I'm not dead

hey guys! just wanted to make sure you all knew i wasn't dead!! :)
because i'm sure you were all wondering why i haven't sent out emails
in a few weeks (yeah i know you missed them.......lol)

alright so i definitely don't have time to just recount all the things
that have happened in the past couple of weeks, but i will fill you
all in on some #key things.

like a couple weeks ago or something we had met this suuperr cool guy
from english course who actually just had his 47th birthday a little
over a week ago. he's married and has 2 kids. to save you some time
i'm just gonna tell you we ended up teaching him and his family little
over a week ago. it went really well. he is so prepared for this
gospel it's unreal. about 5 days ago he had a lethal heart attack and
went into surgery immediately. safe to say our appointment got
cancelled that day...smh.

meanwhile, there is this african family in our ward that hasn't been
to church in who knows how long because they stopped coming due to not
feeling welcome by the italian members of the ward...unfortunately
it's definitely true, but according to me not a reason to come
attending God's church. anyway, they also drew away other un-welcomed
africans into their somewhat newly formed evangelist church they
started in their basement. so now there's like 20+ Africans going to
their secret underground church so that's interesting. it's funny
though because they don't think that we know but obvi we do haha. so
one night we stop by to see this less active family and try and work
things out, and they weren't home, but instead a guy named Tony
answered the door. basically, after some talk, he let us know that he
was the PASTOR of this underground church they're doing haha. and
since he's legal and has his documents we can teach him...if you catch
my drift. so yeah we got his number and set up a time to go by and
teach the boy Tony!!!

turning back to our investigator who had a heart attack...so we went
to go visit him a couple times in the hospital and talked with him a
bit. he told us a lot of things, but he was recounting to us all these
strange things that have been happening to him ever since he met us up
until his heart attack. and he said that the heart attack was the
final straw telling him all these things happening were signs. he said
that according to him these things are signs that this is the path he
needs to take in life. pretty much God has just been blessing him in
disguise, even with the heart attack, strangely enough. he told us
that if and when he makes it out alive, that he thinks he's gonna
become a mormon. it was a pretty amazing experience to be honest. i
love this guy with all my heart he's such an awesome guy. it's weird
how you can care so much for someone you've known for 2 weeks. pretty
much this guy is going to get baptized, but i just hope i get to be
here for it and not get transferred out before his baptism!

so tony...we taught him twice, and it went pretty well. he's soo
attentive. it's weird though, teaching in english. i've only ever done
it once before. and i'm not gonna pretend like i forgot english, cuz i
obviously havent, but teaching the gospel in english i literally like
never do, so it felt really awkward. especially scriptures i have
memorized in italian i dont have memorized in english so when i was
saying them i was trying to translate in my head and i kinda just
slighly looked in the literature i had with me and read it, lol. but
it's weird, teaching a pastor of another church, and having him ask us
all these questions, even about scriptures, that we are capable of
answering. i mean yeah we're young guys but it's crazy how this
mission grows your gospel knowledge so much.

pretty much these are the real important things i felt like sharing
with you all. hope they didn't bore you :)
fun joke we played on the new sister that came in to Ragusa. her first
english course we made sure everyone in our class only spoke Siciliano
dialect to her and no italian so she would trip out and she totally
did!! and i was cracking up and she was getting mad at me because she
thought that i understood and just purposely wasn't helping her lol it
was hilarious, had to be there.

lately i've been thinking about service, and like it says in Matthew,
"losing [your] life for [His] sake"...it can mean several things. but
during last skype call yesterday with my family, they asked me a
question, they asked, "what is your favorite thing about your
mission?"
sounds like a slightly simple question, but it really got me thinking,
and it's like the past 16 months just flashed before my eyes. and
every memory i have from my mission is somehow related to doing
something for someone. in short, i've realized how many opportunities
i've had to serve people, and how every time i've taken advantage of
said opportunity, i've surprisingly felt myself become happier.
i say it a lot. i'm happier than i've ever been, and i think a great
deal has to do with the fact that the life of a missionary is
completely focused on other people, rather than the missionary
himself. i'm just grateful that i have the opportunity to do this, and
i'm going to make sure that i work harder than ever in these final 7
months of my mission to serve God in every opportunity presented to me
without stopping. after all, when we are "in the service of [our]
fellow beings [we] are only in the service of [our] God."

