The Gospel Blesses Families

(Elder Cummings)

The gospel blesses families!  It absolutely does!  This week we have been visiting families and helping them come closer to Christ.

Pete and his wife are saving their marriage!  We have been visiting them for just under two weeks and WOW his life has made a 180 turn.  He has sacrificed almost everything in his world outside of his family to come back to church and to bring them with him.  A sweet spirit has begun to rest in their home.  Pete has been the one of the greatest examples of forgiving and of sincere repentance I have ever met.  His oldest and his wife are progressing towards baptism, and soon will join him as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Vicky asked us to start teaching her daughter as well.  Her name is Janessa, and she accepted a date for baptism by our second visit with her.

Follow the guidance of the Spirit, we knocked on the door of a former, Loynelle.  Missionaries had suddenly lost contact with him about a month ago.  He was home this time!  He had been out of town for emergency medical procedures and finally had returned home.  The last lesson the missionaries taught him was the word of wisdom, and after a month of no missionary contact one of the first things he brought up with us was that he had been cutting back on his tea intake.  What more he still wants to be baptized!  He wants to bring his sons into the church with him!  Blessings are everywhere!

Foua is studying the Book of Mormon and all of her children have been looking forward to church week by week.  They love the Spirit they feel there!

Tawn is Ching's last son not baptized.  This week we taught him about the law of tithing and keeping the Sabbath day holy.  On both instances he cut in about halfway through the visit and started testifying of the blessings he has seen come from his mother's commitment to living those commandments.  He is excited for his upcoming baptism!

The Merced Zone as a whole is doing amazingly!  God is hastening His work!

-Elder Cummings

Week 2 in Barreiro

(Sister Ellsworth)

Dear family and friends,

I love Portugal. The people, the language, the weather, and the food are better than I ever expected. It's hard, but I expected that. First off, Barreiro is across the way from Lisbon. The weather has been Sunny and in the 90s since I got here, but there is always a breeze so it is lovely. This week has been a week of trying new Portuguese foods! One of my favorites bacalhou, which is this very salty fish that they put in lots of foods. Yummy! Also they have Pastel de Nata, which are eggy-pie things. Also very good. As far as food goes here, we often just get fruit and bread from the fruitarias that are on every corner. Food here is very cheap. Usually Sister Williams and I can buy a whole meal for less than 2 Euros, which is like 3ish dollars.

We have three investigators right now, Paulo, Cristiani, and Manuella. They are all marked for baptism right now and I absolutely love teaching them. Teaching is the one situation in which I am able to understand the Portuguese and reply with an understandable Portuguese! Woot! I am already beginning to catch more and more Portuguese every day, mainly because we have the same conversations with people on the streets.

Members here LOVE to feed the missionaries lunch! Culturally, lunch is the biggest meal of the day and is often a 3 course meal. Earlier this week we had two lunch appointments and I thought I was gonna die and the sisters would have to roll my bloated body out the door.

 Our area

 Our fancy food we made. Salad is made with a bit of vinegar and salt. It is an acquired taste... haha!

We walk past this area every day and get a whiff of maple syrup. it's super weird... turns out this plant smells like maple syrup!

Something I have learned this week is about patience. Patience with yourself, patience with others, and patience with Heavenly Father. I was reading in D and C 6, which is now one of my favorite chapters. My favorite two verses are verse 34 and verse 36 when is says "Fear not, little flock.... Doubt not, fear not." We have no need to fear or doubt, because when you're following the rules and doing what you're supposed to, your circumstances will work out according to the Heavenly Father's plan. You always have your agency to choose to be happy!

Love Yall!

Sister Ellsworth

Transfers and Blessings

(Elder Cummings)

Hello all!

This week has been a blessing.  We have had so many great things happen in our lives and in the lives of our investigators.

We received a phone call from the assistants the other day checking to see how someone in our area is doing, Vicky.  We didn't know her, so we went by her address and met her.  Back when the elder who called us was serving here she had a baptismal date and had already been through all the lessons.  He left and she got offended by one of the missionaries who came in.  She has been more than happy to start studying again and is again working towards baptism.

A less active family in the Hmong branch just had two of their young nephews move in with them.  Both of them want to learn about Jesus Christ!  They have not been raised with any religion and have a great desire to learn!  This is helping the whole family come back to church!  What a tender mercy!  Over the last two years the weekly attendance in the branch has gone from high eighties to mid forties.  So many have moved out, but more are coming in!  The work is great!

Transfers are this week!  We were informed last night of where we are all heading.  It is different being more on the administrative side of transfers.  Elder Perkins and I will be staying together, still covering Merced 1st Ward and Merced 5th Branch.  We are doing great work and cannot come down!

