Anziano Steven Delgado: January 2014

Thursday, January 30, 2014

January 29, 2014

Healthy!

Ciao everybody,

So this week was a LOT better than the last. I finally got over my sickness and we got to work right away and really tried to make up for the couple days i was home bound. We had a VERY good lesson with a new investigator and we felt really inspired to give him the baptismal invite in the first lesson so we did, and he accepted it! he really wants to read and has already started the beginning. he also asked if there is a church in Ghana because he has family there who live in the capitol. Not only is there just a church there, but a TEMPLE as well! he was very excited to hear that :) His bap date is for the 1st of March so i may not be here since i suspect i will be transferred this next transfer (im crossing my fingers for Torino i hear it is GORGEOUS). But we still have a lot of lessons to teach him before he is ready for baptism but he has no drinking or smoking issues, that we know of, but he seems VERY prime!

We also have found a new investigator for the other companionship in our apartment and they are teaching him and have become so close to the guys that he invited them to his anniversary party lolol kinda weird but they said it was pretty fun so thats cool :) well the work is slowly progressing here in la spezia and we missionaries are starting to see a lot of miracles come from following the simple mission rules that may seem pointless at times but truly do bring blessings in the end. well im glad to hear that all of you are doing your part in missionary work back at home that is so awesome keep it up! love you all very much and cant wait to hear from you next week! Vi voglio tantissimo bene :) Ciao bravi

January 22, 2014

SICK WEEK :|

Ciao tutti!

Well, this week was kind of a rough one. I caught a pretty nasty fever friday night that carried all the way through to monday and i still have a pretty sore throat but it is slowly getting better. On the bright side though my companion and i are pretty much best friends and we came to the conclusion that we were definitely best buds in the life before this one lol.

Even though the work kind of suffered from me being sick we still set up appointments with people for the upcoming week. We did get a couple home teaching assignments for us missionaries to do which is really nice because its my first time being able to be a home teacher here in the mission and it will give us a few more opportunities to teach when instead we would just be doing hours and hours of finding work. so thats good!

Well thats pretty much it for this week, my sickness is almost gone so im sure next week will be a lot better. Thanks for all of your emails and sounds like you guys are having a great time :) love you guys and cant wait to hear from you next week!

Much love,

Anziano Delgado

January 15, 2014

Anziano Lambert is awesome!

Well this last week has been one of the best weeks since i got into the mission field for sure! Anziano Lambert and i seem to really connect especially while we teach and how well we can go off eachother and make the lesson flow. When Anziano Marin left we only had one investigator because we kept getting dropped and we had a hard time finding new investigators. But the second day Anziano Lambert got here we went out to do some strada and we found an old investigator from nigeria who we had to drop the beginning of last transfer because he got a new phone and we lost his contact and apparantly he lost ours as well. but he stopped us and said he likes reading the book of mormon and he wants to start meeting again this week! and we also found another potential and tomorrow we are going over to his house. So the work is slowly getting back to where it was a little bit ago and i am VERY excited!

Well that is pretty much it for this week, no crazy stories other than the finding work but i am super excited for this upcoming transfer with my new comp. Oh by the way Anz. Lambert was Anziano Marin's companion in the MTC so he also goes home this december. His dad is american but his mom is italian so he kinda cheated and already knew a little bit of italian before he got here lol. But hey i can't complain it just makes it that much easier during lessons :) well i love you guys and can't wait to hear from you all next week!

Much Love,

-Anziano Delgado

FIRENZE/FLORENCE

Zeus Statue

Statue of David

Ponte Vecchia Bridge

Monarola Cinque Terre

La Spezia

Lerici Beach

River of Pisa

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Pisa Duomo and Baptistry

Monarola Cinque Terre

January 8, 2014

CIAO TUTTI!

Ok well transfer calls came monday! And im going to be serving here in La Spezia for another 6 weeks! Im really happy i get to stay here it is such a nice ward, great place and we are working really hard with an investigator that is getting closer to baptism. YAY! My companion Anziano Marin is getting transfered though. He is going to be serving as District Leader in Firenze! He is super lucky! I hope i can serve there and get my scriptures bound in leather before the end of the mission.

Well this week has been kind of slower than the last couple for various reasons but the biggest one is that our only progressing investigator has been out of town for a week and a half and just got back yesterday so we are going to see him today.