i love you guys, and trust me when i say that you will never be
happier than when you are serving and helping someone other than
yourselves.

until next week (i hope),

Anziano Carter Blaise

97100 Ragusa, RG
Italia

Soocer on p day "my birthday" with the district

We were in the same city in Foggia and now we're both in Ragusa!

I'm gettin old smh.... (041116)

Well guys,

Just wanna say thank you to all of you who wished me a happy birthday, it means a lot that you remembered ;) luckily my birthday is on a p-day so I'll be able to go hard for the big 2️⃣1️⃣ haha. Today we're going to Catania as well as pretty much the whole zone so we can play soccer and eat bomb food and kick it with each other, and it just happens to fall on my bday, pretty good present if you ask me. Btw I'm typing this thing on our bus ride to Catania so when I send it there's a good chance we will have already done said things.

This week was a good one, real good one. Things are still going great with Noemi; we're supposed to see her and her mom his week! Carmelo is killing it and came to church for the first time in a long time and he felt good. He's a lot better than he was a couple weeks ago. So glad to see him doing what he knows he needs to do.

We did an "exchange" this past Friday/Saturday here in Ragusa with the district leader and his comp. I was with the district leader, Anziano Holbrook from Sacramento, CA and my greenie was with his comp Anziano Davidson. To sum up the exchange:

-Friday we were going around trying to contact less actives that didn't have a phone number, so we just showed up as a surprise at their house

-one dude wasn't there but his wife was and she went crazy on us and screamed at us and told us to get the heck out of [here] and I was just like ok wth we didn't do anything so as we walked out of the apartment complex I said "grazie, troppa gentile. Buona giornata :)" as she was screaming at us hahaha if you don't understand it just plug it in to google translate I'm sure it'll give a somewhat accurate translation.

-then we met some "Christian missionary" dude in the street that thought he spoke English so he kept speaking to us in English even tho we were speaking Italian (he didn't speak too well). Anyway, this dude just started going off on us telling us how messed up our religion is because we have the Book of Mormon and believe in a living prophet and so forth. Basically he kept contradicting himself and I was getting pretty dang offended at his mocking remarks towards the only true church of Jesus Christ. It's whatever tho, we ended up just telling him we're here when he's ready to know the truth and then we just left haha.

-we also saw some guys about 18 years old driving in their car blasting music and smoking and drinking (they were obviously too cool to listen to missionaries 😉) but their window was down and they were stopped so we went and talked to them and gave them an English course card and they saw the name Jesus Christ written on it and laughed at us and ripped up the card. Man I got so upset like seriously make fun of us Americans all you want but you go and make fun of the Savior of humanity, Jesus Christ? Nah, not cool. So they just drove off laughing after that and I felt pretty bad that I couldn't tell them what was up before they left. But I guess they'll find out one day...

-Saturday we went to Comiso, a town like 25 mins out by car that has some members there, mainly less actives.

-we went to go try and see some less actives, didn't have much luck

-met some SICK people there tho

-we met and talked with a guy named Talel from Tunisia as well as his friend, they're both Muslim but they're very interested in what we have to say and we promised to return with a Book of Mormon in Arabic and Italian for both of them. They also wanna quit smoking. We got some real good hopes for Talel

-we also came across this couple in the street and they were prob both my age. They want a Book of Mormon so we're stoked for that.

Pretty much it's been a good week. Many things have happened and we're seeing some good potential for this city. I love you all, and I think about you guys all the time. Have a great week and I'm gonna try my best to thank you each individually for the birthday wishes you've extended my way :)

Ciao ciao!

