Week 16 in Italia

Hey erbody. It's Anziano Guthrie here.
Everything is going fantastic here in Milan, Italy. A little foreshadowing, be expecting pictures of a baptism soon. Hint hint. It's not set, but it basically is.

A cool thing that happened this past Sunday. There were 3 different people that needed translations of what was being said in sacrament meeting. Seeing as I'm the 3rd most experienced in Italian, I had to translate. It was... interesting. I got the overall idea of what was being said but there was one girl who wasn't speaking into the microphone so that talk was unknown. And then a guy who was from Napoli with a super crazy accent that I can't understand at all. But overall it went okay I guess. I just feel bad for the people that I translated for...

But anyway, this is kind of what I wanted to share in this email this week. Anz. Taylor shared a really cool analogy about temptation with me that his dad used at a Stake Conference when he was mission president. But first I wanna talk a little about other parts of temptation.

First, a couple scriptures about how to get rid of temptation:

1. Luke 8:13 talks about the parable of the sower and how the seeds on the rocks don't have that foundation on something so they will give into temptation. 
2. BANG Helaman 5:12, build your foundation on Christ and LITERALLY NOTHING can stop you.
3. Then prayer is always super important too. Both Alma 34:39 and 3 Nefi 18:18-20 talk about how we need to always pray and ask for help from God and temptation will go away.

A couple other cool things I found are these:
In 1 Corinthians 10:13, it says that we are never tempted above what we are able. So we never encounter anything in our life that we can't handle. Remember that. This scripture, along with D&C 95:1 both talk about how a way has been prepared already for every temptation we face. There is always a way to escape it. And then in James 1:12, the reward for not giving into temptation is eternal life. So do it :)

Here's the cool analogy. When Satan tempts us, it's like he's throwing a rope at us. We pick up the rope and start having this tug-of-war with him. The question asked with that is how do we win the tug of war? Easy. DROP THE ROPE :) That's all we have the do. Don't try to fight with Satan. Just drop it and walk away.

So summary for overcoming temptation:
1. Build a foundation on Christ.
2. Pray.
3. DROP THE ROPE.

You guys rock. All of you. You've all played a specific important part in my life so that I could end up here in Italy doing this work. So thanks a ton :)

Here's random pictures from the week.

Love you all!
Anziano Guthrie!