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Mornin, homies.

This past week was really good! No, we weren't able to get a ton of people to meet with us, but we got a lot of cool contacts and were able to hand off a few referrals. We were also able to set up some good stuff for this upcoming week, so we're looking forward to that as well.

"District photo"

Highlights of the week include...

- a lemonade stand we did yesterday in an attempt to talk to people about how Christ is the living water haha. It definitely wasn't the easiest thing we've done, but then again, we're missionaries and finding people is never the easiest thing. It was a lot of fun though! We met Davide, a 16 year old who's excited to play ping pong with us (and hopefully learn about the gospel, too☺🙏🏼) as well as Piero, a family man who wants to know how to have a better life.

- Finding a new favorite gelato flavor: peach! Ohhhh goodness it was so good. My favorite gelateria is still back in Reggio Calabria, but Palermo has a few good ones haha.

"New favorite gelato combination: peach and coconut"

- Doing a pass of the lesson with the zone leaders for Bernardo. Unfortunately, we won't be able to continue teaching him as he's in their area of the city. Fortunately, the lesson went well and he's excited to meet with them just as much as he was to meet with us! And it's Anziano Campbell who'll be teaching him anyway. I've known him for awhile, and he'll do just fine! I'm looking forward to hearing how they do with him.

- Jerry! It's been forever since we've been able to meet with him again. A few weeks back I mentioned that we'd gone over to his house and met his two non-member sisters. They're so cool! We were finally able to meet with him again and got him committed to reading the Book of Mormon once more. He's a great guy!

- Oh yeah I almost forgot that last week, we went hiking up to some caves as well as a WWII bunker out in a city nearby. It was really cool!

"We also went to see a WWII bunker"

"How we had to get into the bunker"

"Part of the view from inside"

"View from one of the windows in the bunker"

"Hiking to the caves"

"We were trying to get through to spaces like this"

"Inside!"

On the more spiritual side of things...

- I was reminded of how joyous this work was. Lately, it's been really hard for me to get excited about doing missionary work (finding and stuffs like that). It's so much easier to just go get gelato haha. But thinking back to the MTC, I remember a talk we watched where he said something along the lines of how our extremity is God's opportunity. I love that! Because as soon as we reach what we would deem our limits, God steps in and provides whatever it is we need as long as we're committed to just giving our all. When I reached those points this week, God always stepped in and made the work joyous. I'm so grateful for that!

- I gave a talk in church on Sunday about obedience, and as I studied for it, I was struck once again by how important the small things are. If we'll just do that, we can always be strong in the gospel. It's not about how good we are at the big things like not killing, not lying to get a million dollars, stuff like that. It's actually about how diligent we are in daily scripture study, how committed we are to personal prayer every morning and evening. That's what God wants. He wants the other stuff too, obviously, but meaningful obedience that changes lives begins with the fundamentals.

All in all, it's been a good week! Never the easiest, but far from the hardest and exactly what I needed. Work hard this week at the small things, homies. God will bless you for it.

Spread the love!

May the glory ever be to God

Anziano Hansen

A fresh start

Mornin everyone

So! This week was actually another really hard one, but it's definitely on its way up. Here's the thing...this last week, we lost all our work! Yay! Three people moved away and we need to pass off one person to some other elders because we found out that he doesn't actually live in our area. Oh man. Isn't that just the greatest?😂😭 so, all in all, it's been a week full of finding, and it's been great!

"Just me and homeboy"

Here's the thing about Palermo: if you don't want to do finding, the city is big enough and there's enough things to do that you can always be doing something else even though it may not be the most productive. This week though during our weekly planning session, we were able to address that need and get over it. A big part to moving off of the plateaus on which we currently find ourselves is simply acknowledging that we've stopped, acknowledging that there's still progress to be made, and then committing -- and I mean REALLY committing -- to making that progress happen. We've got ourselves a nice fresh start ahead of us☺

From Zone Conference the previous week

The Fourth of July this past week was so fun!! We had tons of food with the senior couple as well as all the other missionaries in the zone. Here's the picture that we took!