My new companion that i will meet tomorrow is Anziano Lambart from Wyoming im pretty sure. he is half italian on his moms side though so i heard he is really good with the language so im pretty excited about that!

Next week ill be sure to send you all my photos from pisa and some others that i took while on exchanges!

Love you all and cant wait to hear from you next week!

Much Love,

Anziano Delgado

December 31, 2013

Hey everyone!

So today i am writing my email since tomorrow all of the internet points will be closed for New Years.

Well its kinda crazy to think that it has already been a week since i got to see all of your wonderful faces, time flies here in the mission! This week has been really great and full of good laughs, smiles, games and last but definitely not least, VERY spiritual lessons! I love Christmas season because everyone is just so joyful and open to hear messages about Jesus Christ and all of the great things he did and still does.

We had another lesson with an investigator that has a baptismal date for the 18th of January and it went really great. He befriended a member here and they have been dating for a little while and now they are thinking about getting married! They both want to get married in the temple and be sealed which is a miracle to say the least! But there is one, rather large, problem standing in their way... he smokes about 2 packs of cigarettes a week (which is weird because we have never smelled smoke when we were around him). We didnt figure this out until about a week ago when we had a lesson with him about the Gospel of Christ which went great like they always do with him! (infact when we asked him if he would be willing to prepare himself for baptism on the 18 of Jan. he said, "I'd even be willing to get baptized tomorrow!")! But after the lesson, as we left his apartment to get a ride from him to our house, he pulled out a cigarette and began to smoke. So the day after christmas we had another lesson with him and decided to teach him the Word of Wisdom :) He TOTALLY accepted it!

The next sunday he came to church and we were very happy to see him and the family that he wants to join with the little 5 year old boy,15 year old boy who is a HUGE help with missionary work and the mom who is another great support for him. I was surprised that they came to church because they were going to go to his vacation house in Sardinia but they decided to come to church instead and then leave after church! In Gospel Principles taught about "Charity" and i thought it went really well and i got a complement from our investigator on my language (who doesn't love compliments on the language ha). Then after sacrament the mom of the family asked if i could give her a blessing of comfort (im still not exactly sure for what reason but my best guess is safety while they travel). Once i finished she started talking to us about Her bf (our investigator) and how he went from smoking 2 packs a week to only 6 cigarettes! Its still kind of a larger number but it is a lot of progress! He told here that he is a lot happier and that he can tell a good change in his life. He's awesome

Well that is pretty much it for the week, thursday we go back to firenze for zone conference again! Oh and tomorrow im going to a little place called PISA! Leaning Tower here i come! lol I love you guys and pray for all of you every day. Can't wait to hear from you next week! Buon Capodanno!!!

-Much Love, Anziano Delgado

December 18, 2013

Ciao ciao! (idk why but italians always say ciao more than just once lol)

Well, its a week till Christmas... wow how time flies! It still doensnt really feel like christmas over here in La Spezia. 1 because its warmer here than in Arizona during christmas time, and 2 because christmas isnt as big as a holiday here like it is in the States. But us missionaries are trying to make it as christmas-like as we can with music, wrapping up presents (to ourselves lol) and decorating our apartment with any green or red colored item hahaha. ok so i think i am going to skype you from an internet point because im not sure if we are going to be still going over to the branch presidents house for christmas. they might be going to their families house up in the mountains ma non sono sicuro ancora. i will probably skype you around 4 in the afternoon italian time so whatever time that is for you guys make sure you are by your phone or ipad or whatever your going to use :) By the way mom i need you to send me your skype name because it wasnt highlighted in blue but dads was so i just want to make sure it was correct :)

WOW! Dallin good job in your soccer tournament! Mom and Dad told me how amazing you did scoring two goals (even though one was barely offside) and winning the PK shootout with your game winning goal! Tu sei BRAVISSIMO! You gotta tell me exactly how it happened when i get to talk to you over skype next week!!! I also got to see some of your soccer pictures as well, they look awesome! haha i like the one where you have your arm pushing the one kid behind you and you are in front with the ball. Good job D!

