Merry Christmas Round 2 - 12/25/17

Caroling in the centro

Some massive studs in my district

The nativity scene

Skyping with the family on Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! 

I hope you all had a great week. This week we were pretty busy.

Zone conference happened and I really loved the messages. They talked a lot about being consecrated missionaries and doing the simple everyday things that make us better. I really like those themes, as I have seen how the small things are what make us great, not any big massive act of charity.

During zone conference we did a nativity skit. Pictures will be attached. I was a wise man. 

Then we also gave a blessing to A, the youngest daughter of the P family. Sadly, she has been really sick recently! (Even on Christmas Eve). So we are hoping and praying she gets better soon!

Anyways, the best part about Christmas as a missionary is that you get to realize that for the whole year you have been 100% focused on Christ. You also get to be his hands in places around the world to help others know about Him, and his plan to help us return. I love it. I hope we all try and do some small things each day to bring us closer to him. I recommend sincere prayers. 

Love you all!

Anziano Ridd

Stromboli! 

Zone elders

Perugia art. Toucans? 

Another Week, Another Italian Church Opened - 12/18/17

Anziano Ridd (left) and Anziano Hughes (right), with friends C & G

Carissimi!

This week was super solid. It stated with the fact that we met with quite a few new investigators and less actives. 

We have a cool new investigator named WL. He is Peruvian and pretty excited to learn about the Book of Mormon. We will hopefully meet him again this week. 

Then we had some more fun and eventful parts, like on Saturday night. We finally got an appointment with an inactive member on Saturday. He invited us to go to a Christmas party that he was invited to. We said yes, and later that night an entourage of 5 cars came by our house. We were instructed to enter the Porsche Cayenne S in the front. We did gladly, and they proceeded to take us to one of the biggest Italian houses I have been to. It was filled with evangelical Christians and all together we sang songs about Christmas, made friends, and read scriptures. Anyways, it ended up being great, and we made a lot of cool contacts. Also, we met A (who is the less active member) and made an appointment to meet with him this week. 

On Sunday morning, we came to Terni and participated in the opening day of the Terni church building. It’s super nice and pretty much American. Anyways, it was wonderful to go and bring all the investigators to see where they will be baptized. We then had an open house at the end and it was a big success. We had nonmembers, less actives, and inactives come. I love these people.

Spiritual thought: The most happiness in our lives comes from our relationships with people. 

Love you all! 

Anziano Ridd

PS - Shout-out to Riley Dunkley who is awesome and just got called on a mission to Paris, France!

Perugia Gold - 12/11/17

Hey Guys!

This week was alright. Perugia is on fire and on the way to becoming a branch!!!

So I’ll hit the highlights. 

This week we have done great work here in Perugia keeping our great active members involved and making the inactive become more active. We had 2 priesthood holders in church that are now becoming active. 

As for that, we are doing very well. The members here are super awesome. Also our work has been okay. Despite difficulty of finding more investigators, we have nice investigators. They are mostly all progressing toward baptism and conversion. The big highlight for the week is that my good friends Anziani Osmond and Allred found gold. He is named SM. 

SM is like...18 years old and he is living on his own because he wants to be more independent as he grows up. He is super awesome and nice, and was interested when they invited him to come to English course. He speaks English perfectly and loves to learn. When he came, he soon learned about our church and was interested as he didn’t practice much of anything recently for religion. He looked up a ton of info on the church and studied it out himself. The last Sunday, he came to church on his own. Then during this week, the other Anziani met with him and he knew all of the lessons already. He totally understood everything, and was excited to accept a baptismal date in early January. He told us he always thought he was weird for having standards in high school, but now he knows that God guided him the whole time. He is so smart and fun. 

The Lord knows us perfectly. He also will guide us if we let him. He puts us in the lives of others to help them. Look around every once in awhile and try to figure out what God wants you to learn from or do to help those around you, and you will feel a higher purpose in life. I know it will also bring a lot more happiness as well. 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Anziano Ridd 

When We Accept That We Don’t Know, We Learn. If Not, We Never Progress - 12/4/17

Perugia, che bella sei tu!

Our Christmas tree

Hey Family,

So on Monday night we received our transfer calls. Not too much commotion here, all of us in Perugia are staying for another transfer. As for Terni, we still have the same sisters and Anziani Daniels and Huntsman, but we got Anziani Jensen and Becker. Pretty cool stuff, and I think we figured these changes would happen. 

With that out of the way, this week was interesting. I enjoyed a lot of it, but sadly many of our appointments fell through. That opened up our opportunity to start up our casa a casa (door to door) here. Hopefully this next week we will be able to meet with these people. 

We worked with Sorella P again this week. She is great, because she knows to ask us when she doesn’t know something. This week she told us, as we taught the Restoration, that she wants to understand scriptures more. So we taught her according to her needs. It was fun, and she is continuing to progress. 

Then on Sunday we had SN in church, along our new elder in the church. His name is BT, and he has been a member since 1999 in Nigeria. He is sweet. So that should help the church a ton. SN is on fire right now, and he is getting us new referrals and is doing all he can to serve others for the “Sii una Luce.” 

Anyways my small thought for the week is that we need to be humble. If we think we know something, we won’t search to know more. But if we are always questioning things, and if we are always humble, our progress is unlimited. I know that it’s been true for me here in the mission. Even when I have done something well 1000 times and it seems to work well, if I am humble and ask, “Is there a better way?” I can always find the answer is yes. Go search for the best way to do everything, especially in doing things for others. In doing so, our growth is unlimited. 

I love you all!

Love,

Anziano Ridd

My French toast this morning