The True Testimony of Christmas! Dec 21, 2011

Well, this week has been super awesome! We had a super awesome zone conference yesterday and even ended up doing a Christmas pageant, complete with cows, sheep and donkeys (missionaries in costume) lol. It was great! 

Not a lot has happened this week though. We've been doing some good work, finally starting to reach our goals, so that's super exciting. I feel like we've really hit a change as a companionship, where now we're both on the same page, heading towards the same objective, so that's way exciting! We've met some pretty awesome people in the meantime as well! Made almost 100 sugar cookies by now to give out to members and neighbors. haha it's about 1000x harder to deliver cookies without a car, but it's fun! 

Mainly, I'm just super excited from christmas. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and we've been trying to focus our lessons on it as well. But it just blows my mind at how much love Christ has for us. How much He suffered, everything He went through, and then He doesn't even ask for anything in return! All He asks us is that we take advantage of it for ourselves, so that we can be happy. AND He's our brother. He's literally ALWAYS there for us. And He knows how to help us become like Him. Literally nothing is impossible. These things probably sound redundant, and a lot of people will say these things, maybe even too often. And it's definitely hard to express myself through email (sometimes strategically placed italics and all-caps can help), but if I can leave you with one thing for Christmas, it's that Christ lives. I know it. He's real. It's not a thing created by men just because it's more convenient to believe in something bigger, it's reality. As real as this world we live in. Christ lives! Think about what that means, and then don't ever forget it.

I love you guys, have a wonderful christmas!

-Anziano Bushman

So here we have the "White Tree of Gondor" or I mean "of Siena"

Makin sugar cookies for members and friends. They actually turned out pretty good, I was surprised.

hahaha So apparently the Wolfgramm's have an annual christmas pageant, and so at zone conference they had chosen some missionaries to be different parts, and I got chosen to be an angel haha. I didn't really do much. Just stood there and looked pretty. Lol it was fun.

Anziano Scheurn and his comp came over last night after the zone conference to spend pday in siena with us, so last night we made some hot chocolate and chilled out by the fire. Probably the most fun thing that's ever happened! 

Blessed to stay in Siena! Dec 14, 2011

Well, tomorrow marks one year. 

Topic change! Things are looking pretty good here in Siena! As for Kochi, we're gradually learning how to speak Bengali (Bangledesh). Haha not really, but we're trying to figure out what chapters are in the Bengali Book of Mormon, because it's only "Selections of the Book of Mormon". So we're making some progress by having him read specific chapters. Oh, and we just learned that Akim speaks arabic (in addition to english) and so does Kochi. So we'll be utilizing him as a translator for sure! Akim is making great progress as well! They had a slight bump with Adam and Eve. When we mentioned that the Fall was part of God's Plan for us, they did not agree. But we were able to explain it for them after a little difficulty lol. It was good though. 

Bianka is coming to church, but they've still been way busy and haven't been able to meet with us.... So, hopefully this week we'll get to see them and start helping Bianka towards baptism. 

Maxwell is also coming to church and still making progress! We are going to have to start going out to his house to meet him every once and a while though, which will invlove about 40 min of bus to get there, and then to get back 40 min of walking and 10 min of bus. Hahah it'll be fun though! 

Also! We got a referral for an American family! The dad came to church this Sunday to check it out, and if we get to meet with them again this weekend, I think they're pretty much solid. They're definitely serious about the whole church thing. They want to find a good church, and they want their kids to grow up in it. So now we just need a chance to talk to them about it!!

All in all, I'm super glad that I get to stay in Siena to help all of these people come into the fold of God! It's an awesome work, and I'm super grateful for these two years I've been given to serve!!

vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!

Anziano Bushman

Oh, I had a pretty cool experience with my comp the other day: we were at the church for some reason, and I was watching the christmas devotional and he was off doing something else, but then when we left I found out what he was doing (see above). It's super nice to find that your efforts are being noticed!

My Gift to Christ this season! Dec 7, 2011

Buon Natale!


Investigator updates:

We met with Akim (Hakim, we just found out how to actually spell his name) and Kochi (Cucci) on thursday, and had a super great lesson! At first I was kind of worried, because Akim had just woken up, and people don't normally pay attention when they're tired.... BUT we went over the Plan of Salvation and get this- he took notes, and stopped us when he didn't understand something. That never happens!!! He was way into it! The Spirit was very strong, so we invited him to be baptized on the 7th of January, and he accepted! Kochi is still a little nervous because he doesn't understand english or italian very well, but he is still reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church!

Then, the next day we were finally able to meet with Maxwell. And we did the same exact thing with him, and taught him the plan of salvation. And although he didn't take notes, he loved the lesson, and accepted baptism also for the 7th of January! It was super awesome!!!!!

Bianka is still coming to church, but I'm still very concerned about her... she doesn't really seem interested in much of church, and they haven't been able to meet with us nearly as often lately... 

