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5/29/2017
Ciao Tutti,
I remember reading Sorella Holiday's emails when she was serving in Rome and I was always confused when she said "Scambio!" So paying homage to her emails that gave me a first taste of the "Great Italy Rome Mission" I've named this week's letter Scambi Magic. A scambio is an exchange between companionships, where we trade companions for a full 24 hour period and do a full day of normal missionary work with them. This week I was able to do my first scambio! I swapped Anziano Ruiz for Anziano Sellers of Sassari, and we had an awesome time!
We started of the week with a trip to Alghero for P-day, a super beautiful city on the northwestern coast that was founded by the Spanish. Cool little blessing that happened when we stopped by the church was that the Sassari Branch president ended up giving us a ride all the way to the train station and also hooked us up with a ride straight from the train station in Alghero to a place where we could rent bikes for the day! We were able to ride all over the historic centro [center] area and see some pretty ancient buildings/streets. It's right along the coast, and has a beautiful view looking off to some Islands in the distance. For the evening we started the scambio and did a gesso with the sister missionaries. It was my first time doing one, but it was cool to see how it works. (Put a sheet on the ground and have people write with chalk on it about a certain question or topic, then us missionaries walk up to people along the street or in the piazza and start talking about the chosen topic) We got home a tad late since we got lost as we left the main square....oops.
Tuesday we had district meeting in the morning and then were going to catch a train out of Sassari, but we forgot some stuff so we ended up having lunch and doing studies before heading back to Olbia. I got to make homemade pizza with Anziano Cutler, who is a self-proclaimed pizza critic. We had a pretty good time putting everything together and the toppings were all amazing! We tried to catch the train, but we were off on the time by 15 minutes so as we walked into the station and it was already pulling out :( We ended up taking the next one which meant we had to cancel our Tuesday night English class.
Wednesday we made some really good German pancakes for breakfast! Wish I had taken a picture because they bloomed up perfectly. We did studies and then I had to get my Permesso paperwork done at the questura (basically my residence permit for while I live in Italy). Anziano Cutler and Ruiz were supposed to meet us in the morning to help me figure it out, but they got on the wrong train (lots of train troubles this week, haha) so we had to go on our own. Luckily my Italian is good enough I was able to communicate/understand everything I needed! Afterwards we went home to make pesto for a group lunch and studied together before going out finding for the evening. We had an awesome time going door to door in a neighborhood we picked out, not too many people opened up their doors to us, but Anziano Sellers is just a super positive guy! We ended up meeting Gino, a former investigator who is about 70ish. He showed us around his house - which is under construction right now - and then we exchanged phone numbers so we can come back again, once his house is all finished. We also met a lady named Luccia who was super nice and gave us the sea shells she has collected! She said we can swing by this next week and teach her a lesson! We ended the night by grabbing some Gelato [ice cream] for our success.
The end of this week we spent tracting in various neighborhoods around Olbia and going to the park or centro [center] to pass out English bigliettini [notes]. We did meet a Romanian family while going through the park on Friday. They are in a rough spot right now and we had a really good conversation about the blessings that the gospel has had on our lives and how we know it will help them! The dad is planning on coming to our English course and said they'll be able to come to church this next Sunday. We're looking forward to teaching them. We also ran into a ragazzo [boy] a couple times and ended up spending Saturday evening in the park talking about the questions/doubts he has about the gospel and how he can find answers to them in the Book of Mormon. I'm always really impressed by how mature he is compared to the other ragazzi [boys] we see.
This week I really was able to see that I can have a real impact if I open my mouth, so I'm excited to try and talk nonstop this next one! We've had several good discussions with people where I've had the opportunity to lead/start the conversation and they've gone great. I just need to remember the prophets in the Bible and Book of Mormon who spoke with power and authority, because the were called of God! I have a similar calling to preach the gospel, and share the message of Jesus Christ with all those who want to receive it. Just like it says in the scripture below, he's the only way!
For our scripture this week we memorized Mosiah 3:17:
17 And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.
Ed oltre a ciò io vi dico che non sarà dato alcun altro nome, né alcun altro modo né mezzo per cui la salvezza possa giungere ai figlioli degli uomini, se non nel nome e tramite il nome di Cristo, il Signore Onnipotente.
