Reading and praying as a family -- incredible!

Hosford Family,

Yes, I know I am writing a week late, but at least you are getting something.  We just finished our p-day and another appointment. I finally found a bit of time to shoot off a letter. It’s the end of 19 months. I start 20 months tomorrow. I also am way past being here for 600 days. However, I am really enjoying myself. We go transfer calls last Saturday. I am staying with Anz. Prieto again which I am happy about and I am not district leader which is really nice. Unfortunately, Sister Rosato is leaving Catania for Bari. But to celebrate we went to Mount Etna again today. We went sledding with air mattresses today. They work very well and they go very fast. There were a lot of people there today, so we found our own personal hill.  Only problem was that there was enough room to stop. We dug a couple ditches to slow us down and we also used the bail-out strategy. I will show you the videos after the mission. Honestly, it really hasn’t felt like Christmas. I am enjoying the season as much as I can, but you only enjoy it so much as a missionary and I am ready to get back to work. We have a lot of investigators and contacts that told us to call after the holidays. In like a week, things will be getting back to normal.  We did see Francesca once last week.  She thinks she found her answer. We did a fast with her and left her some verses to read. She did the fast , read the verses, and nothing. So we left her with Joseph Smith history 1-20 after one of the following appointments and she read it and prayed.  She felt like just reading the scriptures after praying and asking about Joseph Smith. Well, she opened up to D&C 75 and read the introduction the same … the prophet Joseph Smith… she looked at it and laughed a little bit them read the rest of the section.  She thinks its an answer.  We told her to think about it more and to continue reading.  She is doing reall ywell.  Then we saw this other family.  The Zappala family. He wasn’t there but the kids and his wife were there.  They shared with us a couple things they are doing.  They are reading and praying as a family.   Which is incredible, them the mom by herself is really searching all these things. We just haven’t been able to see them as much as we want.  However, we are doing just fine.  Hope Christmas went well at home.  Love you all very much.  See each other soon!  -- Anziano Mitchell Hosford

Sledding at Mt. Etna

Dear Family and Friends

Sorry about not writing last week.  I wanted to but there were just a lot of problems. The work is going well still. We are seeing a bit of a Christmas slowdown. Not a whole lot, but a little bit. It’s also strange to think that the transfer is almost over. We get transfer calls next week. I am really hoping not to go, but sometimes you never know.

Last week we went to Siracusa and saw the Nutcracker. It was really good but a bit short. I finally understood it as well.  In Siracusa I got to see some friends like the Ardilo and Maranci families.  Then last p-day we had a bunch of missionaries here from zone conference and we went up to Etna and went sledding. We had a lot of fun, too!  There was quite a bit of snow, but the sun was out. I was up there in short sleeves and I was just fine, but as soon as you touched the snow, you had to put a jacket on cause it was cold. Our sisters here weren’t able to go because there wasn’t enough space in the cars, so we are going to go again this next week.

The work is going well.  We are helping about 5 of our investigators to quit smoking. We are having a harder time seeing some of our other investigators. Marco finally quit “quit” smoking.  He hasn’t smoked for like 3 weeks and will get the Aaronic priesthood this Sunday.

One of the members we are working with the most is having some problems with local leaders. I understand why, but its not a good reason to be doing what he has been doing. We were teaching some referrals from him and were planning on working with their family members. However, we with actions of this member we lost them as investigators.  However, we are working on getting them back.

We are finally starting to see progress from Francesca. She doesn’t have a huge testimony of the Book of Mormon but there is something. We are now working on Joseph Smith. We want to plan another date, but we really want to work on this testimony more. We have taught everything, we just need to finish the commandments.  Things are going well.

Then we have the married couple (Massimo and Anna) and the brother (Mario).  We have been focusing a lot on Anna and she agreed to a date February 2^nd. We need to work on her brother a little bit, but by Sunday we will have a date with him as well.  They are great investigators.  They have lots of questions.  It took us 3 appointments to explain the plan of salvation for example.

Things are fun here.  Really enjoying the work and hoping to stay longer.  Look forward to letters.  Love you all lots.  -- Mitchell

Sledding on Mt. Etna

Anziano Prieto

Anziano Longhurst

Anziano Kafel

At the Nutcracker ballet