Well the work here is gradually getting better and better! we found 2 new investigators and we had both of them and the less active man and his girlfriend and their baby all came to church this sunday! It was so great to see them all there. We did a scambio yesterday where i went with the district leader and his companion went in my area with anz. marin for the day and they taught the less active family and the lesson went very well they said. but the girlfriend still doesnt know if she wants to get baptized yet, so we just gotta keep working at it :) The man however has a VERY strong testimony and they are reading the Book of Mormon together and praying nightly so i have a pretty good feeling that she will change her mind :)

Thanks for the 2 packages, i just got them yesterday and they were packed with goodies! thank you so much! My jacket and sandals make it soooo much nicer to walk around in the apartment at night and in the morning when its cold. dont worry i wont open the presents till christmas lol. well i love you guys and i cant wait to talk to you on Christmas!!!!!!! Ci vediamo fra poco!!!!!! Ciao!

Love, Anziano Delgado

December 11, 2013

FIRENZE!

Hey Everyone!

Its always so good to hear from all you guys and hear that everything is going so well! So many blessings are pouring in and i can see them every day :) Well, i just want to thank Granna And Bompa and Dad for the Christmas money that you all gave me! You guys are the BEST i love you so much!!!!!!!! So to answer your question about Christmas YES i am able to do Skype with you! Our Branch President invited us over to his house for christmas to use his computer :) Im not sure what time he is going to have us over but ill let you know asap. I can only skype for 45 minutes to an hour though so get all your questions ready and whatever else you wanna ask me lolol.

Ok so this week we had a really really good lesson with the less active member family who i talked to you about last week. We figured out tho that the father is no longer a member of the church though so we can actually baptize both the mother and father. The only problem is that they aren't married yet so before they can get baptized they will need to get married... so that could take some time but for the time being we are going to keep meeting with them and doing all that we can to get them to have the gospel back in their life :) Last week we had a member present lesson with them and we brought The Margheritti mom and dad (who also have a daughter going to the rome mission in a 2 weeks). We talked about the Restoration of the Church. It was one of our best lessons we have had here in La Spezia so far. Member present lessons help SOOO MUCH! The two families really clicked and got along so well and it was a really fun and spiritual lesson. at the end of the lesson they expressed to us how inspired our lesson was because before we got there the mom was asking about how she can know if the church is true and if it is what THEIR family needs. And during the lesson we REALLY hit HARD on the importance of the family and how center it is in our religion and in the eyes of Heavenly Father. It was a cool experience to hear that from them.

Yesterday we had another Zone conference in Firenze and this time i got to take more pictures of the David Statue and also a Statue of Zeus! Then we went to the conference which was really really good. We talked about a lot of really great things that i now have in my journal :) Then we ate the best food that an italian family made us and also had Pane D'oro which means Bread of Gold. and it really was bread of gold it was sooooo good.

Today for Pday we are going to another cinque terre city, Monterosso, to catch the sunset and supossedly there is a huge nativity scene that the city puts on at night! Well, i love you all so very much! thanks again Dad, Granna and Bompa for the VERY generous christmas gift i love you so very much! Love you guys! Rimanete retti per sempre!! Ciao Ciao!

Love,

Anziano Delgado

December 4, 2013

CIAO!

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! im super jealous you went duck hunting without me but i'm glad you had a god time! that's so crazy to hear that sammy is going to get married next march or april! wow time really is flying i still remember when we were in the little kid classes up in Aspen Grove utah playin night games with all the young kids haha. Yea i actually did meet up with Adam ostergard twice already! Once when i was getting transferred to La Spezia and all the missionaries went to Milan and then another time when i went to the Firenze Conference last transfer. he seems like a really fun guy! Lol mom you said you want pictures of my bike but here in La Spezia we dont have bikes because it is such a small city. we just walk and take public buses everywhere haha. And nope we arent seeing any effects from Mt Etna erupting... i had no idea it even erupted lol. yea the sun is out ALL the time. It is still so warm here in La Spezia some days but then at night the temperature drops sooo much its crazy. But don't worry i don't need one of those "substitute sun" lamp things for depression lol im doing great :)

So the work is going alright, it actually kind of just went for a drop in the last week and a half. we lost that one investigator and we had to drop a couple more because either they wouldnt ever answer us or they never keep commitments and just arent wanting to make any progress. but yesterday we found a non active member who's wife is a non member and they have a 7 month old baby and they want to keep meeting with us. this non active actually served a mission for the church and showed us all of his mission pictures! he served in the dominican republic where he is from. So we are going to work really hard with them trying to get him active again and his wife hopefully into the baptismal waters where she belongs :)

