A horrible, no good, very bad week ... even in Italy

Hosford Family and Friends,

I hit my 11-month mark two days ago and I didn't even think about it until I was emailing the day after. Last week we had a great week. We saw a lot of success doing house, we received some good contacts, and really just had a great week teaching lessons.  After about 4 weeks of not having an investigator in Church, we finally had one.  His name is Fabio.  He has your typical problems with depression, but we are helping him get out of it.  Normally he sits in the house, but after meeting with us a couple times he's started leaving his house to fish, to go on walks and various things. Only problem with him (besides smoking) is that he doesn't understand things the best which means we have to keep it simple. However he is very very sensitive to the Spirit which is awesome. So we are helping him and tyring to integrate him into the ward. Last week we met with some new people and just gave our name to a lot of people, made a lot of calls, and such We had one bad day where 3 appointments didn't happen and destroyed our whole night literally.  However, last week was a great week.

This week has been actually just really a horrible week in the sense of dropped appointments and our schedule has been off.  We received 5 appointments for Wednesday (4 new contacts lessons and 1 member lesson). 3 of the appointments were dropped just destroying our P-day and our will. Sad thing is that it carried over to today. We finished our P-day and just had another not great day. However Sunny did email me which made up for it a bit and we don't have to wear jackets anymore which is really nice.

I received like two weeks of mail in like two days (I hadn't received a letter in about a week, then they all came.) So now we are working on a couple projects besides our work. We are trying to make a member book. We just need photos of all our active members. We are also doing publicity work for our English course, which is a boatload of wasted time. So if we have to waste time we want make sure we waste time with lots of people at least. Really the work here is going fine, we just need to call our investigators and set up appointments. We are just tired of investigators not coming to them.

Well I am excited for general conference.  It will be a nice break this weekend.  I hope everyone is well at home.  Write to me more!!  Love everyone -- Anziano Hosford

PS - Tell Amy and Megan sorry about no letter for them this time, but I will try and write one next week.  I am trying to get this letter out tomorrow and don't have a lot of time.  Also ask Megan why she sent me the dollar.  I am a bit confused by that.

Fillo Maranci was like Moroni

Hosford Family,

Sorry its been a little over a week since I last wrote, but its probably been one of the worst weeks in my life. We weren't able to work much because of certain events.

Monday - companion was sick and last day we saw Fillo Maranci
Tuesday - zone conference and English course and last day I talked to Fillo Maranci
Wednesday - new investigator and we search for for people
Thursday - Maraci hospitalized, research/finding, English course
Friday - Fillo Maranci died at the hospital -- we didn't do anything
Saturday - funeral and we did a display of the church in Ortigia
Sunday - church then we went to Noto

That's what we did last week.  Because of the untimely death of Fillo Maranci we lost a lot of time and more importantly, the will do do this work for a couple days. It really was a horrible week.  I was fortunate enough to speak at his funeral.  I shared Alma 48:17, then talked about an experience that we had that showed that Fillo Maranci was like Moroni, then I read the verse one last time with Fillo Maranci's name in the verse instead. I really miss him. He meant a lot to me. However, we did get to inow the inactive side of his family very well.  Then this guy named Fillo Ardito told me on Sunday that he wants to be rebaptized. However, we don't know if it will be soon or in about 3 months. It makes me happy because we have worked with him since I arrived here. I hope we see changes in the ward as well with the passing of Fillo Maranci. However, despite his passing, we are finally moving on. We think that he got his mission call to the Spirit Prison West:  Italian speaking.  So we get to work with him. 

Work here:  The work is going pretty well.  We stopped the 21-Day-Promise for now, but we need to follow up better with the people whom we have done it with.

Now we are working with the girl friend of a less active. We had the restoration lesson with her today. She has come to church for two weeks and she is reading which makes us very happy. Right now in our district we are going for a baptismal date. the ward needs one we think. She is coming along.

Then there is Marysela from the Philippines who came to Church and liked it. We have another appointment with her on Thursday. We don't know if she has been reading or not, but we will know soon.

Salvatore has been dropped. He took offense when the bishop asked him why he was in church.  Really dumb? Yes, but it doesn't bother me because Salvatore was a bit crazy.

We have a good amount of contacts right now and the news about English course has gotten out because more people are starting to recognize us as the English course people. I have given out about 400 English course pass-along cards. So we are hoping for growth just haven't seen it yet.  The word is out though.

Ruth and Amy both sent me letters. Thank them both for their letters. Hopefully, I will talk with Amy tomorrow with email. Ruth asked me a question about being happy and the scriptural insight she had. My thoughts are as follows: our beliefs are central and key to every decision we make everyday. Knowing what we know about this life why be unhappy, there is too much to be happy about and after the death of Fillo Maranci we learn that life is short and precious. Then 2 Nephi 2:25 says that we are here for you ... happiness and when combined with 1 Nephi 16 we see the attitude we need to have ... a positive one. With a positive attitude we will let our beliefs dictate our decisions and we will be happy as long as we make good choices. If you could send that to her.

Well I look forward to talking to you all tomorrow.  We receive transfer calls Saturday and I really don't want to go right now.  But love everyone at home and look forward to letters that might be sent to me.  Have a great week. -- Anz. Hosford

Mental and physical exhaustion

Dear Family and Friends,

Let me first say, I am exhausted! The last two weeks have been hard in the sense of the work here, but I have enjoyed it! I am just hitting a point of mental and physical exhaustion that comes from walking everywhere and not teaching a whole lot. It’s been a big wear on me because I love these families and individuals and we just haven’t been able to meet with them. There is that and my language skills were a little sloppy. I think I am leaving this rut of exhaustion because we have seen some miracles the past couple days.

