Pictures!

Zone Conference & Visitors

THE BIGGEST CRUISE SHIP I HAVE EVER SEEN IS IN TOWN TODAY! SOO MANY AMERICANS!!! It is a huge Carnival ship that has 3 water slides on it that just tempts us from every corner of the city. It is honestly huge! It pokes up above everything! The tourists are funny... Always stumbling around saying, "No Comprenda." I don't know what language that is but they all say it.

It was sweet little Anziano Stewart’s birthday yesterday. We had a bunch of guests over at the house. The APs were passing up through Messina to Rome because they finished Zone Conference. Also... The Malta missionaries* are also going up to Rome to get a Visa to live in Italy again. 2 Other Anziani are following him up to Rome. So we had a lot of people in town. We did exchanges and found lots of people. The APs are really good. I hope to be as good as them one day. Learned a lot.

Zone Conference! It was awesome! Really big though. They decided to have one big Zone Conference with all the missionaries from Sicilia and Malta. They normally do two zone conferences. President Waddoups stressed the importance of obedience and dropped the hammer on P Day observance. He changed the rules for P Days so that now you have to stay in your Proselyting Zone. Not a problem for us because our area is huge. But for Rome where the areas are small it’s a little different. Don’t rightly know. Also he threatened to take away playing soccer if we don’t shape up! I guess a bunch of missionaries are on crutches for playing to rough. Hehehe.

Sorella Waddoups bore testimony and encouraged us to wash the dishes every day and wash our hands.

Right before Zone Conference we had scheduled a lesson with a Nigerian Man (English Speaking. We now have more English speaking investigators than Italian). But we checked the bus times and found out that we couldn’t do both that day. We tried calling him to cancel but he didn’t answer. So we got on the bus to go to Catania and guess who it was... THE AFRICAN MAN! We got to have the lesson with him after all. Hehe… He was trying to skip out on our appointment but we got him good! He found out we were normal people and actually called us to schedule another appointment! He wants to cook us some African Food.

I got 2 birthday packages from Mom and Dad! A letter from Ty, Mom, Noah Jewkes, Madi Yraguen, Adam Lever, and Brooke Staples. The letters and packages from Rome were not opened and everybody says it is safer to send packages there. But letters you can send down to Sicilia. But you should probably put a picture of Jesus on the back and tape the sides. Some Anziani parents use Catholic stamps and that makes it through but a pic of Jesus on the back works.

CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO!!!

*Malta missionaries. If you get sent down to Malta you are there for a minimum of like 7 months. There are 4 of them. They have to learn Maltese when they get there but 75% of the Island speaks fluent English. They teach in English but try to do some in Maltese to get on their level. Every makes fun of you if you are sent down there because you are immediately forgotten and you cannot speak Italian when you get back to the mainland. But! You get to speak in English.... Therefore I want to go. Just kiddin. But this language thing is a big ol’ problem for me right now. But Malta. It’s cool.

Cold Showers and a Baptism Date

Word.

So this week we truly were blessed missionaries. For this week... We were able to see the Madonna descending out the mountains of Reggio. Along with thousands of other people who will testify of it. Truly a sight to behold. Things are going to change for Reggio I think because the Madonna has come to town. In fact! The people have decided to celebrate by holding a week’s worth of free concerts and markets. The Madonna came to rest in the city’s Duomo (the biggest cathedral in town, all the cities have a Duomo). It has been hard for Reggio to do work this week though because all the tourists from around town have come in to celebrate and all the areas where we normally do proselyting have been converted into places to do concerts. We went over to help them do English class stuff and to partake in the cultural celebration.

Wells. We had a few lessons this week but none all too memorable. We had a lesson with a man named Antonio. His daughter called us about an hour before the appointment saying to come to the Park because he was drunk as a skunk and we needed to calm him down. So we scurried over there but I guess he had stumbled off towards the ocean so we instead gave a lesson to his daughter and companion about how they could help him. I guess this thing happens regularly. But I actually think there could be some potential with these two ladies.

Our Water Heater busted out this week. Cold Showers... A goodly saint came and helped us fix it. So our water heater literally comes out as boiling water. We could literally cook pasta with the water that comes from it. And it has melted the rubber in the faucet so that it can’t spray hot water anymore. But it’s all fixed and we have a new chrome faucet. Fancy.

We had a General Ex Seventy come to visit our ward this week. He is on a cruise of Italy and came to church. He had problems finding the church. The Bishop had him stand up and give a testimony which Anz Stewart translated. The Spirit fell upon the all those who were there to hear the good. But I feel constrained to write further on the matter...mostly because I don’t remember what he said. But it was good for the whole ward!

Tourist season is almost done. Hopefully. For some reason the streets were filled with Germans.

Our main investigator is Budiga. He is from Sri Lanka. We found him tracting in the Sri Lankan ghettos with our friend Dayan. He is super nice and self taught himself English (and you can tell!). He is super cool though and it feels nice to be able to teach in English because...well...I can actually teach and understand what he is saying! He committed to baptism date! We are trying to meet with him tonight to explain more about what baptism really is. Wish us luck. We are lucky we have Sri Lankan members who can help translate some of the things we say to him.

Speaking of the Sri Lankans. It’s is Dayan’s birthday today. He lives with a lot of Hindu roommates who have a shelf in their house of all their Hindu Gods. Dayan said he wanted a Christus Statue for his birthday so he could have something in the house... But I don’t know how to get him one… So I made him a simple one out a play dough until I can find one or tell him where to get one.

Ciao Belli Ciao Ciao.

Transfers, Pizza & Family History

Howdy doo family poo.

