Malta | week 16

 The Grotto

 Malta

 Their trash at 8am...

 The trash at 10am... haha!

1.12.2015

As you can see from some of the pictures, we have had some pretty fun pdays the last couple of weeks. It blows my mind how much there is to see in such small places as Gozo and Malta. Last week we got to go to two grottos, an old watchtower, some ancient temples, and a windmill. The temples were 5600 years old, and we read a lot of interesting history behind it. Today is Elder Orfilas birthday so we are going bowling and out to dinner at today. One of the benefits of serving in Malta is awesome pdays for sure. 

This week our friend Brian actually took us to a bay near his house I had never been to before where we had a lesson. We had a really funny experience on the way there. There was a really narrow street lined with stones on both sides towards the bay and a girl about 20 years old was driving towards us. She had to reverse about 200ft so we could pass, and she was having a really hard time doing it. I started laughing, and Brian said in a really serious tone, "stop, thats the worst thing you could do for her confidence." 2 minutes later, we passed her and he started cracking up, "she was so nervous." When we got there we read from Alma 32 together talking about faith to achieve some of his spiritual goals for the new year. I remember my dad always use to tell me how the gym was packed for the first 3 weeks of January and then back to normal around the first week of February. We explained that Alma 32 explains how we can refrain from being that guy. It was a really good night.

On Saturday we also got to visit with Fastus and Claudia. They are a married couple with 3 kids, but Fastus lives here in Malta and she is living in Denmark. Fastus is not a member, so we have been visiting them the past couple weeks and teaching some of the lessons, and he is so nice to us. On Saturday they bought a bag full of oranges, apples, carrots, and cachi (an italian fruit) and made us each like a liter of freshly squeezed juice, and then he pulled out some fish he just bought from the market. I ate 3 full fish with the skin and everything. It took some time to get the bones out of my teeth after, but it was so good. The fish here is really growing on me. She is taking the kids back up to Denmark this week to start work and school again. We knew it will be hard for them, so we decided to show the Mormon Message, "Mountains to Climb" There little boys were being really rowdy the whole time we were there, but immediately went silent while President Eyring began to speak. We explained to them how little children are so close to Heavenly Father, and really receptive to the spirit. It was incredible how they listened to a prophets voice for 5 minutes without talking once. After it finished they were running around and loud until we left. 

Overall, it was another solid week. We found a new girl to teach this week for the first time in a couple weeks which was really exciting, but unfortunately she is too busy to see us until February. She is studying at the university to be a religion teacher in malta, and she committed to read from the  Book of Mormon. Sometimes Im not the best teacher, I just hope people read the book. Its words are so much more powerful than mine. 

Have a good week. 

Anziano Smith