Vi voglio bene, [I love you]
Anziano Parker
5/22/2017
Ajò! - Let's go!
Looking back, we spoke to a ton of people that speak English really well! This week has been the most normal so far, but it's hard to believe we're already into the 3rd week of the transfer. We had a pretty slow p-day [preparation day] last Monday, just shopping and doing stuff around the house. Later, we got to do a "Missionary FHE" with the members of the branch, focused on how members can reach out and do missionary work among their friends. It was pretty cool to go over the lesson on the Restoration and ask them to share their testimonies about specific topics from it - albeit we still had some good old Italian arguing over doctrinal topics every once in a while :0
We had our weekly district meeting on Wednesday, where we get to meet together with the other missionaries in our area (6 total) and get pumped up to do missionary work! Afterwards for lunch, we went to a pizzeria recommended by the Sassari Elders' friend. By far the best pizza I have had in Italy so far!
Thursday we started the day off with a run to one of the bakeries we always pass. We got these super cool donuts filled with Nutella called Bombalini and then ran back home to eat them. To fill our morning hours before pranzo we made a trip to the park. On the bus there, we met two girls from England, and got to talk about our church and America with them. They were pretty excited to meet some people who speak English, as were we! In the park we met a religion teacher who works at one of the local schools and talked to him about the differences between Mormons and the Catholic church. It was an interesting conversation and it made me grateful that everywhere you go, the church is the same. I got to end the day teaching English to a really good class, and I had a lot of fun talking about the languages with them.
I finally made German pancakes! (One of my favorites dishes to make) After we at that awesome breakfast, we did another trip to the park and met a young man named Ricardo, who is actually just visiting Italy on vacation right now. He works as a nurse in Africa so his English is really good and we got to talk to him about the Restoration of the church, differences between Catholicism, and also the churches stand on some political issues. I'm really glad I was able to speak in English because I don't think we would have been able to answer in Italian!
Saturday night we had an awesome time with this guy named Max who just waved us down as he drove down the street! We thought he was a random tourist who happened to be LDS, but he's a native Sardegnan who knows a ton about our church and also speaks amazing English! We walked down the street with him and stopped at a bar (Italian cafe) to have some drinks and talked for a while about his beliefs and a bit about how he is so good at English. Turns out a really good friend of his was LDS and taught him a lot about the church. He has even read the entire Book of Mormon! He's also read the Karan and the Bible multiple times. He just loves learning and even though he's agnostic he still studies the beliefs of other religions. He also happens to know 8 LANGUAGES! Italian, Sardegnan (way different than Italian), English, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese.....not sure if that's all of them. A man walked by while we were sitting outside the cafe and stopped to listen to us speaking in English, and then we got to hear him and Max speak in Arabic together! It was pretty cool, and the street vendor was pretty impressed. We spoke with Max a little more about the plan of Salvation and then exchanged info so we could meet with him again sometime!
This past week I got a lot more time to think about Jesus Christ and the reason why I'm out here, serving a mission. On Sunday I started reading the book "Jesus the Christ " by James E Talmage and I'm looking forward to learning more about his earthly ministry in detail. It actually goes really well with the scripture we memorized this past week, 2 Nephi 25:26.
26 And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.
E noi parliamo di Cristo, gioiamo in Cristo, predichiamo il Cristo, profetizziamo di Cristo e scriviamo secondo le nostre profezie affinché i nostri figlioli possano sapere a quale fonte possono rivolgersi per la remissione dei loro peccati.
This next week I want to focus more on helping people see how church and Jesus Christ can have a real impact on their lives. Many people over here have grown up in the Catholic Church, but don't actually see how Christ's gospel can have a personal and lasting effect on them. My goal is to help then understand the ways they can bring themselves closer to the Savior of the world, and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
Con Amore e Pace,
Anziano Parker
Pictures:
1 Just a peek at what we did for Pday this week! Super amazing town.
2 Bombalino
3 & 4 Best pizza ever! (Napoli style made by a guy who grew up in Napoli)
5 Amazing church with a really cool dome and spire here in Olbia
6 View of the bay of Olbia from tracking on Tuesday
5/15/2017
Questa settimana, abbiamo avuto la conferenza della zona!
