Thursday, January 14, 2016

Jan14

13 Months Down

Good Morning family and friends.
Greetings from Mistretta.🇮🇹

I hope and earnestly pray that each and every one of you back home in
the Land of Promise. I hope that school, work and just life in general
is going well for everyone. Yesterday we hit the 13 month mark. So
happy 13 months to us. Things are going really well over here in
Sicily for Anziano Da Ponte and I. We had an pretty powerful week, and
I am eager to share the events that took place this past week with
those of you at home. Im grateful to be in this country, in this city,
with these members and with this companion. Mistretta is great. Here
we gooooo!

For starters, last Monday we went down to Palermo for our Zone Flag
Football Game. All of the Elders from our Zone got together, and we
played ourselves a classic flag football game. We have a pretty
athletic zone, so we had a nice, clean and competitive game. This time
of the new year, Italy has amazing sales on clothes and shoes and
pretty much everything else you can imagine. So before the game, I
bought myself some all pink Nike cleats for €30. I decided to dress up
as the great Jim McMahon and have a little fun with our little zone
athletic even for this transfer. It was raining a little bit outside
and the field was pretty muddy, but it was more than good to get
outside and chuck the pigskin around with the boys. I will send a
picture of us all together after the game. Monday evening we stayed
with the Elders from Palermo #2 and helped them do some finding. We
met a lot of people that have been to America or worked in America. We
were able to make a lot of connections and hopefully something good
with come from our efforts there.

Tuesday morning we had our weekly District Meeting down in Palermo and
that went really well. We received a training on the nature of our
Father in Heaven and just how much He truly loves us. Afterwards, as a
district, we headed over to a Mall that is real close to the church in
Palermo and ate all together. We went to a place called, "Old Wild
West." Old Wild West is an exact replica of the American Texas
Roadhouse to a T, even with the unlimited peanuts at the entrance. The
menu is practically the same, there are saddles everywhere, pictures
of Cowboys and Indians on the wall, etc. The prices were about the
same as they would be in America, but the food was far below would it
is in America. We all had a good time together and each got ourselves
a mediocre hamburger. After our lunch, we packed it up and made our
way back to the mountainous, mystical and mysterious Mistretta. We met
with our investigator named Gino, and Nino tagged along with us. We
spoke on the power of a truly sincere prayer, the things we can pray
for and why Heavenly Father wants to communicate with each one of us.
We invited Gino, once again, to come to begin praying about and
reading The Book of Mormon. He gave us the excuses that he always
does, such as: "I pray, morning and night" and the classic "I'm a good
person. I carry Jesus in my heart constantly." We explained that those
things are all wonderful and great, but meanwhile he was trying to get
himself out of reading the scriptures I had a scripture come to mind
that I had found in the New Testament days before in my personal
study. The scripture is found in Matthew chapter 7 and it is verse 21.
Which says, "21 ¶Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven." I read this scripture and Gino quit giving
me eye contact and began to just stared at the floor. Anziano Da Ponte
and I both testified boldly that in order for us to grow in this life
and reach our divine preordained potential, number one - we must
sincerely pray and pray for correction, and number two - we must study
the words of prophets and apostles both in these present times as well
as those in ancient times each and every day. We testified that God
wants us to reach up towards Him daily through both prayer and
scripture study. We closed the lesson and left Gino with a choice to
either accept the things the Holy Ghost had taught him during our
lesson, or to continue down his own limited path.

Wednesday, January 6th, is a major holiday here in Italy. As tradition
they celebrate the 6th of January because that is when they believe
that the 3 Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem to meet the new born infant,
Jesus Christ. So practically the Italians celebrate Christmas from the
24th of December to the 6th of January. Nino asked us to come over and
help him out with a few things. He asked us if we could help him
sweet, mop, dust and clean a little bit around his house. Meanwhile we
were cleaning, he was cooking us and the senior couple a really nice
lunch for the holiday. Nino is truly in his element when he is cooking
for his friends and family members. He is always on cloud 9 when we
are eating at his house. I love the guy, and even with one halfway
functioning eye he is still a gourmet chef. That evening, we went back
over to Nino's house to have a little Book of Mormon study session
with Gino our investigator, Nino our investigator and Marco one of our
potentials. It went really well. We read through 1st Nephi 1 and
taught them the story of The Book of Mormon and we also read Alma 32
and talked a lot about the power of believing and having faith. It
went well. We turned Marco into a new investigator. Marco is 17 years
old and is a relative to Nino our member. He will actually start
living with Nino in the upcoming week which means that we will be able
to meet with him on a more regular basis.

