Italy

My first full week in Ragusa is officially over and now the work has finally started! We had to do a bunch of permesso stuff this week so I could be legal in this country and it took forever but oh well. We teach an English course to a lot of people every Tuesday and Thursday and it's pretty exciting since the people don't know how to speak English and I don't know how to speak Italian ha. But the language is coming pretty well. I can do all the lessons and am working on being able to have normal conversations which I can do with missionaries because they speak clear and correct but the locals don't always do that so I'm working on it. We taught a couple different lessons this week and I thought they went pretty well. We have one girl on for a bap date but she has to show up for church and another mother and daughter who are super ready and exempting all the lessons that we passed off to the sisters. We're working and praying for all the others and hopefully they have progress.
My companion gave a really good talk at church on Sunday about member missionary work. His mom was converted by missionaries so he has a close tie to the work were doing. Anziano Martin is really cool and I'm glad he is my trainer. He has 7 kids in his family and he's number 5. He is short and really buff so hopefully we eat healthy. Anziano Martin loves motorcycles and soccer. He went to BYU for a semester and then left on the mission. He has only been on the mission for 8 and a half months and served in rome before ragusa. He had a really great trainer and then 2 super hard companions after that. He hasn't had a ton of success on the mission but we seem to be doing really great here. We are going to try and focus this next week on member missionary work and getting them excited to participate and share the gospel.

After he gave his talk a lady came up to us and said she has had this nonmember boy friend for 10 years and they want to get married but she wants to get married in the temple. So she has been praying for the right time and the right missionaries to help teach here fiancé and after hearing my companions talk and my testimony last week, she wants us to do it which is an honor. Were going to fast and pray a lot to be able to teach him the way the lord wants us to.

But yeah the mission is great and our other investigators are doing fine. We had a San Giovanni festival in Ragusa (the catholics holiday for John the Baptist) and handed out tons of pass along and english course cards. Everyone in Ragusa came out so hopefully we get some new contacts.

The mission is great and I love the work,

Anziano Whiting

Fesival

Buddhist temple we visited with ward mission leader Salvo

Italy

So I made it safely to Italy and it's incredible! But first on Sunday
I gave a talk with the other writings and then sang with the Nashville
tribute band for devotional. It was super spiritual.
Then we got up early on Monday and took the train to the airport and
flew all the way until Tuesday. We stopped in New York and I talked
with this really cool guy from India. And after we went and saw the
temple Tuesday night. It's not done yet but there working on it. We
stayed at the villa with the mission president and his wife that
night. They had to do interviews and give us iPads the next day so we
spent time at the church and the colosseum. We then got our golden
envelopes with our areas and trainers and I was assigned to serve with
anziano Martin in ragussa which is this older city in the southern
half of Sicily. So I went on a train all Thursday down through Italy
and I got zero sleep for 4 days but it was fun. I made a lot of
friends with the missionaries.
I got to Catania,which is my zone headquarters and it was really late
so my trainer and I stayed with the zone leader in Catania. I did get
to hand out my first Book of Mormon that night and eat some real
Italian food. They say that Sicily has the best food so I got lucky
with that. We came to ragussa the next day and got everything in our
apartment which took like another day. We have an investigator whose
moving to Canada but we went and had horse burgers with him that night
and he's excited and sad to leave. He's super intelligent and I'm sad
he's taking off so soon.  He has little questions that aren't so
important that he gets caught up in.
Saturday we went to the hospital because one of the sisters converts
husband died and we helped her with that. We actually went to the
funeral today too and I just felt so sorry for all the people. We
talked to some guys there and they might want to take the missionary
discussions so that part was good. They have these houses for everyone
when people die which is really different from America. It must be
super hard for these people to have to pay for the funeral.
The church here is kinda big, we have one of the few stand alone
chapels in Italy and it looks like a doll house haha. :) I like it
though. I bore my testimony in Italian on Sunday and that was an
adventure with my limited vocabulary.  I did fine though and
understood most of what people said. The people down here have a nice
accent that I get to deal with.
My comp is super sweet, he's from Provo and went to byu for a year. He
learned the language really fast so hopefully I can replicate it. We
get to eat dinners at members houses on Sunday's and it's super good
and super huge. We ate yesterday with these old people that are super
funny. It'll be better when I can communicate more and let my
personality show but I know the lord will bless me as I use what I
have to communicate with his children.
I love and miss you all
Anziano Whiting

Since we got Ipads in our area we can have use the cloud albums to upload pictures throughout the week. So the pictures I take with my ipad will be uploaded whenever I get wifi. I won't be able to comment to anyone unless its pday but you would be able to see more pictures. So let me know if anyone else wants to be in the photo group and you would need an apple device.

