June 26, 2013

I've just been forgetting to write in journal, but we made a miracle wall now which is write a miracle everday that happened that day to show we recognize all that the Lord is giving us. We joke the more sticky notes on the wall we have, the miracles are exponential. So easy to write about miracles

The 20th, whatever that was, we had every single appointement fall through for the day, so we're doing strada [street contacting] and not having success, so Anziano[Elder] Locklear sits down and says "Let's do a popp chart, then we'll get the miracles." Popp charts are something the mission president made up where we teach a principle, ask inspired question, share scripture, and bear testimony [say what you know to be true]  all under 2 minutes. So we do, and then feel we have to go to Arcore, a couple of stops down on the train. Get off the train in Arcore, see a man sitting there, and teach him a lesson right there on the bench at the train station. Not the most suitable environment conducive to the spirit with loud trains roaring past, but left him with a Book of Mormon. Then did strada for a bit, got back on the train to Merate, got off, and exact same thing. Well, didn't give him a Book of Mormon, but set up a return appointement and he knows one of the members so 2 miracles right there.



View from the train passing Lecco

Everyday we plan on looking for a person in particular, and describe them in detail to show the Lord we're putting our faith to work. I think I said last week I talked about finding the woman with brown hair and pink tanktop. This one day we decide we're teaching a South American man in a red polo, and we spend all day looking for him in particular, nothing. So we sit down, do a popp chart, say a prayer that we can find this man, and 10 minutes later we find a South American man ready to hear the gospel and we have a return appointment. And had really good popsicles that day too. Another miracle.

And had gelatto for the first time. You know I don't really care about quality of food, but it was really good. And coming from me that's impressive.

Then we go to a less active who hasn't been to church in over a year, and we read Mosiah 2 with him and his girlfriend, and it just so happens that (I might have written this last week but I don't think so) she read the verses about unquenchable fire ascending forever and ever, or something like that and we didn't even plan for her to be there. But it had an effect becuase Sunday comes and he's there in church, and she's there too which was really cool. Oh yeah, and had 7 investigators in church on Sunday, no big deal.

Some local churches - We call the one on the hill the Nauvoo Temple

And highlight miracle of the week, all miracles are great of course, but a man phones us up Saturday morning and says bluntly "I want to come to your church." He's never been to church before, he's had almost no contact with the church, I think it was an old girlfriend who was a member. So we say, "Oh, I guess we can maybe give you the directions" And he shows up Sunday and the members are fantastic, everybody is coming up and talking to him, and he gets invited by a family to dinner that night and he accepted. It was kind of funny we needed to explain the Book of Mormon in 30 seconds when we used it to look up a scripture, but he kept on asking questions and was really interested in not paid bishops and aposltes and a prophet and how it was the same in Christ's day and we're like "Yeah, that's because it is Christ's Church on the earth today. It makes sense." So we're teaching him tomorrow, he's just super cool and super elect. And Italian, which is rare, we're mostly teaching Africans and South Americans.

Alot of other experiences this week and just with personal revelation I've realized how perfect God has planned everything out and we need to be in specific places at specific times. For example, both of us don't know what the word for queen is, I ask during a lesson, and later that night Anziano Locklear feels inspired to use it in a blessing, which if it wasn't for teaching a lesson earlier that first lesson, we would not have given. If that makes any sense. But just super cool to even sometimes just start to fathom how it's all meshed together in perfect unity and everything is planned out so perfectly. Sets an example for us, we need to plan out everything before we do it because that's what God did.  Anyways, that's it for this week. I'm so happy right now serving others. And so tired and hot and sweaty, but this is what the Lord wants me to be doing right now, along with everybody else. We can all do missionary work. The Furthering the work broadcast about missionary work has been shown in America, but they're showing it on Sunday here, so looking forward to that. Anziano Laceste said it was really inspiring. Thanks for all the support, the church is true.

God Speed,

Anziano Berg

June 19, 2013 - Italia!

Well, nothing much new happened with me this week, just went to Italy. That's about it.

So took an airbus to London, it's a two story plane, and 11 seats across. But it was such a bad ride because we couldn't watch movies in the seat in front of us for 9 hours or something like that. Then the plane was 20 minutes late landing and our next flight was in 40 min, so we totally missed that because we had to find the gate in London airport which is huge and go through security again, so we had an 8 hour layover there, which actually helped a lot with jetlag because we all just slept all day. Got off the plane, pizza at 11:00 at night, got with my trainer Anziano [Elder] Locklear the next day and went to the duomo, or main church [Catholic cathedral], to strada(street contact) Then we took a train and we're about 40 minutes outside of Milan, they might have said Merate, but it's an even smaller city right next to Merate called Cernusco. We cover all of the Mirate area though, so a bunch of small cities around that area. We mostly walk, but we'll take the bikes for longer trips and the train when we need to teach somebody in another city like Ancore down the tracks. Then we usually do some strada there before heading back. Not even close to the size of Milano, most everybody here takes the train into Milano to work in the mornings. I've got the train schedule figured out now, but the metro in Milano is so confusing finding our way around, so I just follow a lot.