Thursday Morning, Anziano Da Ponte, Anziano Wardle and I headed down
together to a members farm that is down a little ways from Mistretta.
We went down to the form of Vito. Vito is Nino's older brother. Vito
loves the farm. To us it would be more of a garden than a farm, but it
is Vito's life. He loves that place and spends most of his time down
there working on different things, picking some fruit, all sorts of
good stuff. We got down there and he handed us each some baskets and
had us pick our own tangerines and lemons that we could take home. He
loaded us up with tangerines and lemons. We have been and will be
eating tangerines for weeks. Lemons have become my favorite fruit
since I've been out here on the mission. We use them for cooking
nearly everyday. We spent some time down there with him, talked a
whole bunch, and he taught us more about the weeds than we could
possibly retain. It made him pretty happy to have us down there and it
was nice for me to see yet another way how they farm over here in
Sicily. I talked about the good ole Nessen Farms and The Pheasant
Farm. Vito and I had a nice farming conversation for a little while,
as Anziano Da Ponte and Anziano Wardle were exploring around. That
evening, our plans fell through unfortunately, and so we went and
helped out Nino some more. Nino has another little house, really close
to his own, where he keeps his wood storage. Now that the winter
season and weather had progressed some, the wood pile in Nino's spare
house has declined a little bit. We re-stacked a large portion of his
pile, because it was just ready to fall over and hurt someone at
anytime. We spent a good little while down there, but it looks much
better and much safer now.

Friday and Saturday are two days that I will never forget in my
mission and here is why. So, Mistretta is a tough, deeply rooted
Catholic city and I mean deeply rooted. The missionaries have been in
and out of here for the past 30 some odd years and to my knowledge
there has been some 8 convert baptisms. Those numbers explain pretty
well just how deeply rooted and have big of a tradition the Catholic
Religion is here. Here there are a few major figures in the community.
One of which, would be Dr. Enzo. Dr. Enzo was a doctor up here in
Mistretta until his poor healthy situation forced him into retirement.
He was also the mayor of Mistretta for 14 years. Everyone and their
dog knows who Dr. Enzo is and just his big of a figure he is in our
community. He is a devote Catholic and even helped raise enough money
to restore the organ pipes in the biggest Catholic Church building
here in Mistretta. We have met Dr Enzo before on a few occasions and
he has always been nothing but gentle, kind and respectful towards us
missionaries, but he has always been severely cautious. Last year
around this time, before he got sick, he began attending English
Course in preparation for a vacation he would be taking to see the
Western part of America. He spoke with the missionaries and a member
here and said, "I will attend English class on one condition and that
is I do not want to be proselyted." Weeks before his vacation to
America, he became very ill and discovered that he had cancer. His
healthy declined rapidly and was unable to get to America. Back to
what happened on Friday. Friday Morning, Anziano Da Ponte said to me,
"Hey dude, are you ready to go find some people to be baptized on
February 6th?" I replied, "Yes." He said, "Good. We will be heading
over to Dr. Enzo's house first thing this morning and invite him to be
baptized on the 6th of February." I looked at him and said, "Deal." We
studied, got all prepared and began heading to Dr Enzo and his
humongous house. We entered in and began small talking a little bit,
safe to say that we were both nervous to be sitting in front of the
most influential man in Mistretta and knowing what we wanted to tell
him. He was awaiting company and so we didn't have much time. Well,
awkwardly we ran out of things to talk about, leading us to the one
things that we were there for. We looked at Dr Enzo and told him that
we had received a prompting to come to his home that morning and be
nothing short of bold. We told him that we would like to begin
teaching him the lessons and we invited him to be be baptized on the
6th of Feb....Friday Morning he accepted the baptismal invitation but
would not commit to a date. As soon as we finished talking about
everything that we wanted to, the doorbell rang and his guest showed
up. Heavenly Father gave us just enough time to tell Dr. Enzo
everything that he needed to hear from us that morning. A morning full
of miracles.

