Friday, October 4, 2013

Ciao October 2, 2013


Ciao tutti!!!

I'm going to start with sports this week. Yes Dad, please tell me about BYU volleyball and basketball. I have a really good friend on the volleyball team (shout out to Sam!!) and we now know that one girl who's name I can't remember at the moment on the basketball team. I'm excited about the football win, and sad about the soccer loss. Last year was just so great, but I am still a dedicated fan none the less, so keep the updates coming! I really want to know about the playoffs as long as the Dodgers are in it. After that, I probably won't have any interest. haha. 

The weather right now is really nice here. We have a lot of rain about one of week or so, but besides that, it's perfect. But starting Saturday we move off summer schedule here, so that means 6:30 wake up and suits to meetings. That means that winter will soon be upon us. I have a feeling that I'm going somewhere really cold this winter, but who knows. We'll see what happens! 

 Working with less actives is probably one of the best uses of missionary work, because you can always find referrals from them. Tell the TO3 Ward to keep on working hard, I love them and send my support. 

I'm really glad to hear that you are reading out of Predicare il Mio Vangelo. That book is inspired and the common misconception is that it is only for missionaries. That is WRONG!!!!!! Every member should read PMV, so that they understand their role in helping the missionaries. We just did a training on the Work of Salvation with our ward, so I just want to stress the importance of members understanding their role in missionary work. It is critical. Invite invite invite!!! Fellowship everyone. Share the gospel as much as possible with everyone! Just like Elder Holland said, "an invitation extended with love will never appear offensive".

We are super excited for conference here. It's going to be weird because the times are super different, but I'm really excited. Unfortunately we don't get Sunday afternoon session here, so I'm going to miss Elder Hamilton's talk. I'm going to try and see if we can watch it in District meeting the next day. If not, I can watch it next P-day or something. I want to challenge you all to have a question in your heart when you watch conference, and if you listen hard enough, I promise you will receive the answer. I also want to invite all of my non member friends, yes you know who you are. Its not just for the members of the church, its for everyone! I'm sure my family would be more than happy to have you over to watch with them. I testify that their really is a living prophet on the Earth today, and we can hear from him, the things that our loving Heavenly Father wants us to know in these perilous times. I pray for you all the time and I love you all so much. Don't be afraid to ask questions. 

I want to share a really special experience I had this week. We were calling old potentials out of the area book with really not a lot of success. We went to get ready to leave when I said that we should just call one more. We called them and found a really awesome woman who had met the missionaries before and read the Book of Mormon. She lives in Austria right now, but is here for vacation. We met her that night and had an amazing lesson. We didn't really know what to teach her, so we got to the church early and prayed. We then thought that we should show her part of the movie Together Forever, so we ran back home and grabbed it. When she got there, the Spirit told us to do something completely different. It's funny how the spirit works, and we may not understand it, but if we head its promptings, we will know what we need to do, and what we need to say. We had a really powerful lesson with her and at the end of the lesson we were inspired to give her a blessing. She is really trying to overcome this difficult time in her life and she is honestly seeking for answers. I know that they Lord gave her these trials, so that she could be humble, and now the savior and this gospel can help bring her up even higher than before. It really made us think of Alma 32 where Alma rejoices because the people were made humble and so he knew that they would accept the gospel. The moral of this story is to follow the spirit. He will never guide you astray. If we are humble and willing to heed the promptings we receive, we will be blessed and guided in our lives.

In other random news, I love Ecuadorean food. It is so good. I have eaten so much rice, beans, and chicken here, and it is always good!!! Jason, I know you ate good on your mission. Oh man, I love when members feed us. Its the best! haha. Sorry there aren't any picture this week. We wanted to go to this awesome little town called Portofino today, but we missed our train, so we are just going bowling again, but this time with the Capi Zona! Next week I think we are going to Portofino, so we'll see. Either way, there will be pictures.

Another random story. So we planned this activity for people to come to the church and find out more about the church. we planned to watch the Restoration film and have a question and answer session. So we passed out about 200 plus biglitini over about a month, and then literally no one, and I mean NO ONE showed up. We know why it failed though. We didn't include the members! So next time, we are really going to use the members better. haha. Moral of the story, members are really important in missionary work!

I want to end this email with a really lame, but awesome thing I realized this past week or so. So one night we were walking and I saw this cat, so I spoke to it naturally. Then Anziano Salmon asked me why I said "ciao", so I said, "normally cats say "meow", but the cats here in Italy are Italian, so they say "ciao"". Yes, I know its pretty lame. Anziano Salmon thought I was crazy, but I'm convinced that it works. Communque...Thank you everyone for your letters this week! I love hearing from you and I can't wait to hear from you all next week. I really hope I hear from some people saying how awesome conference was, yes, you know who you are. Just go watch one session. I promise its worth it. Please tell Patrick again to email me, and please send me recipes!!!! I am out of cooking ideas!!! I need new ideas! 

Vi voglio tantissimo bene!!!
Anziano Langlois

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