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| Anziano Youngblood & Anziano Ridd with their good friend, "Fb." |
Hey family!
This was an okay week.
Today we got the opportunity to go to the Navy base here in Napoli and buy some
American food, and it made us all really happy. We even got some American food
for lunch. I got a Philly cheesesteak. So good. Anyways....
This was the first week of
the transfer. Anziano Youngblood and I get along really well. He is a great
missionary and always has great things to offer. He’s improved his Italian so
much in 1 week!!! The secret about training is that the trainer always learns
just as much - or more - than the trainee! I know he is learning SO much, but I
have learned so much from him, and the Lord keeps blessing me so that I can
improve as well. There is definitely an interesting thing that happens when we
serve the Lord with all our mind, might and strength. I'll promise that my 100%
of mind, might and strength has changed since the beginning from the mission
till now. We get blessed with a bigger capacity to serve. I finally have a
flipped perspective to see, that as a greenie, I may have truly given it all I
could, even without speaking the language. Then the Lord blessed me with
ability to speak, and I had a bigger capacity to serve.
I hope something in that
made sense...I don't have enough time to fix it :)
Anyways, I love being a DL
and a trainer. It's so much fun being with so many friends, and being able to
serve all of them. It's funny, now I get to be a servant of the Lord, serving
servants of the Lord. 👍
Awesome, on to some of the
work this week. P and F are awesome, keeping active in church. P was a bit sick
so she couldn't make it church, but still awesome. Then our investigators. This
week we taught C the Plan of Salvation. We taught it pretty well, because every
time we taught a principle, he would just throw out a scripture from the Bible
to support the plan of happiness. It was super cool. We taught the lesson along with
the Hydes, and it went pretty well. The big thing that happened is that not only
did he say that he believed in the Book of Mormon - he said he knows it is
true. So we were like,"Great, what do you think about baptism?"...and he was not
too fond of the idea yet. So this week we have been planning out our next
lesson super hard. He is so ready! We are
super excited for him. We taught a couple of other people this week, but I'll
talk about them a bit later as progression occurs.
Ok, so I didn't mention
this, but President Russell M. Nelson comes to the mission this week for a mission
conference. On Thursday, we all go up to Rome to see that. I am super pumped
for that this week. Not only that, but 4 days after this we have zone conference. So
this week will a lot of fun and excitement.
Well, this week I have been
studying about what it means to have faith. Faith is simply a belief that is
acted upon. When we do this, we have faith. In science, we call it a hypothesis
and testing. This shows our faith in the hypothesis. If we just have the
hypothesis, or belief, and don't do the testing, this is not faith. We might
now trust that the hypothesis could be right, or in other words, we doubt it.
To learn anything in life, spiritual or physical, we use faith. It is an
eternal concept. So to learn about spiritual matter, we do the same. We have a
belief. We trust that it is true, and put it to the test. This is made easier
through prophetic promises that we can trust. One example is in the Book of
Mormon. If we read and ask the Lord with a sincere heart and real intent to
know if it is true, we will receive an answer. But we have to believe, and
trust our belief (Moroni 10:3-5). Through this faith, we can learn for
ourselves. We can the act on the thing we have learned. This will lead to
further knowledge.
If we think about it, it's
simple. Believe, act, and receive knowledge. This is the process of faith.
I use this pattern every day
to continue to learn of the gospel. Every day, I challenge others to learn and
grow for themselves spiritually. Ask and act. I do this because I know we have
a Father in Heaven who loves us. Because of this He will help us learn and
answer our prayers. I bear my testimony that revelation did not stop with the
Bible. There is no way a Father who loves his children would stop giving
direction to His children. He speaks today and is always there for us. I
challenge all to search for Him. Act in faith. And learn the truth that He has
revealed today. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
I love all of you!
Anziano Ridd
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