Hello Famiglia

Not too much news since the maxi-conference. Here’s our group picture; I’m in the front row.

The other day we decided to do what we call an "excellent activity." Basically it means that we do something that's really fun, while doing missionary work at the same time. For this activity we decided to do a spiritual thought with Salvatore, and then play soccer with him and also a member so that they could become better friends. He is our investigator that is getting baptized on the 5th of June that is making great progress. He's been smoking since he was 16, (he's 21) and he's trying to quit. The spiritual thought went great. Then we started playing soccer and that was a blast. We have a soccer field to the side of church, and we played with a bunch of local kids (who are all crazy good). But Salvatore didn't want to play! We were shocked, and then asked him if he played basketball, and he said yes. So we played a little bit of soccer with this member and all the local kids, and then we decided to play a little basketball to get Salvatore involved--he played for about two minutes and then went inside the church!! It was crazy. haha. So we told him next time we're just going to watch a film with him, and I think we're going to watch the restoration. So far in Italy this is only the third time I've played soccer!! I thought I would play every week! But it's okay, I still played alright.

We do weekly service at the soup kitchen here. They actually have really good food there! Yesterday we went and did service and the food we served was a lot better than the food I ended up cooking for lunch. As usual I made a pasta with red sauce. We had leftover meatballs from a member lunch appointment, so I put those in. I used one bottle of red sauce, and a can of peeled tomatoes. I cheated a little and used this pre-mixed spice that I found in the cupboard. I also grated some carrots, and I put in a little garlic. I tried something weird this time. I decided to put some Basil in the water while I cooked the pasta. I'm not sure if it did anything or not, but the pasta ended up tasting pretty good. The only problem is the meatballs didn't have enough flavor.  I also learned an awesome recipe the other day. It's really weird, but it tastes really good. I'll have to make it for you when I get home. It takes 2 boxes of "panna". I'm not sure exactly what that is, but you always use it when you want a pink sauce. Two boxes is a ton, but this sauce ends up tasting awesome. I've found that most sauces that I like would taste better with hamburger meat with them as well...but that's mostly just because I love hamburger meat so much. I also learned a pesto recipe the other day that I'm going to try sometime soon. It just takes a lot of basilico and pine nuts. It's just the classic pesto - genovese. I've tried it and it was tasty.

Institute here is pretty funny. I've had to help teach a couple times. They just meet once every week on Sunday evening and go through a few chapters in the Book of Mormon. There are usually only three or four people there. One girl in our ward just sent in her mission papers! I should probably be here when she gets her call.

Speaking of calls, transfer calls come tomorrow!! This is my first transfer, so I'm sure I'll be staying, but what we don't know is what will be happening to the city. Right now there are four of us here, but odds are that the city is going to go down to two missionaries because there are something like 10 missionaries leaving and none coming in, so everywhere is getting downsized every time we have a transfer. What will probably happen is I'll just stay with my companion and the city will go down to two...which is not that exciting. haha.

Which reminds me of something that is exciting! I met a Chinese guy this week in a store that may be coming to church one of these weeks. It will be hard to do translating for him, but it'll be really cool as well. He's from near Shanghai. He's buddhist and I taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I think anyone who will serve a mission in the future should learn another language, because even if you don't go to a country that speaks it, you'll probably meet someone who does. I've met people who speak Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Bulgarian, French, Russian, English, Farsi, and all kinds of other languages. Basically, Chinese has helped me a ton, but if I had studied Spanish more it would have helped me as well, or any other language. It's starting to seem crazy to me that anyone doesn't speak at least two languages!

Okay, so my advice for this week would be to serve others, and plant things. haha. I think those are two great ways that everyone can better the world. More plants, more kindness.

Have a great week! I'll let you know of any changes to our city next week! For sure something has to change because Anziano Shaw is going home.

Love,

Anziano Banks

Alla mia amata famiglia

C'è tanto da scrivere questa settimana!

