The Tower Challenge

Ciao mom and dad!
   First I wanted to share this quick story of our district getting in trouble at the MTC. For lunch one day there wasn't really any appealing food so our district decided to eat this whole tower of cereal. In total it was 55 bowls of cereal to finish with a district of 10 people. I ate the least since we were eating coco puffs, so I only had two bowls while others ate like 8 or 10 bowls! haha it was crazy gross, two elders were in the bathroom throwing up that night and two sisters were so sick they didn't come to class the next day! And to cap it off, the cafeteria saw us doing the "tower challenge" so they called the MTC president who called our branch president who called our zone leaders who called our district leader. We were given a lecture on how we're wasting church funds and I felt so bad even though I only ate two bowls of cereal! You really feel guilty when you feel you wasted someone's fast offerings.
   Now the other day we received our flight plans! We fly to Chicago then to London then off to Rome to receive our assigned areas! Then following that we skyped a church member and shared a lesson with him. Since he goes to church every Sunday we shared how to receive revelation at church so we committed him to go to church with a question in mind for the Spirit to answer.
   Sunday night we had a devotional by Joseph A. Jenkins who discussed our relationship with Christ. He stated how we've become too casual in our appearance and language which really hit me hard. It's really easy to speak how others in high school speak but I challenge you (Reece & Robby) to avoid using language that you wouldn't use in front of Mom! Another thing is in our prayers, try not to use "you/your" in place of thee & thine because we really need to show respect to our Savior. Christ isn't just a man, He's a God! I encourage you all to use your modern day Leahona's: Apostolic council, prayer, scriptures. I finally finished the Book of Mormon here! There are too many great scriptures so take Ryan's advice and read that book as oft as you can! Then use the New testament to back up everything you find! We had another devotional where Tad R. Callister talked about the NT as the blueprint of the true church.
So today was the last time I get to go to the Temple for forever since I hear the Rome Temple is delayed. Hopefully it finishes while I'm still serving. Two years is a long time without a temple session! Also today we received a change of plans notice where we have to leave 5:50 in the morning for the airport. Non buono. But I get to call you at the Salt Lake airport so I'll give dad's cell a call if he's not too busy working since his is the only number I remember. Mom I'll call your cell as well but I don't remember your classroom number so hopefully I can catch you at a good time. I bought a $5 card for the airport which has like 500 minutes so I have plenty of time to talk but don't know how long they want us talking for so we'll see how it goes.
Love, Anziano LaFaye

MTC week 2

Hey famiglia!

Things have settled down now that I'm a 2 week veteran at the MTC. I saw Elder Taylor Polatis from St. George Utah!! I don't know if you remember him but we played soccer together. I didn't have my camera on me though so no picture with him sadly, but if you remember what he looks like from Bloomington Elementary School, he looks exactly the same except for he is super tall. I'll try to find him again before he leaves. Tough news about the surgery for Reece, tell them to give you an awesome scar to show off. Robby focus with that kicking man, it's incredibly easy to mess up big time if you do one little thing wrong. That sounds like it could apply to the gospel, I think I'll use that comparison in one of my lessons. So I give two- one hour long lessons a week and I've become pretty good at it so teaching certainly isn't nerve racking anymore. Being District Leader has its ups and downs. The Up side: I get to be the final decision in everything haha but the down side is dealing with Elders who have girl problems. One Elder has a girlfriend here, no buono. And another Elder is a big time player, flirts with literally every girl he shakes hands with. We had a sub teacher one day and the teacher called him out on it! Made my job a little bit easier! The church seriously needs to consider having separate MTC's. One for Elders and one for sisters, in Provo at least. So last night we had a devotional and Elder Russell M. Nelson spoke to us! Not only that but mi collega and I had front row seats! We made a sweet deal with a security guard who sits up front every devotional so we'll have front row seats the rest of our stay here :) He had the best, shortest quote ever: "Have character, don't be one." As missionaries we need to have Christ-like attributes, we shouldn't be goofing around being a character because it certainly withdraws the attention away from our Savior to us. It should be the other way around. All the attention should be around Christ, not us. Okay, we have this training resource center (TRC) where we speak Italian to random people who also served in Italy, and they judge our language skills from us teaching them lessons. Talk about intimidating! So Anziano Calchera and I said a prayer before we went into our first lesson which was on the Atonement. I thought it was a very hard lesson to teach but we did fantastic! Words just came to me and I was speaking descently smooth without thinking about what I was going to say, but our second lesson was on families. Sounds like a simple lesson right? Nope, it was a terrible lesson and we got a harsh review of our lesson. We were thinking about what went wrong forever, turns out we forgot to say a prayer before our second lesson. Thinking back on that I definitely noticed a difference in the personal connection we made from the first lesson to the next. It may sound lame but my testimony of prayer has grown on a large scale here at the MTC! Next topic, you guys have to look up this talk by Elder Bednar called Character of Christ. Incredible!! Don't really have time to get into it but it changed my perspective on how to serve a mission big time! I just realized I'm using a lot of exclamation marks, apparently I'm really excited about being a missionary.

