Hey!!

I loved your emails, or the lack of them, ha-ha! J It's all good - I know that you two are busy. So this week has been kind of a blur. I have had some awesome lessons with our investigator Gianfranco. We taught him the restoration and gave him an overview of the Plan of Salvation. We asked him what he had questions about and wanted to know more about and he said the three kingdoms so that will be our next lesson.

 I was able to meet our new Mission President and his wife. He is super cool and seems like he is going to be a “follow the rules to a T” President, which will be awesome.

So, yeah, I will be in the MTC until July 23 and soon after I get those papers for my visa, the Church will send me to Vancouver to get my Visa finished and back to the MTC I go, ha-ha. I am all good!  I am learning to look at these challenges with an 'all is well' attitude. I know that the Lord knows what he is doing, and who am I to question what he does and how he does it.

Every time I look back at what I have asked for while being in the MTC, I see that he has given me the things that are the most important to me. For example, I have always wanted to be a German Citizen and now I know that I am; I wanted to stay in the MTC and remain a missionary instead of being sent home for recovery, and now I am; I wanted to see Charlene in the MTC, and now I do every day at breakfast; I wanted my foot to heal and not need the surgery and a miracle happened and it has healed quite a bit; and I wanted most of all to be able to know the needs of the investigators and be able to address them and resolve their concerns and thus far for the most part I have been able to. The Lord knows what is important to us and if it is expedient for him or wise for his purpose to grant it to us, he will. I really appreciate that Heavenly Father hears prayers and I look forward to the continuing experiences in the MTC.

How has life been? What have you been up to? I understand how busy you both are with your callings. I hope you send me some dear elders about how your week was.

Love you all and hope all continues to go well.

Love, Anziano Luening

P.S. In case you don't know already Charlene Luening's mailing info is:                                                                                      Box # 122 MO-INDE departure date 0710

19/06

Here is the update.

I will be in the MTC until the 23 of July. I need you to get/send me ASAP a Notarized Priesthood Ordination Certificate, also 3 statements 1) Scotia Bank Statement 2) Your Bank Statement 3) Dundee Wealth Statement. All those statements need to be going back 3 months. This is to prove that I am financially supported during my stay. I need to get these as soon as possible. I will be staying in the MTC and when my visa comes I will be flying to Vancouver getting my Visa and coming back to the MTC. Then I will be flying out of the MTC with this group of Italians. I will get to call you and update you later - sometime, I don't know when yet.

Love Anziano Luening

12/06

Hello,

So, this is what happened: Another group of Italian Elders had a foam soccer ball the size of a softball so we were playing mini soccer in the Residence in the hallway. I kicked the wall a couple times by accident and then I went to send the ball to the end of the hall, but an elder got his foot in front of the ball and so I kicked his foot. My pinky toe caught on his foot and yanked it to the side and so it is fractured. The fracture is in the foot and is like diagonal so the reason why the surgery is necessary is because if I leave it, it will not heal properly or at all. The doctor told me it would take 3 months to recover if I leave it, or I can get a pin put in from the top of my pinky toe into the meticarpal bone  to keep it straight. It will heal normal and it will take 6-8 weeks to heal. The surgery is happening on next Wednesday. I have follow up appointments for two weeks after the surgery. So, I will be home in 3 weeks. It's all good - I will be skyping with my MTC teachers and continue to obey the mission rules as best as I can. Also I will study lots of Italian words and make lesson plans in Italian. So I have that planned out and so I will be home for 3-5 weeks.

I tried to use my debit card to pay for some medical things and it didn't work. I need to pay $20 for this weird shoe that I am wearing and I need to pay $10 for strong painkillers for after the surgery. So I need help figuring out how my debit card works.

The Romanian districts left for Romania on Monday and so we all said good-bye. Also, the rest of the Italians left yesterday in the morning, so I sad good-bye to them on Monday night. I am the only Italian left in the MTC until the new Italian missionaries come in today. I have temporary companions who are learning Spanish. They are awesome! They have only been here for two weeks and I will be with Italians later today.