The Maxi Conference was awesome!! That's the one that was in Taranto. We learned a lot of great things, and I also got to see some of my best friends here. Anziano Rowland and Anziano Garcia. They're so sweet. We also played tons of sports. My team was named the ant crushers. Mostly because there were tons of ants everywhere, and the mascot just fit.

Our team dominated at almost everything, but having only four of us made a lose a couple games. We played volleyball, dodgeball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and ultimate frisbee played with a rugbee ball. (We played it once with a frisbee, once with the rugbee ball). Even though we didn't win, I would definitely say we were the team that had the most unity and spirit. I'm pretty sure no one else even had a team name! My teammates were Anziano Cox who I knew in the MTC, Anziano McDaniel from Ogden, and Sorella Hirsh from New York.

Basically what made me enjoy it most was being able to see Anziano Rowland (my district leader from the MTC), and Anziano Garcia (from my MTC district--from Malaga, Spain). I sat by Anziano Rowland on the ride back from Bari and we did a lot of catching up. It looks like we're both loving our missions, so that's good. haha. We've also both had tons of funny experiences.

We stayed the night in Statte. It's more or less a suburb of Taranto. It was alright. Taranto is a beautful city. I've found that my favorite cities (in the world) are always those that have water, and Taranto has a bay, so I liked that. Here is a picture of the view from where we stayed in Statte.

We also had a Zone Conference in Bari in the last week. haha. I love traveling! At that conference me and my companion did a 20-minute presentation on how we can have a more effective personal study. If you ask me, what it comes down to is how much we can follow and learn by the spirit. Obviously everyone has different levels of focus and intelligence, but that can only take you so far. Once you do everything you can, if you pray for the spirit you can learn a crazy-ton more stuff. haha.

I think I've about mastered the art of talking to people on the train. Or at least talking to one person. On the way to the conference to Bari I talked to a guy who learned about the church 20 years ago, and doesn't have any interest. Then a college girl came and sat by me and I talked to her for a good while. She was really cool. She's an art major, and she loves Michael Jackson. When she was four years old she saw a video of him or something, and has been in love ever since. When he passed away she flew to London for a big event they had there, and one of her life goals is to go to L.A. on the anniversary of his death one year. It was really interesting to talk to her, and of course I also shared the message of the restoration with her.

Here's what I've figured out. You can't fake genuinity, but you can gain it. I've figured out that I'm actually interested in every person, because every person has something interesting about them. As you learn their desires, their beliefs, and their interests, they naturally ask about yours and it makes sharing the gospel really easy. Basically I've just come to the realization that everyone is better than me at something, everyone has different talents and abilities, so there's always something to be learned, and the sweet thing about a mission is you get to talk to so many people that you learn all kinds of things!!

I've also met many crazy people. haha. The other day we were at a really interesting less active member's house and she said the closing prayer. In her prayer she said: "...and please bless these men that you sent to serve thee that they will not be killed...because those that serve you are killed"

haha, what!! It's nice that she's so honest in her prayers. She's an interesting lady. Really funny. She always tells us random quotes that she doesn't understand. She'll say something like "My mom always told me never to trust doctors and lawyers"

Then a few minutes later she'll say, "Doctors are saying never to eat meat"
Then we'll say back "But didn't your mom say not to trust doctors?"

And she responds, "Oh yeah! hahahaha"

It's pretty nuts.

Let's see, what else should I fill you in on. I guess that's about it. I'm really grateful for my mission and all the important things I've been learning, and all the great people I've met. I already know that I'm going to be friends with all the people in my MTC district for the rest of my life. Anziano Rowland will always be the best district leader I've ever had. Even now when I talk to him I feel like he gives me advice that helps me in the mission field.

I love my life. I love life. I love the gospel, and I love Jesus Christ. I know that he is our saviour. I know that each of us can improve every day thanks to the atonement. We can bring our lives into harmony with the will of God! It's incredible and amazing.