Friday for lunch, Nino invited us and his daughter over. Nino's
daughter is named Sonia and she is 32 years old. Sonia lives down off
of the hill of Mistretta right off of the sea and has distanced
herself away from the church after the whole situation that happened
with her mom and that mess. Nino cookies us some white rice with
cooked down pumpkin mixed in with it, steaks and spinach. The rice
with pumpkin sounds interesting I know, I was thinking the same thing
when he told me that was the main ingredient other than the rice
itself, but it was actually delicious. We had a good little spiritual
thought with Sonia about just how much God loves each us individual
and personally. We told the story of Moses on Mount Sinai and what
Moses learned how we as humans are nothing compared to God, but yet we
mean absolutely everything to God. I always like teaching that story.
It's comforting to know that there is a Supreme Being, an Almighty
Father in Heaven that loves each of us perfectly even when we are so
imperfect, mistake prone and unclean. He doesn't look on the outside
appearance, He looks upon the heart. We had a good little lunch and
Sonia headed back down off of the mountain. Nino thanked us for some
reason, and we had a good little discussion after Sonia left. Nino has
such a good heart. Goodness I just want to pack that guy up in my
suitcase and bring him home with me. I'm going to miss the ole one
eyed fella. He had taught me so much, more than he really knows. He is
so pure and is so full of absolute faith. He is a hero of mine. I love
that guy.

Now back to Dr Enzo.
He told us the day before on Friday that he is always free to listen
and for us to stop in whenever we had the chance. Little did he know
that we would be returning the next morning to begin with the first
lesson. We rang the doorbell, he opened his front door and let us in
with a smile. He sat us down and we began right away with the
Restoration. We wanted to really emphasize on: #1 - The Authority to
act in the name of God #2 - The important and divine role of a Prophet
and #3 - The Great Apostasy. After we taught the apostasy, we asked
him if he had any questions on what we had been teaching or anything
like that. He pretty much said, now I believe completely what you have
just taught me on this apostasy. It's clear and it makes sense. He
said something along the lines of, so technically my baptism is
invalid. Now that is a hard question to respond yes to, because we
don't want to offend or hurt anyone's feelings, but the only correct
answer is yes. We said that what he had just told us was true and he
handled it really well. He didn't get upset, look at wrong or
anything. He just accepted it and we kept moving forward. We finished
the Restoration and invited him to begin reading the Book of Mormon.
He accepted the invitation and we also set a baptismal date for the 6
of February just as Anziano Da Ponte had said the day before. It was
one of the scariest, but most powerful lessons I have ever been apart
of, if not thee most powerful lesson I have been apart of. The best
part was at the end when we both bore our final testimonies and poured
out our soul to this man who a year previous proclaimed that he did
not want to be taught. I know that we had nothing to do with that
revelation, with that powerful lesson, with any of it. We never would
have even had the idea or the thought come to mind, if the Spirit
didn't bring it to us. I'm grateful for the inspiration that Anziano
Da Ponte received from the Holy Ghost and I'm grateful to the Lord for
blessing us with the courage necessary to carry out that prompting.
The Lord with always prepare a way for us to accomplish both our
righteous desires and the things that He has commanded us to do.

It had been a week to remember down here in Mistretta. We are excited,
the Wardles are excited and there is truly something in the air down
here. We had another good week down here in Mistretta and are praying
for another one this week that is ahead of us. I thank you for all of
the love and support that you each give to me. I thank you for the
prayers, for the thoughts and for everything. I hope you all have an
incredible week back at home. I would invite you all to have some kind
of Family Home Evening tonight. It could be as simple as a board game
after dinner, or a good movie before bedtime. I would invite you all
to do something as a family this evening. I know that quality time
spent with the family time, is time well spent. I love you all. Y'all
take good care and have a real good week. You are all in my prayers.

Also, I would ask that you would all keep Elder Just in your prayers
throughout this week and the weeks to come. I would also ask that you
spread the word to family members, friends, work buddies, everyone.
Please keep this Elder in your prayers.

I thank you all.
I love you all.
I'm grateful for you all.

Love,
Anziano JarDee Nessen
Italy Rome Mission
D&C 100:12



Zone Football


--Vito and His Farm
 
His Shed/Shack


Anziano Da Ponte picking himself some Tangerines.
I picked a few myself.
Our basket of Lemons


He calls his place The "Little" Garden of Eden.


Sicily is Beautiful!

Anziano Da Ponte and I may have had a little celebratory happy dance to celebrate a good week. More pictures to come!
Enjoy!!


 


We  were  PUMPED!

 


 



THAT'S ALL FOLKS!



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