February 19, 2014

TRANSFERS!!!

Buon Giorno Tutti!

Well, big news! im going to serve in SWITZERLAND!!!! Im going to be serving in a town called Lugano right over the swiz border. IT... IS... GORGEOUS!!! The even cooler part though is that Switzerland, due to its strict law, has been closed to any missionary without a european passport for YEARS, so i am the very first american missionary to be serving there since it got closed i couldnt even tell you how many years ago. but the thing is is that im not going to be living in lugano. i will be living in Como, 5 min from the swiz border, and every day ill travel by train to lugano and then come back. It may seem like a pain but Como is actually one of the most gorgeous cities in this mission lol so im getting the best of both worlds! i cant tell you guys how excited i am! my new companion is Anziano Oz and he is from Australia and has been in the mission the same amount of time that my current companion, anziano lambert has. Everybody that calls me to tell me how lucky i am tell me that my new comp is super cool and a very hard worker so i am SOOO excited! Also, anziano lambert served there for 6 months and said it was his absolute favorite ward that he has been able to serve in. the bishop is american, and the members are all just amazing. he is also very excited that i get to serve there because i can say hi to all of the members that he got to become friends with while he served there.

I am going to miss la spezia though. i feel like this has been home. i have been here for over 4 months and i have gotten along so well with my companions, especially anziano lambert, and the other two missionaries living in our apartment. im also going to miss the margheritti family here in our branch. we just ate over at there house for pranzo (we ate the BEST homemade lasagna) and i got to share a spiritual thought at the end. i shared helaman 5:12 and bore my testimony on how it has effected my life and how if we build a strong foundation on the lord we can never fall. the spirit was very strong and by the end brother margheritti was in tears, which almost got me to begin to tear up as well. we took some pictures of their family, which ill send to you soon. they were by far the best family i have met here in the mission. im going to miss them so much. 

Well thank you guys so much for all of the pictures and emails, i love you guys so much! Dallin looks like a baller in his suit by the way! haha well wish me luck in my travels all the way to north italy/switzerland! haha im so excited im gunna DIE! (in the voice of that little girl in Dispicable Me). CIAO! 

February 12, 2014

New Contact!

 

Hey guys! thanks for the pictures and amazing emails! it is very sad to hear about chris page's death but im so glad he had the chance to be baptized and feel the spirit in his life before he passed away.

Ok so this week has been a little better than the past in the sense of people to teach. we just got two lessons yesterday and a lesson the day before so we are doing a lot better now! we got one new investigator that came to english class and he is curious about the book of mormon and wants to learn more... but only if we teach him in english hahaha. its good for us since it is 10x easier to teach in english but we really want him to be able to understand everything we say and teach so that he can really understand everything but we'll see how it goes! we also are still teaching the man from ghana and he is really progressing and is reading the book of mormon and praying to know the truth, we just need him to commit to come to church and get to meet the branch members who are all very sweet. but other than those two investigators we dont have much else. just proselyting a lot and going house to house. it was a great week though and my companion and i are getting along great! its going to be really sad if i get transferred after just serving one with him. 

Ok well thanks for the emails and thank you granna and bompa for always taking time out of your week to write me! love you both so very much!!!!!! love all of you guys and cant wait to hear from you next week! Ciao BELLI!

From Milena to Steven:

So, I have a few random questions I would like to know:

1.      How much is a haircut there?
2.      How often do you eat at the members home?  Have they cooked anything interesting lately?
3.      Do you ever take your suits and ties to get dry cleaned? (Just noticing how dirty our Elder’s suits get especially when they’re playing ping pong and baseball in them…lol)
4.      How much money (euro) do you get for allowance each month?  Does it cover all your expenses?
5.      Did you ever see a Dr. when you were sick?
6.      Any pictures of your new companion?  Still getting along great?
7.      Are you ever gonna send me your flash drive with all your pictures?????  Buy a new one and start backing up to that.
8.      Any new conversion stories or new contact stories? We LOVE hearing them!
9.      From Missy:  Are there any cute Elder’s in your mission? Lol

From Steven to Milena:

1. I cut my own hair so im not sure, and im pretty dang good now lol

2. Maybe 1 time every 2 or 3 weeks. our branch is tiny and in my area there are only 2 active member families.
3. no not really its pretty expensive. maybe i will in the next city i serve in.
4. 190 euro. it is barely enough
5. no it was just a fever so i took ibuprofen and tablets that dissolve in water that helped.
6. nope it pretty much every day here so i stopped taking my camera around with me. every pday it has rained so we havent been going site seeing. but yes he is my favorite companion!
7. yes i just keep forgetting to buy a new one
8. mmm yes and no ill go over them in the fam letter.
9. NO!!!! :)

February 5, 2014

Ciao Ciao!

Thank you guys so much for all of the wonderful letters and pictures! Thank you very much granna and bompa as well i love getting mail :) Im so glad that you guys have seen so many blessings and can have the missionaries over often! im positive that those missionaries are absolutely loving being able to be around my amazing family all the time. 

Well this past week we have really been trying new ways to find new investigators but not much has been working the way we had hoped. right now we really only have one investigator and he hasnt been answering our calls. it is really insane how you can have a bunch of investigators and then the next thing you know they are all gone. We havent let it get to us though, every night we take advantage of the 2 hour "red zone" time between 6 and 8 to go building to building "knocking" on doors and trying to get into a house of prepared people ready to hear the wonderful message that we have to bring. 

Unfortunately, satan works in very mysterious ways to turn the hearts of people away from the light and last week we only ended up getting one lesson... my first time in the mission field. i was pretty dang sad to see that 1 at the end of the week, mostly because i knew that we had worked so very hard. my companion and i talked about what we can try different to improve our numbers this week since not much was working last week and what we came up with was to work more with the less active in the branch. We have already passed by all the less actives in our area, but the other anziani in our apartment have about 70 in their area that need passing by. so we might pass by them and see what we can do :) Keepin our heads up of course :)

Love you guys so much and cant wait to hear from you all next week! Ciao!

Sinceremente, 

Anziano Delgado

PS- Oh almost forgot to tell you! on the brightside i got to go teach a blind member named Antonio when i went on the exchange yesterday. He is an AMAZING piano player and plays for our branch every sunday. He is so talented, he can literally hear a song and then play it! he asked us if we played and i said yes so he wanted to hear me play a few songs. i played my favorite ones and he really like them. Then i showed him how to play the left hand part of heart and soul while i played the right side part. he made his own little rendition of the left hand part which sounded 10 times better than the original haha it was so much fun. i had a great time and im sure he did as well. it was a great day