Super fun week that absolutely flew by, when you're traveling time just zips past. We got to do a decent bit of train riding, and when we take the bus for city transit I'm starting to not fall over when I'm standing up!
Last P-day we took a trip to Sassari early in the morning (2 hour train ride there) and then once we met the rest of the group we had a 1 hour bus ride to Castel Sardo, which is a town on the northern coast of Sardegna that has a hill with a castle on the top. We got some amazing photos on the walk up towards the main castle with views of the city and the coast. We almost missed the bus going home, and Anziano Cutler ended up chasing one bus leaving the city down the street - thinking it was our last way back to Sassari for a couple hours - but we were able catch one that pulled up to the curb just a couple minutes later! Then another 3 hours of wonderful travel to get back to Olbia by 6pm for contacting in centro until 9pm. Anziano Ruiz also made an amazing white sauce pasta for dinner (I'm spoiled having a cook as a companion)
On Tuesday we spent the morning doing my Permesso paperwork, so I can stay in Italy longer than the 8 days that my visa provides me, so that was exciting signing papers and mailing stuff off. After we wrapped up we were walking by the Mazzone apartment (branch President's family) and his wife invited us in to see what she was cooking. She gave us the the recipes and ingredients so we could cook some red sauce for pranzo and then we went home to put it into practice! (Turned out pretty good, except for using too much carrot) Afterwards we did some studying where we tried not to fall asleep. We then went to do a lesson with Dino, the man we made an appointment with us the previous Saturday. I could barely understand him at the beginning of the lesson because he speaks really fast, but after saying a little silent prayer, a couple of minutes later, I could understand almost everything! We didn't really get to teach him a lesson because he kept on telling us what he believed for about an hour. Then we had to get going to do some finding before doing the free English group we offer every Tuesday and Thursday. I taught the basic course, which is going over basic verbs and all the different tenses for them. Teaching is just so fun! It was a fun end to the night. Anziano Ruiz broke the bidet handle while washing his feet so it never turned so off unless we turn off the main valve in the house.
Wednesday morning we spent some time figuring out whether we could fix the bidet issue and ended up deciding just to turn the water off for the house whenever we aren't showering, using the kitchen or using the commode. We spent the morning looking through the area book, a list of all the people missionaries have contacted in the past, to see if there were any people we should contact. We started making a list so we can have a good idea of where to start when deciding where to do house to house finding or calling people. We spent the evening contacting Casa a casa in a neighborhood and then stopped for dinner at a really good pizza place! The owners were super nice, and we had a short discussion with them about why we were here in Italy.
Thursday we headed off to zone conference on a 3 hour train ride to Cagliari in southern Sardegna. We spent the afternoon doing some studying while waiting to have interviews with President Pickerd and then Anziano Ruiz and I decided to go on a quick shopping trick for some snacks. At the checkout I accidentally bought a bag for our 3 items, so Anz. Ruiz made a big deal out of wasting 10 centisssimi (cents). We ate in a little park outside the store and then since he didn't like seeing 10 cents being wasted we started picking up trash around the park. As we went around I found two 20 euro bills just sitting by a park bench, so we went and ask the man on the swings if it was his but he said no. We had no idea what to with it, but we ended up deciding to use €20 each to buy Mother's day gifts. To end the night we did some contacting in centro and then had pizza from a pizzeria from one of the Cagliari missionaries' investigators. It was pretty amazing for just a cheese pizza! (We also had an amazing conversation on the train with two guys that surf and snowboard for a living, one of them actually has really similar beliefs to ours, but we didn't get to talk for very long.)
Friday was zone conference with all the missionaries serving on Sardegna. It was pretty much all day, but some of the highlights were singing a musical number "Teach Me to Walk in The Light," listening to all the amazing baptism stories from last transfer, and talking about the power of the Book of Mormon in conversion. We got on the train afterwards with the other missionaries headed north and it was absolutely packed! No empty seats anywhere, but I was able to have an awesome BoM study session for the ride home. We spent the evening talking to a young family and having a man yell "Rompere le scatole" at us for knocking on his door at 8:30pm! (It means he'll break our boxes, haha)
Saturday was full of weekly planning in the house most of the day. When we got on the bus we started to have an amazing conversation with a ragazzo named Filippo. It's a miracle he was on the bus for so long because we able to tell him the entire Restoration story and give him a copy of the Book of Mormon. Afterwards he actually texted us and said hi (we gave him our number but didn't have time to get his) so hopefully we meet him this week.
