his will

​Carissima famiglia, 

First news of the week, I have finally recieved my Permesso di Soggiorno!! Which pretty much means 1) I can now rest peacefully at night knowing I am "allowed" to be here and 2) because I got my Permesso in Trapani I'm pretty much considered a local and I therefore qualify for a sweet discount on the chairlift up to the beautiful city Erice on top of mountain next to Trapani. I already went there once with my last companion but with over 100 GB of space for pictures on my memory card and the "local" discount, who could say no? Not me!!! I will send pictures later...

This week I learned many lessons. One being, if you need to catch a train that leaves at 8:00 in the morning and you have to get ready, pack lunches, and walk 45 minutes to the train station, you should probably wake up earlier than 6:30! Thank goodness Heavenly Father forgives us and helps us still because as we were rushing hopelessly late to the train station we happened to pass by a certain bus stop right as a certain bus that would take us near the train station miraculously happened to come by. Enough said, we were able to make the train! This appointment was with a less-active who we have been trying to meet with for over a month because he's been so busy and unavailable. The next train wouldn't have come until noon and so we would've missed our lesson that morning if we hadn't made the 8:00 train. 

This week I have also come to see what it means to mourn with those who mourn and to stand with those who are in need of comfort. We taught another less-active in Mazara del Vallo this week too. He cannot walk anymore so he is confined to a wheelchair. We taught about prayer and how you should thank God for things he has given you and then ask for blessings. He just kept saying over and over again, "All I pray for is to be healed..." Thinking he just maybe wasn't understanding I kept re-explaining how he can also pray for other things. It took me a bit before I understood what he was saying. With tears in his eyes, this 65 year old man said, "That's all I pray for. That's all I ask. I just ask God to give me healing. That's ALL I ask." It broke my heart to see him like that. He has such an innocent understanding of prayer and God. We tried to comfort him as much as we could by bearing testimony of Jesus Christ and the importance of respecting God's will in all things. 

This week we went all the way over to Catania for stake conference. During stake conference a man gave a talk and talked about how often we may have the faith to be healed but then he asked the question, "Do we have the faith to NOT be healed?" The point of his question was profound as he went on to explain how so often we ask for things that we want or what we think we need, but God doesn't always give them to us because it's not what HE wants. We have to believe that what God wants for us is really the best. If we have faith in God, we can have faith that following Him and sacfricing our will for His really is better. 

I love you all! Have a good week!
Thank you, Anziano Stucki.