Week 40

Hey erbody. How's it going?
Life is Pisa is aight. Normal stuff going on. Everyone hating us. No one wanting to talk to us. Plus side. We have tons of people in English class now, way more than we had before. So maybe some good stuff will come from that. Lot's of young people because more than half of the people in Pisa are students at the University of Pisa.

Stuff that happened this week... Zone Conference?
I saw my dad. That is, mission dad.









That was fun. Love this guy. He's a goof. But yea at Zone Conference we talked a bunch about Decisions Determine Destiny, President Monson's famous quote. And we talked a bunch about applying that to missionary work and just about being a good person in general and making decisions now to determine the destiny to come. Good stuff :)

Eh besides that nothing that fun happened.

So yeah. We made homemade tortillas and tacos. We have sweet cooking adventures every week. We're basically experts. And then today we at lunch at Subway. That was super strange because I don't know how to order Subway in Italian, only english. It was super expensive... But worth it hahaha. Weird stuff. American food and stuff.

Let's jump to the excerpt of Anz. Guthrie's brain for the week. I've been reading the Book of Mormon a ton. I'm basically reading through it twice right now, both in English and Italian. So I'm getting a lot out of it. Just a couple things from this week.

Alma 12:14:

14 For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us; and in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence.

So cool stuff from this, which I also got from Brad Wilcox's well known speech, "His Grace is Sufficient." Here Alma speaks about how when we are at the judgement bar, we won't be begging to get a degree of glory higher than we deserve. We'll be begging to have mountains hide us so that we are shielded from the glory of God if we are not spotless. Brad Wilcox talks about how he now envision the judgement day not as us pleading to go to a higher kingdom, but Christ begging us to repent and follow Him so that we can enter that higher kingdom. That's really interesting and I never thought about that before. We will go where we feel most comfortable.

Then in Alma 13:12 it reads,

12 Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.

They could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence. Imagine being so sensitized to sin, that it literally caused you physical and mental pain to see others sin. Let's be realistic though. That probably isn't possible in this life. But we can get pretty close, I'd say. I think we should all start sensitizing ourselves from the world, from these temporal things, from the things that aren't necessarily awful and taboo, but that don't bring the Spirit and bring us closer to our Savior and Heavenly Father. It'd make life a lot better.

Think about that. Reflect upon it. Eat it up. I'm hungry. You guys rule.
Have a great week!
Love you all!

Anziano Guthrie fuori.