Have a lovely week!  God is with you always!

With love,

Elder Cummings

Life in Ancona

(Anziano Wilkinson)

We've been having a great time in Ancona recently! Today we went and visited yet another castle up in the mountains, not San Marino this time, but a small place called Gradara. This castle was much bigger than any I have seen in Italy and so much more full of life. It was like a little medieval town on the outside of the castle and the whole experience was a blast from the past. There was medieval music playing, people dressed up in old costumes, and decorations to make the ambiance look like we had basically walked into a magical city haha. It was definitely worth the trip!

Meanwhile, back in a Ancona we have been seeing great things happen. Miracle after miracle keeps coming to us just as we think it can't get any better. But instead of just talking about it, I'll share a few of them!

So on Sunday we ended up having our evening plans fall through at the last minute and so we decided we'd call some people up to see if we couldn't set up an appointment. We ended up calling one of the people we teach and asking if we could pass by him, he told us he had some time and that we could find him at a park where he was hanging out with some friends. So we showed up and to our surprise, what turned out to be "some friends" was more like thirty people, some playing soccer, others just sitting on benches chatting. We spent a while getting to know many of them and in no time we were all laughing and joking together. After a while we asked if we could share a spiritual thought and we ended up teaching the plan of salvation to a huge portion of these people. It was an amazing experience to be able to stand and testify to so many people of the plan of happiness our Father in Heaven has made for us. They invited us to come back this next Sunday as well because I guess they gather like this every Sunday evening. In one night the number of potential people we have to teach easily doubled. Teaching so many people at once made us feel a little bit like the original twelve apostles must have when they taught large crowds of people in the streets of the ancient Roman Empire. It was definitely an experience to be remembered.

Another miracle happened a little bit earlier in the week when my companion had to be present at a district leader meeting. The it works in our mission is that every district leader in the mission and our president in essence signs on to a virtual skype-based chat room and participates via internet. I was not a part of it so I did not have really anything extremely productive to do. Not long after we had gotten to the church in order to get wifi for this video conference, we heard the doorbell buzz. I answered the door to find a woman who had seemingly randomly showed up to ask if she could come in to warm herself (yes, it was cold that day, and rainy, I'm really not sure how that happened in the middle of summer, but hey, it happened). I talked with this lady while my companion participated in his video conference and got to know a little about who she was. It became very clear to me that she had experienced a lot of hardships in her life. We had the chance to talk about the healing power of our Savior Jesus Christ and about how she could access that power just as easily as anyone. One could tell that she found hope in the words I shared with her and she gladly accepted the invitation to learn more about what we believe and about how she could more effectively access the power of the Atonement. I don't know how the video conference my companion needed to attend happened to fall on the only cold day in August and how this lady, chilled by the cold, happened to be in the right place at the right time to find our church at one of the few times when people were there not on a Sunday, but to me it was no coincidence. This woman (whose name is Magdalena) needed to hear the message we shared with her. Our Father in Heaven set things in place so that she could find us when she needed it most.

The list of miracle we saw this week does not end with these two; there are many many more that we have been a part of! The work of the a lord is moving forward here in Ancona and all thanks to the faith of everyone involved. It has been humbling to have been a part of these amazing experiences and I hope to continue to see more as we keep working hard and seeking the guidance of the spirit in our daily lives. If anything can be learned from these experiences, it's that God has a plan for his children in a Ancona and loves them, just as He does for all of us.

Have a fantastic week and look for the miracles!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson

The Man Behind the Curtain

(Elder Cummings)

I don't even know where to begin this week.  We have been busy with meetings, teaching appointments, and a temple trip this week.  In between it all we still found time to deep clean the car and the apartment.  There were two baptisms in the zone this week, one for Karen and the other for Alfonzo.  I find it so inspiring to see other missionaries working with zeal.

On Thursday we were able to go to the temple in Fresno and worship there.  It was a wonderful experience.  I love the house of the Lord!  I received direction and guidance for the work we do and for my personal life.  God will always speak to us if we are willing to listen!  Listening for the Lord's voice is an act of faith.

One woman we met this week, Barbara, had the faith to listen.  She had been introduced to the LDS church years ago by some friends in Las Vegas who met with missionaries, and eventually were baptized.  Barbara never studied the church and its teachings though.  She was born and raised Lutheran, and at the time she attended a baptist church, and didn't see the need to investigate.