Besides that, like I said, we just ended up doing quite a bit of finding. It's been fun to get back into the groove of it! We did a scambio (an....exchange? That's what they're called in English, right?) with the Bagheria anziani this weekend and it was a lot of fun! Saturday night, anziano Oswald and I bought €13 worth of chicken and fries and on top of it, the guy threw in some arancine for free.

"SO MUCH FOOD

"Under all those fries on the bottom is an entire chicken lol"

You'll have to look up what those are because I don't know how to describe them to you haha. In the end though, it ended up being wayyyyy to much food for the both of us and we felt sick, but it was worth it.

"Stuffs"

"More stuffs"

We also had a member talk in church the other day about peace in adversity. I really like that topic, because it's not peace FROM adversity, but peace IN adversity. When Christ said

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

he didn't mean to say that we won't have tribulation, but does promise us that in the midst of our afflictions, we will have joy and grace. And that's beautiful! One of my favorite quotes of all time as it (kind of) relates to this is by President Eyring (I think...I could be wrong!), who said (I could also be wrong on the quote...sorry I'm not on point today) "it's not to only weather the storms, but to choose the right while they rage."

(From October 2005 General Conference.

Talk: Spiritual Preparedness:Start Early and Be Steady)

With Christ, that's possible. And it's not only possible, it's joyful! And that's a beautiful message☺

Have a great week tutti!

VVB!

May the glory ever be to God

Anziano Hansen

hbd america 🇺🇸

So! Good morning! And happy Fourth of July to each of you! All of you

in America...PLEASE celebrate a ton for me. I promise I'll be there

next year👍🏼☺

"Anziano Friedman!"

Anyways, the email today is going to be pretty short. We've got a lot

of stuff going on! We're meeting up with all the other missionaries in

the zone to have a barbecue at the senior couples house, and it's

going to be so fun haha. I feel bad though for my Australian companion

who doesn't yet understand the beauty of the Fourth of July. Poor kid.

He'll learn quickly haha.

"The elders in the district waiting for the tram this morning"

"I just thought it was a pretty day:)"

Besides being busy today, there's not much that happened this past

week. It was actually pretty hard...one of the harder weeks of my

mission. But there's light at the end of the tunnel, and it's best

summed up in a quote I was reminded of that my sister sent me at the

beginning of the mission.

Your mindset is a definition of your faith in Christ.

"Anziano Vance!"

And that changed everything. I admit, I was having a hard time being

positive. A lot of things fell through and we definitely didn't use

our time as best we could've. That just got us even more down. But I

started studying a little bit about positive attitudes as well as the

atonement, and one of the greatest things I learned is that if we

really want it, Christ can not only help us to become clean, but he

can help us be stronger and create within us the desires we need to

get ourselves out of the slums. And what a blessing that is!

"Anziano Young!"

If we're really talking about freedom and liberty today, we can't

really talk about it without also mentioning Christ, who liberated and

freed us all. How grateful I am for him and his life and for the time

I have to represent him!

"Anziano Battaglia!"

Other small highlights from the week include

- playing soccer last night with some Italian teenagers in the parking

lot of the church for finding haha. We got one of the kids numbers

awhile ago and we invited him to come play last night, and he did!

That was fun :)

- zone conference and alllll the homies! We had a combined zone

conference with the Catania zone and I saw so many friends haha. I've

been in southern Italy a long time now, and the majority of the

missionaries I know are down here. It was so fun!

- trying to jump a fence and completely landing on my side on the

pavement hahaha. Luckily, no one saw it.

- doing a district blitz in Bagheria this past Monday

"Anziano Alexander!"

And that's about it! In closing, here's one last quote:

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that [we] can change [our]

circumstances by changing [our] attitudes of mind”

It's not our adversities or our challenges that define us, but how we

respond to them. And we can always choose to respond with positivity

and hope and faith!

"Anziano Peterson!"

Have a great week everyone :) and happy Fourth of July again!

VVB

May the glory ever be to God

Anziano Hansen