There are basically two kinds of preaching (to me). Small groups, and Large groups. I have no problem with Large groups, as in I can talk to a whole bus of people or a crowd, or a class and it's no problem. Small groups would be like on the train talking to one person. I love that as well. I'm getting better at talking to two different people on the train at the same time, but I definitely still can't handle three, but I'm building up to it.

I think of in that way because Jesus Christ would talk to individuals, and he would talk to large groups. The woman at the well that got water that would stop her thirst, but also the thousands of hungry people that listened to him when he decided to feed them all fish and bread.

Oh! One more thing I wanted to say was that I love what I learn for after my mission. Sorella Taranto taught us about setting goals, actually so did President. We need to think about what we want to do in life (Marriage, Job, Education, Service), and then quantify it. For example, I want a happy, spiritual family. Very Broad. So then I break it into things that I can measure, like family home evening once a week, family scripture study, maybe dinner as a family, yada yada yada. One thing I really liked was that the Tarantos always had service as one of their priorities in life. I love service. They didn't just do church service, but they also did community service. I'm not really sure what exactly I want to do with that in the future, but I think I always want to do some sort of service. There's always the random ones that are great as well. Another thing I’ve been working on that will help me later in life is gardening! Check out my sweet onion and spinach that I am growing!

Okay, one last thing. This was hilarious. There was a talent show at the Maxi Conference and there was a skit about the RM MTC. hahaha. I can't remember what the acronym stood for, but it was hilarious. They taught about asking referrals from your dates, dates in the presence of a father, and their guarantee that a girl will propose to YOU within ONE transfer (6 weeks). haha. They did a really nice job with it. I hope someone got it all on film because it was totally hilarious.

Arrivederci!

Love,

Anziano Banks!

P.S. I figured out a new way to work out. Haha.

Sono Foggiano. ...quasi

This week went pretty well. Actually, I take that back, it went amazingly well. hahaha. One of our investigators got baptized on Saturday. Her name is Irene. She's already really good friends with all the members in the ward, and has been an investigator for quite some time. The baptismal service was nice.

 

We also have great investigators right now. We should be having three baptisms in June!! So far. That's how many dates we set this last week. We also have one investigator that wants to get baptized soon, but he smokes and isn't trying hard enough to quit.

I went on splits with Anziano Shaw for a day and that was pretty awesome. He's from Sandy and goes home in 3 weeks! The whole day was really fun, but I think the highlight would be when we taught one of the sisters in our ward. We're helping her know how she can help us more during teaching appointments. During the lesson we both felt like we should change what we had planned on teaching her. By the end of the lesson she told us that now she knows exactly what she needs to do. It was great to know that we had both been following the spirit. She has a couple rebellious kids that she's worried about, and she also has to give a talk in church in a couple weeks that she was worried about. One thing I like about Anziano Shaw is that we have a similar teaching style. Neither of us are afraid to have some silent moments. One thing that bothers me when I teach with some people is that they always rush to fill in all the quiet moments. There's obviously a balance that is ideal.

I actually don't have that much else to say, so let me explain to you how our lunch generally goes down. We just do a rotation between the four of us. So basically I cook once every four days. We all cook more or less the same thing. Pasta with red sauce. We mix up what we put in as far as meat, cheese, spices, and types of pasta. But so far in my mission it seems like we always have the same thing for lunch. When not all four of us are here (which happens more often than you'd think), we just cook for ourselves. I like to have a tuna fish sandwich, or fried rice, or something else to that effect.

I'm going to go to Taranto for a huge conference!! It should be really awesome. I'll take lots of pictures. In two days I'm going to be in Bari for a Zone Conference. I'm pretty excited. I get to do a presentation on how to have an effective personal study.

Sorry I don't have much more to write about, but I'm pretty tired today and I can't really remember anything else from this week!

Besides the baptism on Saturday we also had to clean our house for the entire day. It was pretty crazy. I guess it was some sort of holiday here in Italy, so that's why we did it.

Anyway, have a great week!

Love,

Anziano Banks!