This week has been good. The crutches are killing my shoulders but oh well. I will be on bed rest for three days after the surgery.

The teachers guessed where our first area would be and we got to take pictures with them. Also on Sunday we took a picture of our whole zone and I was surprised - it is a lot bigger than I thought.

I don't really know what else to right nothing much has happened. I am glad you are all having fun and hope that you enjoy yourselves. I have a question:  - when is your vacation to Europe because I have the surgery on the 19th and six weeks later is the 31 of July so I will be able to leave on July 31 or August 14. It all depends on if the doctor in Canada clears me or not.

I will see Charlene in the MTC, I guess and my birthday will be in the MTC as well.

Anyways, that’s about it. I miss you all and will see you soon. I hope all continues to be good.

P.S. I will send pictures later today

05/06

So, I have some statistics for you! There are 44 Italian missionaries: 20 missionaries are going to Rome and 24 are going to Milan. Also there are 13 Romanian Missionaries with 2 sisters. Today 940 missionaries arrived at the MTC - 442 of them are sister missionaries! J



05/06

This week has been pretty good. The days have pretty much blended together. I found out today that after the other Italian missionaries leave I will be in the MTC for an extra week to be reassigned and then I will probably be going to the Vancouver mission for six weeks.

A group of Italian elders left their door open all day so Elder Berg and I rearranged their beds, ha-ha!  It was pretty good. J

I learned a lot of things this week. We had two great lessons yesterday. The first one was with Angela and we taught her about some of the commandments and asked her if Heavenly Father had answered her prayer yet. She said she would keep the commandments and that Heavenly Father had answered her prayers. I asked her if she would choose a baptismal date in June and so she is going to tell us the date next lesson. The spirit was so strong!  We were planning on teaching her the law of chastity but when asking her about her family some more,  we realized it wasn't as necessary as we thought for this lesson.

Our second lesson was with Giosue.  We planned on teaching him obedience, to pray often, scripture study, baptismal covenants, and obey and honour the law. I tied in obedience and prayer and scripture study into Lehi's vision. I said that the iron rod is the word of God; the straight and narrow path is obedience to the commandments of God and to the word of God; the tree of life is the love of God, and the mist of darkness is temptation and apostasy. It was a great lesson! I had him read 1 Nephi 11:25 and 1 Nephi 8:23. I had drawn the vision as well and labeled it so he would stay interested in the lesson. During the lesson we somehow had time to teach him the ten commandments as well. It was more of a reminder for Giosue because he knew those commandments pretty well. We taught him the baptismal covenants because I wanted to make sure he knew what he and the Lord were promising each other. We taught all of the things we planned and the ten commandments. He committed to obeying the commandments we taught him and I asked him if he received an answer to his prayer. He said that he had and that he wanted to be baptized! It was awesome. I asked him to pick a date in June and he said he would look at his calendar and pick a date towards the end of June.

Also we were investigators for the “Sorelle”  yesterday as they taught us the second lesson. The spirit was so strong in that lesson and I could feel the love of God so strong. I learned a lot of things from being in an investigator’s shoes. That’s about all that happened this week. We learned a lot of things in the week but that’s everything really exciting that happened. President Callister of the Presidency of the Seventy spoke this Tuesday and he basically proved with scriptures from the Bible that we have the same organization, ordinances, and fruits as the primitive church.

Life has been dece. I decided I will impress/ freak out the new Italian missionaries when they come by speaking as much Italian as I can, ha-ha!

I am glad all is well with all of you. It sucks that you had to drive all over the place this past week but I am glad that all is well and Charlene is getting everything done.

 I was sick again this week, I had a cold again but it is gone now and let’s hope that I don't get sick again in the MTC. I had my first haircut here and it turned out pretty good. Anyways that’s about all that has happened in my week so far. I look forward to hearing from you next week or during the week.

PS I did get the packages thanks they were delicious.