-First, we have this new investigator named Salvatore who talks a lot about stuff non gospel related and it’s hard to have formal discussions. Either way he is reading the Book of Mormon and his friend is this old RM. He is going  to arrange a time for all of us to talk which is pretty cool.

-Second, we are working with this less active sister who has a large family. One of her granddaughters comes to church with her and really likes church and we are about to start the teaching process with her.

-Third, on Monday we were walking around and we saw this guy named Mario who is less active and is just having a hard time with life right now. We read the part in 1 Nefi 16 where Nefi breaks his bow and what we can learn from that story. Well, by the end of the meeting, he was telling us and saying to himself that he is going to build his own bow which I believe gave him a hope. We will see what happens with him.

-Fourth, we tried passing by this one referral from the sisters and actually it was the wrong house (we found that out tonight) and there was an evil woman there tonight who wouldn’t let us talk to this kid. I hope I outsmarted the devil woman by giving a passalong card to a neighbor who said she would give it to the kid for us. So while ringing on the wrong doorbell we decided to do house and found this woman whose husband had recently died. She wasn’t super interested but wants us to come back another time with a talk from President Monson because she is curious about this prophet.

-Last, we received a member referral and finally met with him. We shared a brief message and did a lesson 0 (introductory lesson) and he was really touched by it. He has many problems with health, friends, work, etc. and his beliefs that we can help. We are seeing him tomorrow and hopefully two or three times a week.

Really in 2 days we saw 5 miracles. Which we really needed for the work. I really needed personally as well. It didn’t help me sleep better. However, it was an answer to my prayers and all I pray about is the work here. It’s the most important thing to me and I love it. Well I hope everything is well at home. Love everyone and write me more!! I love letters. They brighten the days here.

Anziano Hosford

Finished my first journal

Dear Family and Friends,

How is everyone doing? Well I hope. Things have kind of slowed down here. Lately a lot of our investigators have been busy, so we moved back to doing finding while trying to remain in contact with them. We have a bunch of contacts right now from doing house that we need to pass back by in the next couple days. Lately I have been handing out lots of family proclamations with the hope that someone gives us a call about it.

We still have our typical work with investigators which si slow, but this week (Monday) we met the whole family of one of our less actives.  We were doing house and met her mom, 2 daughters, and some of those daughters’ children. I met her son and last daughter at an appointment we had with the mom (Sorella Caruso) and we talked with various members of the family.

(Here he drew a diagram of the family …)

We are working with or starting to work with one of the granddaughters.  There are two twins (about 16 years old) that are investigating us instead of the church.  It’s fun working with them.

We are still working very hard to grow our teaching pool.  It just takes more time but we still have a little something.

So I finished my first journal on Sunday and I finished the Isaiah yesterday.  Not really a lot to report on.

Send me letters!  Anziano Hosford

Eaten 79 pizzas!

Hosford Family,

Last Saturday was quite the day. We received transfer calls.  My companion and myself are both staying. However, I am district leader which I am kind of excited for. I already have everything ready for the first meeting. I am taking all the things that I have from past district leaders and I'm making my own meeting. So one of the sisters left and we got a new one from France. I forgot her name and where in France.

We had quite the week last week with finding people and teaching lessons to investigators and less actives. However, this week has just been really slow. We had a couple lessons fall through (like 5) and a lot of people have been busy this week.  We are hoping for the best for next week thought. This will make the only week that we didn't show improvements, but it still better than our first two weeks. However, we have had a lot of member work this week and did perform a lot of service with/for them.

I hope that pizza place in Charlotte is good.  I will tell you it its true or not when I come home.  Two signs that you can tell if its real Napoli pizza is:  needs to be made in an oven with wood ... wood oven and the sauce, choose, and oil need to make it soupy.  I have my doubts about it.  Now I have eaten 79 pizzas. I have slowed down because the pizza here isn't as good.  We are going back to Napoli soon so I can eat one which makes me happy.

We weren't able to see Rita this week. Her son opened a hair salon and has been really, really busy. I will call her.  I know her family struggles. Two sons don't have work and one just opened a salon. She has two 20-year-old twins and a 20 year old son. They are fantastic. I hop ewe can see them this week.

Aka - we dropped him.  He has missed about 5 appointments, hasn't been to church in like two weeks, and we caught him with cigarettes complaining about having no money. I don't care as much about the cigarettes and the church as the missed appointments when people miss appointments.  Its the only thing that pisses me off.

So Instead we are making contacts and are actually a little behind right now with that and referrals. We have done a bit of house lately. We need to go find more contacts.

Zone conference was nice. Look at dad's email for what I said about it.

For numbers here, the standard of excellence is 21 lessons a week no including less active lessons.  I haven't known anyone to do it. The most lessons I have done in a week was 12 with less active lessons (last week, before it was 11 with my trainer).  A lesson is 2 prayers and one gospel principle at least.  The only thing our mission president really wants is us to have two new investigators every week. The mission average is like 1 per companionship every week. We have done 11 in five weeks.  We were going for 18 this transfer.  We will do it next transfer.  Well, that's it from me. Not a lot going on and we need to find.  Love everyone. Talk to everyone on Wednesday.  -- Anziano Mitchell Hosford