The week started off with transfers which went along smoothly. Except the APs called us at like 8 o clock that night asking where the Elders were that we sent off the bus about 8 hours before. I guess they never showed up to where the APs were going to meet them that night. Never found out what happened to them. Hopefully they are alright. Hmm.

During transfers we had a bunch of people staying with us in Messina because it is a central point entering Sicily. I like transfers because you get to see missionaries from all around the mission. Because it was P Day we were able to go to a really fancy Pizza Place which was pretty good! Pizza here is super cheap. It is about 4 euros for about a meal and half. My favorite kind of pizza here is called Diavola (Devil). It is really spicy and has little bits ‘o ham on it.

Special edition planner for the new transfer.

We were able to go out to Pizza again this week with two guys who have been coming to English Class for years. Their names are Giovanni and Domico. They are really cool. They are moving to Ireland next week and wanted to take us out to Pizza and to thank us for teaching them English. We played soccer with them the other day and they love doing things with the missionaries but not really interested in the Church. But we still like them. They are moving to a smaller city near Belfast. I want to find out where Ryan Lever or his old, Italian Companion are--serving maybe we could give him a referral of some people to teach? 

We went tracting with our friend Dayan a few days ago (He is Sri Lankan), and we went tracting up in the Sri Lankan part of town. It is crazy how differently people treat you when you have a Sri Lankan next to you. 100% different! We were able to talk to a lot of people and we got an investigator named Budika. He is funny and came to church (The first investigator I have seen come to church!). He speaks English a little and tonight we have an appointment with him at a Sri Lankan family’s house. I hope it turns into a dinner appointment because the Sri Lankans cook good stuff.

Pizza with Giovanna and Domenico. They are leaving to Ireland.

A missionary couple came from Bari on Sunday and gave a seminar on Family History. It was like 3 hours and super interesting. Have we done any family history? Because it is cool. The new familysearch.org site is way nice and all the Vecchi (The Olds. That is how you say it in Italian. Same as friends if what Ty said is true.) want to start doing indexing.

That just about sums up the week. Oh! We got a sweet Johnny Cash Gospel CD from the APs this week. We listen to it when we work out and make our muscles bigger. It reminds me of that trip up to Jackson and listened to the Cash for hours while Dad just pleaded for us to change CDs. But we didn’t let him, did we Ma? We just kept on listening! 

Prossima Volta. Anziano Big Muscles Kelley.

Birthday in Italy

Wassup Family! It has finally started to get a little cooler here. It has been terrible hot here but this week it rained and stormed a lot, which made it a lot cooler (also cleaned out the smokes in the gutter). We got stuck in the rain twice walking home and I actually really enjoyed it because for once I was wet by something other than my own sweat. I guess in the winters here it rains buckets and I think we are starting to get a little bit of that weather change.

Speaking of change…August is over! That means people will finally come back from vacation and we will have a ward again! The Bishop has been out of town for a month and a good chunk of the ward is classified inactive because they haven’t come in ages. I am happy because there are more people in the streets to talk to and it seems that a lot of crazies have gone back in their homes now that everybody is back.

I am close to being legal in the country now! We have had to go to the government building like 5 times to get this thing filled out and hopefully in the next few days I will be legal in the country. Most of the people here are actually not legal in Italy. Especially the Sri Lankans. So I guess that over the last 30 years Italy has taken a lot of steps to stop illegal immigration and they have been checking peoples’ papers a lot. But...they never check papers in Sicily. This is why we have so many Indian and Sri Lankan people here in Messina because it is right next to the mainland and most of them end up stopping here. I like it. There are a lot of Hindu Shops and the Sri Lankan ward members always cook their native foods for us. It’s really good but spicy. And messy because we eat it with our hands.

Speaking of eating. I think I am slowly developing gluten intolerance and Diabetes here. All these people eat is Pasta, Fruit, Ice Cream, and Granita. I am not joking. It is actually hard to find vegetables and food that isn’t made up simple carbs and sugars! I have had more ice cream in one week here than I have had in all my time spent in America. And this is a normal thing for Italians! In fact... My MTC Teacher really did develop a gluten intolerance and mild Diabetes on his mission. I am always telling Anziano Stewart that we need to cook more vegetables and eat whole grains. I seriously can feel a difference in my energy and body from all the stuff we eat.

I had a good Birthday though! We had our District Meeting where a member met us with Pasta and Gelato Cake! It was awesome. After that we helped a member move. She is moving to Richmond, Virginia with her kids. That took about 6 hours because she lived on the 4th floor and was not really ready for us. Afterwards we had Pizza and Coca Cola. After that we had an appointment with Namoli and Kushon who just got married in the temple. We needed to talk about the temple with them. They had made a birthday cake for me too, and more coca cola. It was nice because we got to where normal clothes pretty much all day on my birthday. But all the Pasta and Sugar is slowly wearing me down.

Birthday Miracle. While carrying a bunch of stuff to the garbage while moving there was this Romanain guy in a little truck who was taking all the metal stuff from the trash can to melt it down. We gave him about 200 pounds worth of metal and he was super happy. We went to move more stuff and came back and he has taken a copy of The Testaments that we were throwing away. He said he was going to give it to his little kids to watch tomorrow. Sweet! One man’s trash is another man’s salvation. He said that he wanted us to come over to see his yard and meet his family (without us even asking). So that was pretty cool.

Transfers are today. Nobody in Messina is going anywhere. Reggio is moving an Anziano out and bringing another one in from Bari. 

Also! I got a lot of mail this week. One from Dad, few from Mom, Terrik, Whitney, The Kelley, G-Ma Barbara. It was nice because I got them on my Birthday! Grazie Tutti!

Ciao Ciao Ciao Ciao Ciao