Anziano Carter Blaise

Via Michelangelo Buonarroti 201

97100 Ragusa, RG

Italia

Inviato da iPad

Our "Ward mission leader" and his familyare like my 2nd family out here.  They had us over for lunch and made my fave stuff and made me a cake and sang and they even bought me a gift.. wth

this ones for Matt

Sprinklin' dat $

Carmelo, and investigator

We was cookin sumn

An investigator Noemi and her friend

Conference and miracles

man what a week...

this week was nice. we didnt teach a ton of lessons nor get any new investigators technically, but we saw God's hand!!!

literally, no, but we really got to see Him work His magic even in the little things.

last week we started teaching a 15 year old girl who's the girlfriend of a 17 year old member. she ate up everything we taught. i could just feel the whole time how much she had been prepared her whole life for this. after teaching her about the restoration of our church, she expressed to us that she believed everything we said was the truth, as well as everything she had read in the book of mormon so far. anyway, we taught her the plan of salvation this week and she just loved it. she just couldnt keep herself from tears when we told her that through this plan, she could be with her family for all of eternity, in the presence of God the Father. at the end, we asked her what she thought of the plan, basically, if she would be down to accept it and follow it by being baptized into Christ's church by someone with the actual Priesthood Authority of God...she said yes, she was so happy. she told us she was pretty scared though because she didn't think her mom and dad would be ok with her decision...which is pretty necessary when you're a minor wanting to make decisions like these. she also expressed how sad it made her to think that her family wouldn't accept this great plan of God that she knows to be the truth. i felt the impression to tell her that everything would be ok in the end, and that eventually, they would accept it based off her example she was setting. so, her mom came, picked her up, and saw the pamphlet we had given her. turns out she read it out of curiosity, and then asked her daughter, noemi, if she could learn more about this thing we were teaching her. and then, as you can maybe assume, her mom granted her permission to be baptized. this process happened over the course of 5 days by the way, and we had been praying hard the whole time for a miracle. and it happened. now all she needs is her dad's permission and she's good to go for april 30th :) and dont worry guys, im not dumb, we're for sure gonna work our butts off to try and teach the whole fam as well. after all, the Gospel was meant for families ;)

our ex-communicated homie we're working with decided to make a goal with us to get baptized in july this year. he came to conference, in fact, he came to all sessions of conference saturday and sunday in the church. it was his first time coming to church is straight up MONTHS. he's finally making a move, what a miracle. i been praying so hard for him, it's working.

some dude called us asking about english course, and then when i told him i was american, he flipped out and basically offered me a job with his company because of how good i speak english haha. he was like, "yeah when you get home in december you can start working from wherever you want, what do you say?" it was kinda whack haha. so when he comes to english course he wants to talk more about it...i guess i'll see what's up.

i also got some pretty spot on answers i been looking for during this season's general conference...so sick. i love hearing the Prophet and other church leaders speak, it hits me hard right when i need it. i could go on forever on what things i took from conference, but i'll save us both the time and share a quote i heard from Jeffrey R. Holland that really hit me where i needed it.

"You can have what you want, or you can have something better."

God knows us better than we know ourselves. often times we become selfish and forget that what we want may not be the best thing for us. i'm currently on the never-ending quest to align my will and desires with that of my Father in Heaven, because i know that if we both want the same thing, that I will be happier than I have ever thought possible. in the instances that we have shared the same desires, i've never seen anything work more smoothly and perfectly.

Trials are gonna come, they're inevitable. but it comforts me to read the words God spoke to the Prophet Joseph Smith when He said that "all these things shall give thee experience." It's easier said than done, but that is what life is for, to work your butt off so that you never waiver in the midst of trials because of the identical will you share with the God who created you.

love you all, and of course i miss you. i think about you guys a lot.

have a tight week and i'll talk to y'all soon!

ciao ciao,

Anziano Carter Blaise

Via Michelangelo Buonarroti 201

97100 Ragusa, RG

Italia

Inviato da iPad