Lol so the other week i had a super crazy experience. It was a rainy day and for morning proselyting we decided to go to the boardwalk and talk to the people there. But when we got there we saw that nobody was out (probably because of the rain). So we decided to walk out onto the pier where people sometimes fish whether it is raining or not but when we got there nobody was there either. So we decided to go all the way to the end of this maybe 15 foot wide peir to see if anybody was down there that we could talk to. we passed one guy that was sitting in his car probably waiting for the little drizzle to stop and then begin fishing again but other than him nobody else was there. so we got to the end and decided to turn around and go somewhere else to find people. But right when we started to head back the wind picked up and the rain started to really pour down on us. We were hoping it would stop soon but it just got worse and WORSE. The wind was so strong that we had our umbrella's completely perpendicular with the ground and the mist and rain from the ocean right by us was still soaking our legs ankles and feet. The wind bent every rod in both our umbrellas and completely broke them so they did us no good anymore. and then we decided to just run to get off the pier because the wind was seriously trying to blow us into the ocean. And as we were running anz. marin's glasses flew off and were sliding toward the ocean so we both RAN for them and saved them about 5 feet from the edge! I figured it was way to far to run all the way from where we were on the pier to the beginning so i ran to get shelter from a parked car and i whistled my loud whistle for anz marin to follow but he couldnt hear because the wind and rain was so loud so i whistled again and that time he heard. So he came and took shelter as well. Finally after about 3 loooooong minutes which seemed like forever the wind and rain faded away. So we decided to get outta there asap lol. and as we were heading back we passed by the guy sitting in his car about 10 yards away from us during the whole storm just sipping on a hot chocolate and chilling in his nice warm air conditioned car probably listening to some christmas carols while we on the otherhand were getting our butts handed to us by this hurricane! lol it was INSANE you guys would not even believe how crazy it was. INSANE. dont worry though mom im totally fine, my suit took a couple days to dry out but its all good now lol.

Well, thats my story of the week lol hope you liked it. see you next time on "Crazy Adventures in the Life of a Missionary" ;) Love ya guys!

Love, Anziano Delgado

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

November 27, 2013

Portovenere!

Ciao Ciao!

Hey everyone! Lol thanks for all of the pictures you guys sent so many i love it! I'm doing great here in La Spezia and looks like i am going to stay here for another 6 weeks! I'm super grateful i didnt get transferred i love it here in la spezia. For this transfer we got switched from the genova zone to the FIRENZE ZONE! It is now the best zone in the mission because it has 5 terre, which is right by us, Firenze, and also the leaning tower of Pisa! so these next 6 weeks be ready to get some awesome pictures lol. my companion is still going to be anziano Marin so thats great b/c we get along really well. Super excited for these next 6 weeks :) So for Thanksgiving we missionaries put together a huge party and made mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and some other members brought some more food including a giant turkey it was a great time. we explained the reason we celebrate thanksgiving in america and hade a giant feast all sitting around a looong table haha it was really fun.

Well down to the important things, the work! The work is going really well here in The Spice of Italia. Our investigators are doing well and we are really seeing some progress in a couple of them. The other day was really sad though. It was saturday and we had a lesson with an investigator who had a baptismal date for the 28th of December and she was going to come to church with us the next day (she is our most promising investigator). We got to her apt. building but she didnt answer the door nor did she answer her phone. that was the first time she blew us off so we were kinda sad about that. and then we were walking around centro doing proselyting and we ran into her on the street! she said she was very sorry but she talked to her husband about going to our church the next day and he gave her an ultimatum and said that if she went to church or met with us anymore he would leave her. it was really really really sad. but on a happier note we are finding more and more people who want to hear our message and we are getting a lot of lessons! so we are still seeing many miracles here :)

Well today we went to Portovenere! It is really close to La Spezia and someone once told us that we can't say that we have been to La Spezia if we haven't seen Portovenere so we decided to see for our selves what the big deal was. Right when we got there the view was a bunch of colorful houses on the mountainside overlooking the ocean and a castle on the very top of the mountain...GORGEOUS! I got some good video and pictures you guys will love them! We didn't get time to go into the castle so we have to go again but we did get to hike up to an old catholic church right on the edge of a mountain overlooking the ocean and city and we got to go inside and on top and get some cool pictures i cant wait to show you them!

Alright well im gunna start uploading the pictures since it will take a while cuz i have sooooo many to upload lol. Love you guys a ton! cant wait to hear from you next week!

La Spezia!