Sunday was exciting because the Simoncinis, an Italian senior missionary couple, visited the ward to inspect our apartment and to do a course on self reliance for the branch members. Church went well, and Dino -the man we taught Tuesday - actually showed up to sacrament meeting! We had pranzo together as a branch and then visited until I got to Skype with my family for Mother's Day! We had a really good visit, then I studied for a little while before going out to contact some more. We ended the day with a really good conversation about the gospel of Christ with a man named Johnny!
These emails are always so much longer than I want them to be, but it's so hard to fit everything in. To wrap up this week I just want to ask everyone what their favorite scripture is, whether it's from the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants or Pearl of Great Price. I'm memorizing one scripture a week in Italian so it would be great to have a list to pull from. Just shoot me an email with the scripture and a little explanation of why you like it! (Also, I'm taking homemade brownie/cookie recipes as well)
If you want to check out my companions mission blog search for Romanruizinrome on blogspot.com
Scripture of the Week: Helaman 5:12
And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.
Ed ora, figli miei, ricordate, ricordate che è sulla roccia del nostro Redentore, che è Cristo, il Figlio di Dio, che dovete costruire le vostre fondamenta; affinché, quando il diavolo manderà i suoi venti potenti, sì, e i suoi strali nel turbine, sì, quando tutta la sua grandine e la sua potente tempesta si abbatteranno su di voi, non abbia su di voi alcun potere di trascinarvi nell’abisso di infelicità e di guai senza fine, a motivo della roccia sulla quale siete edificati, che è un fondamento sicuro, un fondamento sul quale se gli uomini edificano, non possono cadere.
Vi vedrò prossima settimana, in bocca al lupo!
Anziano Parker
5/8/2017
Greetings from Italia!
It's hard to believe I've been here for almost a full week now. Sorry I didn't get an email off last week, I had it almost finished and then about halfway through p-day we all started freaking out about packing and getting the residences ready to head out. I'll just say that the last week flew by really fast, and it was pretty hard saying goodbye to everyone in our district going to Milan. It's been a ton of fun learning Italian and more about the gospel with them, and they all have amazing testimonies that I'm going to miss hearing. Highlights of it were getting to the temple one last time as a zone, seeing Character of Christ again, singing "Nearer My God to Thee" as a quartet at the new missionary devotional, and having some amazing final lessons with Sorella Grifffin and Fratello Sloan.
As for this week, it was jam-packed full of stuff. On Sunday night we said goodbye to everyone going to Milan and the Romanians, then we went to bed and tried to get some rest before our early morning travel. We woke up at 3:00am and checked out of the MTC at 4:20am before getting rides to the Frontrunner (Utah's train line) Station and getting on the 5:00am line to Salt Lake. Since we had about 18 people in our travel group (16 going to Rome, 2 to Barcelona) it was really fun guarding the luggage and transferring it from Frontrunner over to Trax to get to the airport. We got all checked in and some people made calls to family while waiting. Then we got on our flight to New York JFK from SLC. I got to sit next to Sorella Oveson for the flight and it was cool to visit with her since we hadn't been in the same district in the MTC. Our flight landed at JFK about 3:20pm and then we had a 2 hour layover until our flight for Rome left. JFK airport is the most crowded and crazy airport I have been to in my life! We had no idea where to go but eventually were guided to the international terminal, got our tickets for the Alitalia flight, and made it through TSA for the second time that day. We got about 30 minutes of chill time before our flight left so everyone had some time to buy overpriced airport food! Then we got on our flight to Fiumicino Rome.
