What is your
physical address in Sciacca? We would like to look up where you live on Google
and send you letters.
Via Lanza 45
Sciacca (AG)
Italia
We don’t live in the city of
Sciacca though. We live out in who knows where. They threw up a bunch of new
Apartment Buildings outside the city that is where we live. We work and do
church in Centro.
Can you tell us more about the missionaries who were robbed? When,
where and how? What was taken?
Anziano Stewart and Stephens.
Hehe. Stewart was my trainer. They never lock the door of their apartment and
they do church in their apartment, so their address is everywhere. Luckily it
was only 40 Euro that was swiped. But that was all the money that they had.
Classic.
You said your finding comes from “slow friendships with people.” What
does that mean? How do you go about it?
Well... Pretty much we have a
ton of friends in the city that own shops and what not. All the shops are small
and family owned so it is usually just them working there all day and not many
people coming in and out. So for the past 5 years missionaries have literally
just wandered the streets talking with people but that hasn't really
worked.
Funny Story. We did finding
one day and got a bunch of numbers... However... All of their names were
already in the phone. Classic Sciacca.
So we are trying to just make
friends with the people as we visit their shops and talk with them and try to
teach a simple principle at first (Our most successful thus far: "Using
time wisely," "Budgeting," and "Improving Family
Relationships"). For the most part nobody wants to talk about religion, so
that has been our way in to most of these people’s shops. In this way people at
least will get a lesson from us and invite us back! With some of the people we
are to the point where we can share Bible verses about the principle we are
teaching. Needless to say... It is not the easiest city to work in... But the
people here really are super friendly and classic Sicialian People. They are
not mean or anything. In fact, quite the opposite! People invite us to dinner
all the time 5 minutes after meeting us and laugh and joke with us! Great
people.
Sciacca is not like any town I
have ever seen. I am pretty sure it is the one city in the mission without a
train station and I am not kidding when I say everybody knows everybody! Kind
of cool in that way. But also really hard because the town is super
traditional.
So. Like I said. Slow
friendships and friendly livin’.
Oh! Slow friendship paid off
this week! One of our friends who owns a shop came to church for fast and
testimony meeting. Boom. He also bore a testimony and it so happened to be the
best one of the day. He talked about love and accepting other people and
faiths. He is a super cool guy. His name is Marco. We are going to start going
to his house hopefully this week!
Hey! This week there was the
big Patron Saint holiday in Sciacca. Sciacca’s patron saint is the Madonna (She
just keeps following me everywhere. First Messina now Sciacca.). But it was
cool! The whole town came out and walked around bare footed and chanted prayers
and lit candles all day long. It was really neat to see. Then... They had a big
parade where they brought the Madonna herself out. But this year was special
because they had a special Maria...FROM BOSTON! Do you guys remember that Maria
we saw on the North End? Well they brought her here to be in Sciacca where she
started. The last time they did it was like 20 years ago. There was also a big
group of people from Boston that I got to talk to! It was super fun speaking in
English with them. All of them had roots in Sciacca... Grandparents, Great
Grandparents and what not.
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| My friends from Boston. |
This week we also went to
Palermo because Zito had to plan Zone Conference. I got to do some sweet, sweet
finding there. Big city finding. Classic.
This week we had Zone
Conference.
Zito is a super good cook. I
am taking notes from him.
Yeah.
Ciao Ciao!
