then she generously gave us a ton of food they weren't going to bring with them to Texas. It was really nice of them. On Sunday we had something awesome happen. One of our investigators we have been working with for a while agreed to be baptized in a few weeks. I hope we can keep that date and keep progressing, he is such a great guy. It's been awesome watching him grow in the the gospel. He is the most sincere guy I have ever met. For P-day we were able to play the beautiful sport of soccer! I don't think you could ever get bored of playing. 

On Wednesday we got a good training from our mission president. He brought up a really cool point that I would like to share, he said "it is better to be all in, than just partially in". I think we cannot only just apply it to missionary work, but life as well. We cannot act one way through out the week and then a completely different person on Sundays, "No man can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24). There will come a point in our lives where we are going to have to decide if we are going to "be all in" or not in. And it will always be better to be on the Lords side, no matter what. I know its something I can definitely work on. Anyways love you guys! Thank you for all the love and support you show me, I definitely couldn't have done it with out you!

May 29th-

Brindisi just keeps getting better! We have been seeing tons of miracles here! Our investigator who is getting ready for baptism is doing great. We see him quite often, and he comes to church a half hour early every Sunday! Pretty cool to see. We were also able to finally visit this guy who we think is ready for the gospel. Unfortunately he works a ton, but the times we do meet with him it goes really good. This weekend they had the "festa della madonna". It's pretty much just another reason to have a party haha. They closed off the whole main street for this thing, Italians don't mess around with their festivals here! They are so fun!

The flies and the mosquitos have been coming out so we bought an electric fly swatter this week. We like to leave the patio door open because it gets pretty hot inside the apartment so in turn a bunch of flies and mosquitoes come in during the night. I think we have killed off at least half of the population of flies by now.  This P-day it was just a little more relaxed, we just headed to the mall, looked around, then came back and played some basketball. My comp likes basketball, so its well play it every once in a while. 

This week I came across a cool quote by Richard G. Scott, he said “Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more". Some times when challenges arrive its because the Lord knows that we can grow. They aren't always long lived, and it's from those challenges that we are able to grow and develop. Thanks for all your support!! Hope you have a good week!

Anziano Andersen 🚀

Romans 1: 15&16    🌍