Alright can you keep the NBA updates coming til it's over? After that you can cut me off ha and also can you check my credit card account? My payment never showed up on the computer before I left so I never got around to that. I hope you got my letter about some things I'd like, if not here's some: my college backpack, my oil containers from my dressor, some family pictures and I forget anything else I said. I have some pictures, hope you enjoy!

Ciao!

Anziano LaFaye

MTC Week 1

Ciao madre!
No I won't be able to skype or call here at the MTC. I won't be able to talk until I'm at the airport in 5 weeks. MTC rules are crazy strict here! But for good purposes. Sooo Happy Mothers' Day! Anywho, my italiano is coming along pretty well, I'm able to roll my R's now so the gift of Tongues is a real thing! I've had to teach lessons in italian almost everyday now. We started teaching the second day we were here, che nervoso! I'm able to pray and bear testimony in complete Italian now even though my vocabulary isn't very broad, I know my prayer is still meaningful. Speaking of prayer, I've never prayed so many times in my life! I'll say a prayer then 5 minutes later I'll say another prayer with my companion, then 10 minutes later I'll pray with my district. Odd thing is that I'm the one who wants to pray, not because a teacher asked me to you know? Hopefully you got my letter by now but I've been called to be the District Leader and I had my first District meeting last night. I shared an awesome message (of course!) on our purpose with baptism then opened up for discussion on some goals. Well every goal was basically directed towards one person's weakness like talking during our study time, and certainly got out of control fast. I think I have my work cut out for me with this district haha but I'm glad I've been called to be an example. My companion is Anziano (Elder) Calchera, he lived all over the U.S. as a military family and loves basketball. Just from that I love this kid! We get along very well besides the fact that he wants to join choir and I don't haha. Anyways I've been here for a week now and definitely evolved as a member of this church. I love praying on my knees with my district and love the devotionals we have here. I remember being told that we missionaries should share the gospel at all times, and when necessary, speak. BE AN EXAMPLE! That's my motto here and cannot wait till the mission field! Hope you're loving the small family back at home!
con amore,
Anziano LaFaye

Oh my goodess I forgot! I went to the Provo Temple today to perform endowments for an Italian and this is only my second time going through the temple so still very nervous. But it's a great reminder of why we live this gospel, to return to our Heavenly Father! Everyone in my district has gone at least six times so I'm quite the rookie here. And if you haven'[t noticed, our P-day is on Wednesday here so hopefully you weren't thinking I was ignoring you on Monday. And our weekly service assignment is on our P-day, not excited about that, so we had to be at work at 6AM which makes it the second time in the week that we have to wake up before 6:30. So much for living the mission rules of 6:30am to 10:30pm. But my roomate's alarm clock is wonderful, birds are chirping when the alarm goes off so it's a wonderful way to wake up :) Alright I got to wash laundry, arrivederci!

Anziano LaFaye