Fast forward to last night, and she invited us into her home to share a message with her.  We chatted for a little bit, got to know her needs, concerns, and interests, and then started into the formal discussion.  We shared the message of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ with her.  Elder Perkins and I were teaching smoothly in tandem, and the Spirit of the Lord was present.  I had never taught the restoration the way we did---with such a strong emphasis on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ---which makes perfect sense.  I had never taught Barbara before.  As we unfolded the doctrines of prophetic dispensations, of priesthood keys and authority, and of the atonement of Christ she lit up noticeably.  After sharing with her the miraculous story of Joseph Smith's first vision she told us in hushed voice, "Now, I have seventy-two years in the back of my mind that don't want me to agree with what you two boys are telling me tonight.  This is asking for a big jump, and I am not too good at jumping anymore, but I want to know if this is true."  She wholeheartedly accepted the commitment to begin reading in the Book of Mormon and to study the pamphlet we also left with her.  Before we could bring up the topic, she volunteered the idea of being baptized once she learned for herself that the message we shared was true.  She closed the discussion with a prayer, and then coerced us into singing a slightly off-key rendition of one of the church's hymns.  The whole visit was a spiritual high.

The experience got me thinking about God's love for all of His children.  It may be redundant to say, but God has sent us into mortality to have experiences that optimize our opportunity for exaltation.  Here was Barbara, who was unashamedly searching for absolute truth, and her entire life had led up to that point last night when she first heard the message of the restoration in its fullness.  On a micro-scale everyone's lives are oriented in this way.  On a macro-scale all world history since the life of Christ has been in preparation for the restoration.  God is absolutely in the details!  He knows our needs better than we do, and he ministers to His numberless children and invites them to come unto His Son, Jesus Christ, and be saved.  We can live lives full of light because we know who is behind the curtain.  Our Heavenly Father loves us!  We don't need to know all things to know this! (1 Nephi 11:17).

Live the abundant life this week!  Keep the commandments!  Come unto Christ!

With love,

Elder A. Jared Cummings

First Week in Portugal!

(Sister Ellsworth)

Ola de Portugal!

Wow... it has been one crazy week! I don't even know where to begin. First, on Tuesday we went to the temple for the last time really early in the morning. I met a lady who had a daughter out on a mission and I gave her a good long hug. I also got the opportunity to sit in the temple by myself for twenty minutes which was so perfect. Afterwards we quickly finished packing, cleaned our room, and dashed off to the buses by 830 am. We were loaded onto a bus and dropped off at the airport. I was able to call my family and have Cafe Rio for the last time! Unfortunately our plane was delayed about 10 hours in Salt Lake due to some parts needing replaced. Our group of 10 missionaries met and talked to everyone on our flight! We also met a lot of missionaries coming home, going to MTC's, and headed out to the fields.

The flight to the Netherlands was great, I tried to sleep for most of it. We landed in the Netherlands in the afternoon and since our first flight was delayed for so long, we had to be rebooked. They split our group up onto two airplanes and I was in the group that would fly from the Netherlands to Porto, and then Porto to Lisbon. We had to run to catch our Porto flight, which was delayed after we got there, and then we had to run to our Lisbon flight, barely making it onto this tiny plane with pretty sketchy looking propellers but tudo bem! I talked to the gentleman next to me a tiny bit in Portuguese but then he told me that he spoke English. I left a Book of Mormon with him!

Once we landed in Lisbon, we were in the Airport for an extra few hours trying to find our bags, which had been lost. Only 3 of 7 had one or two bags show up. We met up with the second group and eventually decided to leave without our bags. Our Mission president picked us up and took us to the mission home and fed us lasagna and soup at 2 am. We showered after almost 36 hours of traveling and crashed hardcore. The next morning we met our companions! My new companion is Sister Williams! She speaks English and Portuguese and has been so patient with me and my jetlag and limited language.

The first week in Portugal was a lot of smiling and nodding but I did get to help teach a young man about the Plan of Salvation and taught a woman about how much Heavenly Father loves her. I am serving in Barreiro, which is right across the river from Lisbon. It's been so fun to get to know people and go to Church! The food is strange, but good. We made mini hotdogs and cinnamon biscuits which would have been cinnamon rolls except neither my companion or I knew how to say yeast in Portuguese.

Also apparently I speak Portuguese with an Australian accent! How neat haha. Also people here have a VERY hard time saying my last name. Like most can't even try! Half the sounds in my name don't exist in Portuguese so what comes out is something along the lines of el-sh-wohtch. Close enough I guess! I'll make a nickname for myself or something.

Loving every day more and more! Tudo Bem! I can't get pictures up right now but hopefully I'll send some later today!

Sister Ellsworth

San Marino

(Anziano Wilkinson)
I'm really short on time his week so I will just share some pictures of our adventure in San Marino this P-day. We got to explore some pretty sweet castles in the mountains.

Hope everything is great! Enjoy summer!

-Anziano Jake Wilkinson