It was an 8 hour flight total, from 6:00pm East Coast time to 8:40am European when we landed in Fiumicino Rome airport. Even with all the time in the air I was only able to sleep 2 hours because my legs were so tight. I did have an awesome conversation with the man sitting next to me though. When we had dinner I asked him a question in Italian and we ended up having a really good conversation in my very slow Italian for about an hour and a half! We talked a bit about the church and also about the differences between Italian and American food. At the airport we were greeted by President and Sister Pickerd, Anziano Spencer and Draghi (assistants to the President), and Anziano Guercio - one of the senior missionaries here in the Rome mission. Right off the bat we got to go see the temple and then headed to the mission villa to take some photos with the Mission President and finish some interviews before going to the center of Rome for some contacting and sightseeing. We got to go by the Coliseum as well as Basilica San Giovanni which were both amazing! Afterwards we had dinner, pizza, at the villa and ended the day at around 7:30pm because we had technically been up since 3:00am Mountain time without a break.
The next day we did a group training at the Rome 2 building, which was pretty cool since I'd seen pictures of Taylor Holiday (a sister from my ward who just got home from the same mission) at the same building! Then we walked to the mission office and got some training from several of the senior couples. We wrapped up the day with a nice Lasagna for dinner and opening our first area assignments. Everyone got to go up one by one, open their call, and then announce to the group their city and show everyone on the map where they were going. I got up for mine, opened it and found out I was going to Sardegna (Sardinia) in the city of Olbia on the northeastern side! I was pretty pumped since one Elder, Anziano Sellers, had already opened his and got called to Sassari (the northwestern side) so I didn't think anyone else would be able to go to Sardegna. We ended the night by singing the mission song and saying a prayer together.
We flew out to Alghero, Sardegna Thursday morning from Rome and then took a bus into Sassari with our new trainers. We had some really good pizza and gelato as a first meal and then went back to Anziano Cutler and Sellers' apartment to do language study. We did some contacting on the bus and then Anziano Ruiz, my new companion, and I took the evening train from Sassari to Olbia. We ended the day with a pretty good homemade red sauce by Anziano Ruiz!
Friday was full of weekly planning as well as getting ready for a baptism on Saturday. An investigator that Anziano Ruiz and his previous companion had taught called them one morning and said that after he had been reading the Book of Mormon and received a prompting that he should get baptized as soon as he could, there was no need to wait! It was pretty cool to learn about him and when we got to teach him a lesson Friday evening he actually told us he had just finished the Book of Mormon!
Saturday we got the font (a square pool) filled up with water, and while we waited went into centro (downtown) to see the Giro Italia (a massive bike race throughout Italy) while it came through. They rode into Olbia Friday evening and they rode out Saturday morning so we got to see them take off. It was pretty special, plus centro was packed with people to talk to because of the event! We then went back home and had pranzo (lunch) with the missionaries who had come in from Sassari for the Baptism. The Baptism was really good, and there were some great talks given by 2 of the members in the branch. I got to sing "Seguitemi" as a special musical number and then we had dessert and cleaned up the building with the branch president. While we were cleaning up a man ended up walking by and got into a conversation with one of the members about the church! Anziano Ruiz talked with him a little about the Book of Mormon and what we believe and then set an appointment for Tuesday of this week.
Sunday we started by having correlation meeting with the branch President and then having our normal Sunday meetings from 9am to 12pm. We actually had a couple visiting from Switzerland who have a vacation house here in Olbia! The members were pretty excited to have some new faces in church. To break our fast we had pranzo at President's house which was a huge 4 course Italian meal that stuffed me full! If I hadn't been fasting beforehand I don't think I would have been able to finish everything, haha. Afterwards we took a walk with everyone through centro and went to the Olbia Museum since it was a free day. Once we had finished looking at several cool display of ancient archaeology from Olbia's history Anziano Ruiz and I went home to do some studying before going out for the last couple hours and contacting people on the bus and throughout town. It was a very long day....
I'm so happy to be serving here in Italy, and even though I can't understand everything perfectly it's amazing to hear the testimonies of the members. I don't think I'll have as much time to write the next few weeks so I'll definitely try and condense my emails from now on. It should be easier since my days are consistent from here on out for the next 22 months!
Spero che tutto sia forte,
Anziano Parker
PS. The title is true, there's a pizzeria wherever you look.
5/2/2017
Samuel did not take time to update his blog last Friday. But, we did receive an email early this morning that he arrived in Italy.
Here are two photos:
Samuel at the construction site of the Rome temple
Samuel with Mission President and Sister Pickerd, at the mission offices
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