Thanks love Anziano Whiting

The mainland

Arrival in Rome!

Hey mom, i made it safe. Here are some of the pictures we got from today. Sister Waddoups is also going to post a lot of the pics on the blog.

The Rome Italy temple site

Me and President and Sister Waddoups

Final Week at the MTC

The branch president gave us a short P-Day today to do laundry and write emails so here goes. I taught my last lessons on Thursday and it was really cool because we taught Concetta who got 'baptized' about getting sealed in the temple to her dead spouse so they could live together for ever. It was really spiritual and something I hope I get to do in the mission field. On friday we had in field training all day and I had a blast. We did different workshops and scenarios to practice for when were actually in the field next week. It was weird teaching in English for the first time in forever. I feel like I would have done a better good in Italian which is a good sign. Today we just have culture day which is where our teachers will talk about Italy and then will have to say good bye. I'll send the last pictures from today later tonight. Then tomorrow will be the final church before Rome and I'm almost certain I'm going to speak just because I haven't yet and Brother Whiting is in the Branch Presidency. They choose randomly every week and I've just dodged the bullet so far.

The flight will be all day on monday and I'll show up in Italy Tuesday and then get assigned to an area and head right out to it. I'm trying not to want to serve in certain areas but it sounds like there's a spot in Sicily and that would be an amazing first area. I'd be happy with anywhere in Italy.

Ciao and I'll write again whenever I have P-Day and I'll have a ton of pictures ha.

Anziano Whiting

Our MTC teacher

Our MTC district with our MTC teachers

Our MTC teacher

Una Settimana Piu alla MTC!!!!

The sentence above just means I have one more week at the mtc and then I'll be in Italy! So this past week has actually been really fun. I watched a really cool devotional sunday night given by Holland almost 10 years ago. He talked a lot about how we need to be a missionary our whole lives and not just on the mission. And then also the importance of submitting ourselves to God's will which is really vital for someone like me who is trying to become a missionary everyday. We got to skype with an actual italian this last week for trc and it was sweet. He enjoyed our message and gave us some good tips. On monday, my zone also got to host the elderly couples that are coming in and get them ready to serve on their missions. I met a couple from Star Valley and even ate dinner with them when I saw them sitting by us in the cafeteria. They're going to the Brazil MTC to be the medical professionals so that'll be fun for them.

This week I also got as close to a girl as I've been in 6 weeks, ha we were playing volleyball and someone hit it long and I ran for the ball and hit it (perfect set) and just demolished the girl. I felt so bad since I did not see her at all. On well. I've been able to see a lot of close friends which has been really cool to see that my friends are making the same decision to serve the lord on missions. 

We got flight plans this week and my group takes off at 6 to go to the airport and then its a direct flight to italy. Its the first time they have had a direct flight to italy for the missionaries so I feel really blessed. My companion is also the travel leader so he gets to try and corral all of us onto a plane. We saw some baptisms in the ocean in areas of the rome mission so I am totally stocked.

Anyway love you guys 

Ciao

Com amore

Anziano Whiting

PS I might get an extra P-day saturday because I'll miss mine next week since I'll be on a plane. And in Italy the missionaries write home on mondays not wednesdays.

MTC Week 4

The mtc is starting to fly by and I can't believe it's already like 2 weeks until I get to go to Italy! I'm pretty stocked even though I've been enjoying my time more at the mtc. Last night we got to hear Russel M Nelson speech and it was soooo good. He is the President of the Quorom of the 12 Apostles who are divine witnesses of Jesus Christ. I sang in the choir for him and it was really spiritual. He talked about how we need to be epistles of the lord on our missions. President Nelson had some really cool analogies from surgery to the stripling warriors. And we also got to see the human side of him from his sense of humor.

Another interesting thing from this week was service. We do and hour and 15 minutes of service every week and this saturday we were doing it and the bathroom flooded. So anziano thompson, anziano lui (my Polynesian boy) and I all jumped in there and started getting all the water and other wonderful material draining. Then when we got it cleaned and bleached the bathroom flooded again so we cleaned it all over and made a channel for the water to flow right into the drain that I pried open with a screwdriver until someone could go turn the water off. We got it figured out though. 

Anyway, I love the mission and I love Italian. I can't wait to help people come unto Christ and hope everyone is doing well.

Love

Anziano Whiting

Italian flag made out of lights