So I have gotten un sacco of questions from people this week, so I will organize my letters thus:
1. Soccer in the Mish
President shut down Calcio a couple weeks ago because too
many missionaries were getting hurt. Well... This week he also said that no
sports of any kind could be played. It makes us sad but we can still play with
our companions he said? It may be a good thing because when Italians play
sports they play soo aggressively and I could easily see missionaries taking it
too far. So no Sports of any kind now.
2. My Weight
I have lost a little weight here--maybe 5 pounds or so
from stress. I have made it a transfer goal to gain it back but it is hard to
do because we only have one big meal a day. But I think I have been making
progress. We eat pasta and tomatoes every day. So does everybody else. It is
crazy. It makes it hard to put on weight when your diet doesn’t consist of
McDonalds and 24oz Steaks.
3. Zone Leaders
All of the Zone Leaders for the Island of Sicily are
Italians from the North. We have 4 Zone Leaders (2 for Catania and 2 for
Palermo). We did a exchange with them this week in Messina and Reggio. It went
pretty well and we got a few more potentials we can try this week!
4. Clothes
My clothes are holding up just fine actually. This one
member here slims up the clothes of all the missionaries who came here because
she says the Americans dress like circus clowns. So my pants and shirts and
nice and slim. It is also sweater and scarf season. Not for us because it is
still too hot to really wear jackets but President said we can wear jackets or
sweaters when it gets cold. I like the sweaters personally.
5. MTC Greenies
My group was the biggest group to come in. Normally it is
about 5 or 6 missionaries coming in. This transfer we got all the missionaries
from the Spain MTC (which is all the European missionaries). We got 3 Italians
and 1 German/Italian. He lived on the border of Switzerland so he could speak
German at home but Italian in school. The German speaking one is in Reggio
right now. His name is Anziano Poof. He is 23. He was actually a model before
the mission but didn’t like the lifestyle so he joined the church again and is
now a missionary. He is great. He wakes up an hour early every morning to exercise
more. I think the mission lifestyle will gradually beat that out of him.
6. Baptisms in Messina
Messina has seen a few baptisms in the past couple years.
The most recent of which is Graziella. Which... We went to teach there this
week and she expressed that she maybe is still praying to the Madonna. Hmmm...
Also she received her answer that the church is true because she prayed to the
Madonna and she came to her in a vision, saying Joseph Smith was a prophet.
What do you say to that? But we are hoping that changes here quick. The sisters
have been teaching her. I think we are going to stop by more often now.
7. Baptism
The people before Graziella were a Sri Lankan family.
They are awesome and honestly understand what the Gospel is. They are super
cool! They’re baptism was a year and half ago-ish and it is a mom, and 2
daughters. The one daughter speaks perfect English. She learned from watching
movies! We ate Sri Lankan food at their house this last week. Before them was
Maria Pia. Maria Pia is awesome and helps us teach a lot! I love Maria Pia. She
was baptized 3 years ago. She has been helping us teach Francesco.
7. Our Area
Our Area is about 3 hours north of Messina on train and
past Taormina on train. In total it would take about 4 hours to go from the
North to the South of our area. It is essentially the North East corner of the
Island. Reggio is about 3x as big as us. Their area is the whole toe of the
boot. We mostly work in our cities because it’s impossible for people to come
to church if they live an hour away.
This week we got offered a job to teach English at the
biggest high school in town. We went in there to hang up posters for English
course and the principal thought we were asking for a job so he said he would
love for us to work for him. He thought we were asking if we could be teachers
at his school. Needless to say we were flattered but declined the job. However
he did invite us back to teach at least one lesson to his school. I think we
are going to do it because the school is 2500 kids big! He said to come talk to
him this week.
Francesco is getting ready for baptism. In fact… It’s
kind of hard to not talk about baptism! We will be talking about how we need to
keep the Sabbath day holy and he will talk about baptism. He is great kid
though. A little slow. But he wants to be a member soo bad and loves to meet
members and missionaries. He is great though. We are still trying to figure out
how to teach him because we are finding that we are having to simplify our
lessons down a lot. Very slow, very simple. I think we may need to go even
slower than we thought before. We are hoping to teach his sister who has been
in and out of a few lessons. She actually asked us to give her a blessing the
other night and we did and she expressed how she was feeling the spirit. We
invited her to read a chapter in the BOM so we are going to follow up on that.
Francesco is great! We are planning a baptism date for the 23rd.
For some reason the Stake Presidency for Sicily has been
pushing family history work! We have had 5 stake people come to our church to
teach how to do indexing. I think they are pushing it with the temple coming
up! They need more and more Italian names for people to do! The temple has been
delayed but I think if the members start doing their part it will be back on
track again. You guys should do Indexing. It is pretty cool!
The language is still a...trial before blessing...and a
few members and zone leaders chewed me out this week for not learning but...
all good things in time right? Thanks for all you do and thanks for your
letters!
