Haha. The city of Lecce is completely empty now.
Everybody has moved to their sea side homes, or at least seem to go to the sea
about every day. It’s very fun for them. But a little harder for us. But we are
getting by and continue to find people. We have been tracking down less active
people this week mostly. Turns out about 40% of this branch list doesn’t live
at those addresses anymore, so we are going to work with the ward clerk and get
their names cleared off the list. They then send all the names to Frankfurt.
For some reason the Branch President’s wife has selected
me as the choir director. So every Tuesday evening I now teach
singing lessons to the members. There is going to be a big Stake Conference
choir soon, so I have to prepare my students for that.
4th of July this week was sweet. We talked with the
Napoli Pizza place near our house and they agreed to make us red, white, and
blue pizzas (the dough was blue, white Mozz, and red sauce). It was a super
good memory and all the employees were taking pictures with us. It was a good
time.
.JPG)
.JPG)
This week was a little sad because two of our less
actives expressed a lot of doubts, faith issues, and seem to be drifting
further from becoming active. We are doing our best to try to teach to their
needs but they are not keeping commitments and continue to bring up more and
more problems they have with the church. We are showing them love and being
patient. But it may be out of our control for now unless they change their
circumstances or they start keeping commitments. We pray for them multiple
times a day. The other less actives we are working with are now fully active
and have kept all commitments and are attending church every week.
Our 13 year old investigator, Gabriele, loves the church
and loves meeting with us... However, his father is against religions and does
not really allow his son to attend church. We have not been able to meet with
his parents yet which is the hard thing but we are praying that an opportunity
will be opening up so that we can meet with them and explain a few things.
Gabriele reads the Book of Mormon and hangs out every day with his member
friend, Kevin.
The member friend Kevin (new convert) is super cool! This
week we encouraged him to tell his friends about his standards. He instead thought
that we could just meet with his friend and do the same thing we are doing with
his friend Gabriele. Yes. A referral! This new friends name is also Kevin and
he is really cool. We are very impressed that Kevin (member Kevin) is doing so
much missionary work which is amazing because he sometimes calls them and
invites them to church and likes to explain his new standards to his friends.
This week we have planned a youth activity of volleyball where member Kevin has
invited all his friends (guys and gals) to come! SWEET! I personally may make
some hamburgers for everybody.