Anziano Locklear is such an amazing companion. He's from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I'm learning Italian and my English is starting to have a southern twang, he has a really strong accent. He's really outgoing and a really hard worker, which is great. It's a tradition to take the junior companion out for gelatto, but we haven't had time yet. And a lady who's not interested in the church but really nice offers us over for pranzo(lunch) and the last companionship did it all the time since it was really good Sicilian food, but it doesn't help us fufill our purpose so he doesn't. Miracles happening in this mission now. 2 transfer before I came here they were teaching 2-4 lessons per week, and the [mission] president really pushed standard of exellence at 15, and they did 15 and we did 9 this week, with 20 lessons planned but the majority of them fell through (called bidone,trash).

Language is getting slowly better, trying really hard to obtain His word and then the words will be given to me, but I'm pretty quiet most of the time, which I shouldn't be. Just need to open my mouth and say what comes out. It's actually an advantage to me because I can only do simple statements of bold truth, which is ideal for all missionaries, the only problem is I don't know what they are saying back to me.

Bore testimony [what know to be true] to the ward on Sunday, we have about 80 people in the top floor of an apartment building, and I planned it all out and role played with Anziano Locklear so I wouldn't get grammar wrong and I thought it went well, but mi collega (companion) said afterwards my voice was so low that he couldn't understand anything. I'm taller than mostly everybody, and I thought Brian's voice was low compared to mine, but everybody is higher with the sing-song way of talking.   But it's all good, think I made a good first impression.

Very beautiful county, anything will grow here including stuff from Canada, like I saw a spruce the other day next to a palm tree. Crazy drivers, and maybe not that bad compared to a big city in America, but coming from Red Deer without motorcycles driving in between cars and all that, very new experience. And really narrow streets, even for the smaller cars which is all you find here. Most of them don't have sidewalks, so we just walk single file when a car comes by.  Reminds me more of paved alleyways.

View from our apartment window

We live in top story of an apartment, just us, but they have siesta here from 1:30 -3:30 so we eat a big lunch at home since nobody is out on the street during that hour, and then language study. President said just study inside because you won't find anybody and they're all taking naps. The humidity is the worst part of adapting right now, everyday it's short sleeves. On the first day I wore a long sleeve and took my suit off, but just in the hour it took to get home I was considering taking a picture of the sweat stains on the collar. It's always muggy, but bearable though. Italian immersion is hard, we speak English inside the house but outside try to only speak Italian. And it's not like Italian speaking in the States, where you can still resort to English, it's "hopefully mi collega [my companion] can translate that because I don't know what it is". We spend most of our time trying to go to lessons, the President has put a focus on investigators we already have in the area book and nonactives, but we truthfully spend most of our time doing strada. Haven't actually done casa yet(house to house) just do a giro centrale (circle lap that covers the center of the city and where all the people hang out) of Merate or Cernusco and talk to everybody on the street. At zone conference, APs  [assistants to the president] were saying that if you present the Book of Mormon the right way and leave them wanting more so you can give it to them in their house with a return appointment, they will want to take it out of our hands. And it had happened the day before, a man, P.,  said let me see that book and took it from me and S. saw a passalong card sticking out of Anziano Locklear's pocket and took that. So really excited to teach them next week. And so big lunch and no supper, or a snack when we get back to the house.

Zone conference before we started there was a tally on the board for what I thought was a vote, but lunch comes and they had made every person there own large thincrust pizza for lunch.

Cool story, doing strada and a lady was sitting down on the other side of the street, passed her, felt we had to turn back which would be really awkard after she saw us just walk by, told my collega, and I was kind of scared if it wasn't really a proper prompting and she told us to get lost, which was a totally irrational fear once even if she did turn us down, but walked back and she invited us to sit down and Anziano Locklear talked for 15 min. I timed it. She's a really strong Catholic and wouldn't accept a Book of Mormon, but now she definitely knows that we aren't bad people and knows a little more about our church. So even though we didn't get a baptism date or anything like that, it was just cool to realize the spirit so directly in my life, which is most of the time, but more directly so. And they haven't had a baptism for a year and a half, used to be considered a bad mission, and we have 2 baptism dates for next month.

And President saw I had juggling written down on my papers and everybody had seen me juggle at the Missionary Training Center and they told the president he needed to see it, so I had to juggle with apples and eat them when meeting up with our trainers and again at zone conference in front of 60 people. So that was fun.

[Check out the video of him juggling on the mission blog under "June Arrivals" and hear his new companion, Anziano Locklear's reaction!]

Went to language class after zone conference yesterday, I'm doing most of this by memory because I haven't been writing in my journal in the most interesting time of my life, so most of this is fairly recent, but expecting to teach people who didn't really know English and it's just people who have accents who don't have an opportunity to speak English anywhere else. So we talked about politics, which we're not supposed to get involved in, but it's important to them right now. So that was super fun as well.

Signing off now, thanks for all the letters. Will try to send pictures, but I've barely taken any anyways, just from our window. TTFN

God Speed,

Anziano Berg