Cool experience:

Okay, so mom you mentioned something about how cool it is when we just do what the Lord asks us to do, because then he opens doors for us. Well, Sis Wolfgramm invited us to pick a Christlike attribute for this month, and to make it a "gift to Christ" by doing something everyday to improve on that attribute. Well, mine is patience, and I did not realize how impatient I am hahahaha. SO I kind of forgot about this challenge until the 4th of December, but since then I've been doing a lot better, and part of this challenge is to write down a specific thing that we did each day to improve, and so it's been in my mind now when I'm about to explode at someone "wait, maybe this could be my gift to Christ for today". So that gives me the desire to be patient and what not. SO, story time. We just finished a missionary exchange, and quite often I end up being the one that has to travel up to firenze (90min) to pick up and drop off my companion and then travel back down to Siena. BUT that's only part of it. So we had just gotten to Firenze and we were waiting for the other missionaries to get there, and so we call them and long story short they were more than an hour late (even though the city they were coming from is 10min from Firenze). I can't say I was too surprised, because they are almost always late, but this time, we had lessons to get to, and appointments that could not be moved. So, when I found out how late they were going to be I remembered the gift to Christ deal-io, and started seeing what I could do to rearrange appointments. All in all we got to all of our appointments after some adjusting, but the real miracle is the train ride home. So the train we ended up taking was pretty sweet. We grabbed the first seats we found, and about 5 min later some girl sat down across the aisle from us. So, with very little effort we started talking, and she completely opened up to us about how she's trying to come closer to Christ, and we just had a great 90 min conversation with her! We got her number, gave her a book of Mormon, and she welcomely committed to reading it! And, she wants to bring a friend the next time we meet! Sweet!!!

So yeah. Moral of the story: do what God (and his servants, it is the same) tells you to. You won't regret it. 

vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!!!

-Anziano Bushman

Bahahaha, We found a super old missionary slide reel in our closet, and it's got all kinds of messages, with synchronized cassette tapes as well for the audio! hahahaha! In fact, dad, did you ever use these? Some of them have copyrights around 1976ish, so right before your mission. 

This is our ward council. Pretty epic, huh? 

Bianka's Baptism!!!

Decorating the Christmas tree!!!

Anz Palmer & Me, Dec 2011

Man, I love baptisms! Nov 30, 2011

Lorena got baptized!!!!!! Everything went perfect! We spent a good amount of time friday night cleaning the church with several other members due to a bunch of remodelling that's been going on in the church, and then saturday morning we got to the church at 8am to try and heat up the water a little bit lol.... Get this: So since the hot water in the church runs out every 2min, we have to boil pots of water, and then pour it in the font to try and counteract the cold water. After about 30 large pots of boiling water, however, I'm not so sure anything changed. Lol nor did the water heat up at Tina's baptism. Hahaha so I don't know that we'll be trying that again. It was fun though. And it was Anziano Palmer performing the ordinance anyways, so no worries =) I made chocolate chip cookies for afterwards, and also Lorena and Bianka brought some cookies from a bakery and a little tostada (looks like pie, but it's not) and Sorella Feri brought some AMAZING pastries from some local bakery, that were probably on the more expensive end, and they were definitely worth it! We had 12 people all together at the baptism, which, when I first got here we only had 12 total people in church, so that was a huge success! Maxwell, an investigator of ours, was also there! Lorena was so happy!!! Man, I love baptisms. Then we got to spend a good amount of time cleaning the church again, and getting it ready for Sunday.

Man, and Sunday was super awesome as well!! We had two investigators come back to church! John and Hakim, who Anz Lehnardt and I taught for a while, but who then decided that they preferred their church, came back! They were very happy to see me lol or maybe they just love saying "Bushman", but nonetheless, I got a warm welcome from them, and then even more so yesterday when we went over to their house to teach them. Anyways, back to sunday, so we had a gospel principles class with Lorena, Bianka, Tina, Cucci, John, and Hakim along with Presidente Fergnani, and one of Pres Wolfgramm's counselor's that was visiting Siena. So we taught them all about the Gift of The Holy Ghost in preparation for them witnessing Lorena's receiving of the holy ghost in the next hour. It was super awesome!!! Anz Palmer also confirmed her a member. 

So, yeah, they're awesome. 

Just a couple more things before I have to get going, Hakim told us yesterday when we met with him that he wants to get baptized! He said that he did like Joseph Smith did, and has been reading the Book of Mormon for 2-3 months, and now he wants to "become a full member"! So we're super excited for him! Also, we started teaching a partial member family, of which 2 of the 4 members were baptized just about 6 months ago. The two that we're working with are Malvina and Romina. And they both are showing sincere desire to learn! So we are being greatly blessed down here in Siena to be able to see the work progress like it never has here! The members are also responding very positively! After turning us down all the time when we've asked them to come to appointments with us and whatnot, they are now asking us when we have appointments that they can come to! It's sweet!!!!

Oh, and also I got an email from Luca (we baptized him in Ravenna) so that was way exciting as well!

vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!

Anziano Bushman