THE ELECT - April 14th, 2010

Last week I was kind of annoyed with my President because he basically told me that park contacting was a waste of time and we should be trying to teach people in their homes. He explained that we would be more likely to find "the elect" this way. To be honest, I don't think I really believed there was such thing as "the elect" or people just waiting for me to knock on their door. From what I had seen, it was up to us as the missionaries to be interesting enough, spiritual enough, ready enough to answer their questions, etc. If all that was in place, then anyone could be converted. Based on this theory, park contacting worked better, especially for Italians, because we had more than the 20 seconds yelling through the closed door to do all of the above and touch people's hearts.

This week I was humbled. There is such thing as "the elect". We did lots of door to door this week, even though it was so hard to walk by all the groups of families chillin' in the parks, walking along the river. We even took the time the night before to pick out exactly what road we wanted to go to. Here are a few of the people we found...

Luigi, a 20 year old Italian, model-esque, semi-professional soccer player living at home with his family while recovering from knee surgery invited us to come back and meet with him and his mom. When his mom, Sylvia learned of the Book of Mormon she was in shock and couldn't believe that she hadn't heard of such thing before. She was really upset that no one at the Catholic church had taught her about it. We told her all of her questions and concerns about life could be answered in it and in faith she continued to ask us about a million questions she has been pondering. We will try to answer them all tomorrow when we go back.

Mirella - a 25 year old Brazilian with the cutest 2 year old boy ever after Rio. She invited us in without hesitation and had her husband, uncle, and cousin at the next 2 lessons.

Brenda - a 30 year old woman who lives in the same complex as her sister and mother so invited them all to come over and meet with us. We only had a 5 minute lesson with them but they all were so excited to set the next appointment with us. Brenda was all "Yeah, two days from now should be perfect. We are going to need that time to reflect about all that you have taught us."

Hamda - An Egyptian Muslim who wandered over to us while we were talking to an old Italian woman through her window. He joined into our conversation and by the end was asking us for a Book of Mormon. We said yeah, wed bring one by that week. He called us the next day to ask us when we were going to be able to bring it. Then he came to church on Sunday to get it and stayed for 2 hours of church.

As I was pondering this new idea of "the elect" and what exactly that means. I have been trying to read all the Ensign articles possible about converts and what converts feel during the finding and teaching process. There are some incredible stories. Mostly what it seems like is that the elect are those whose hearts are not hardened against learning the truth. When they hear the truth and the Spirit testifies of the truth than they readily accept it.

This lead me to start studying the spirit a little more. My favorite phrases I read about the spirit is that it is a "foretaste" of eternal life and a record of heaven. When you put that in perspective using the scripture in D and C 14 that says that eternal life is the greatest of all the greatest gifts of God...that means the spirit is a foretaste of the greatest gift ever!! And we are told that, based on our worthiness we can constantly be tasting of this greatest gift. Then working in the opposite direction...in Galatians 5:22 we read that the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith - meaning that eternal life is all of that times a million. That is what we are working for. That is why we need to keep the commandments and make covenants.

I was also pondering this week about Mom's favorite section from the Harvard lecture where Oaks talked about the 3 fold sources of truth. I read an enlightening paragraph in Jesus the Christ that said something along the lines of...Christ was able to progress and develop during his youth so rapidly because he didn't have the retarding and dragging weight of sin. He loved and obeyed the truth and therefore was set free. This really impressed upon me the importance of being sin free. We cant receive knowledge when we are not cleansed from our sins because the spirit can't be with us to teach us. 2 Nephi 32:3-7 goes along well with this thought.

Hopefully you all find these thoughts as interesting as I do. I feel like they are probably things we are all taught from day one, but some concepts seem to just take a few years till they finally click for me. I am glad that I learned at least these few concepts this week. I was really having a hard time during personal study because our president had assigned us a handful of scriptures from the Bible to read and every time I start getting into a story in the bible I start reminiscing about various vacations we have had to Biblical sites.

Not really anything funny to report from the week. Sorella Casalingo has started talking quite a bit more. She actually probably talks more than me when it is just us two together. We'll just be walking along, then she'll tell some completely random story from her life that is related to nothing, then we walk some more in silence until she thinks of another story. One of my favorite stories was about how the highlight of every week during high school was going to the homeless animal shelter nearby her house where they LET people take the dogs on walks. Mostly it is her giddy smile and light in her eyes that makes the stories awesome.

I'm going to send you some pictures from last p-day. It was her birthday and she wanted to go to the cemetery to celebrate. Her mom had served a mission here in Milan and went to the cemetery and told Sis Casalingo about it so she has been dreaming about it since childhood. I also tried making Sister Prina's bread pudding recipe for her for her bday. Didn't turn out half as good as Prina's, but I tried.

After internet today we are going to go enjoy the sun in the park nearby us and write letters. I basically have the best friends ever and have about 15 letters backed up that I need to respond to, so I'm going to try to get them done while getting some sun.

Love you all,
SLC