Transfers are IN! I will be remaining in Messina another six weeks. In fact, the whole district is staying the same. It is a little tiring, but the Lord  must have some work for me to do here. Keep on truckin.

I did a three day exchange down in Catania this week. Anziano Cicon had to go to Napoli for his Visa. So me and Anziano Cremonesi (he is Italian) did a good 48 hours’ worth of finding for the Catania Missionaries. Oh man...I don’t know if I could ever serve with an Italian companion. They are impossible to understand. There are two Italians down in Catania. Catania is a big city compared to Messina but I was surprised how similar the people were to Messina. Catania is beautiful though. Apparently the Volcano erupted... Nobody even talked about it but you could smell it from Catania to Messina. It made the moon this blood red color too. It was pretty cool, but normal for these people.

We have been working with Francesco! He is doing great and we finished all the lessons with him. But we probably need to repass this stuff because we don’t know how much he got. He is a character though. We will plan to meet him in the church and he won’t show up for like 35 minutes so we will start to leave and he will have been waiting around on the street corner or right outside the church for like the past 40 minutes... We keep telling him he can come inside the church but that’s just how he is I guess? He is great and loves the church. He always calls it his house.

I got those pictures of Kris, Ty, Bri, and Mark on their missions! I really liked them and it is super fun to look at them. 

We have two new investigators. One is a fireman named Giovanni and the other is a teacher at a high school who teaches cooking named Giovanni. Sweet! We are hoping that we can teach them some more!

Today we are with the Reggio Anziani and we are going to all the Cathedrals in town. Anziano Stevens from Utah and Anziano Puff from North Italy. He speaks German in the part of Italy he is from though but still knows Italian. (He is also impossible to understand. Should be fun today.)

Orange Season

Hey! So Noah Jewkes, my friend serving in Denmark just emailed me. He is serving in a little city in the boroughs of Copenhagen. He said he was doing some Area Book and found a whole bunch of sheets and pics from a one Soster Kelley. He is in...hmm...Amager...Allerod...one of those! I don't remember! But he said he is going to take special care of those people! I thought that was kind of cool!

I also had Zone Conference this week! It was good to see all the Missionaries from Sicily and Malta again. This Conference was about the Book of Mormon. And about how we can use the book of Mormon better in our finding efforts. President doesn’t want us to give out a book without a sincere heart felt invitation to read it. Some Elders just set up shop and hand them out!! Don’t know why... But yes. It was good. We also got a change on Suit Jackets. We can wear sweaters or suit jackets now. Woot. Depending on what the Zone Leaders choose. All the Zone Leaders are Italian... So they just say you can choose.

Also... They changed the new mission standards. Instead of 20 baptisms a month President raised it to 40 baptisms... The math all works out when he was presenting it to us but this new goal is surprisingly hard.... The average right now is about 7 baptisms a month for the mission. We were able to get 23 5 months ago. It was also President Kelly’s and a 20 others’ last transfers in the mission so they were working super, super hard. I think it can be done. But a lot of faith is going to have to be exercised that is for sure. President also wants for Italians to be baptized instead of Africans or Chinese. So our goals are changing and so must we.

He also stressed that the temple is getting built in less than 17 months. So we have 5 months to get people baptized to get them to the temple! That was a cool talk he gave actually.

It is orange season here in Sicily. Sicily is the land of oranges and lemons. There are orange tress everywhere!!! For example... There are hundreds of orange trees in the city and they are starting to drop oranges. When you go out into the country it is only oranges! In the winter they are so cheap people sell them for like 10 cents a kilo or just give them out free because they are so many. Blood oranges to! Everywhere. The city smells like oranges now too.

There was a big strike in town this week. All the truck drivers parked their trucks in the middle of the road so nobody could move. They were protesting poverty in the South of Italy. 

We also had Stake Conference this week. We all climbed on bus up to Enna. All the members. It was really fun for everybody. All the members saw their friends and we saw all the missionaries for the second time that week. At that conference, President gave some really good talks about member missionaries and the temple again. One thing that was really humbling for me--Stake Conference was about the same size of our ward every week, about 200 people and 40 of them were missionaries. It’s really such a blessing to live in Zion. Makes me want to work harder.

Also. Our investigator, Francesco, with the baptism date didn’t come to church for the 2nd time so we have had to move his baptism date. He is still awesome though. He wants to get baptized really badly. But sometimes he is just a little lazy. We are going to be seeing him a lot more and see if there is maybe some family problems there. I think his mom is not all too happy, which is maybe what is stopping him. So we are going to keep working with him. He is still a progressing investigator.

Transfer calls this week. I am going to Catania for 3 days because Cicon has to take a plane to Napoli for his Visa. Should be a good time.

Lots of Pictures!

Questions Answered

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!

We have appointments!

Another classic week in Messina. So close to Italy...yet soo far away! I like Sicily a lot though, and I wouldn't mind spending more time on this here Island.

This week we had a guy call named Francesco. He is 23 years old Italian who found a card on the ground with the Church’s info on it and he "felt impressed to call it." So he did and met with us and the next lesson later he has a BAPTISM DATE! Two days ago (the second time to we tried to meet with him) he said he had a headache and couldn't meet but we offered to come to his house and give him a blessing. So we went there and ended up giving a lesson about the spirit to his whole family. It went very well and his family was very accepting, so much so we felt impressed to give Francesco a baptism date. He came to church and loved it and he said his mom is reading the BOM and is feeling the spirit. Cool eh?

This week we have done a lot of walking! For some reason we have had appointments on opposite ends of the city every day this week. Which is a good thing because... WE HAVE APPOINTMENTS! Things are picking up slowly here and we are having more stuff to do! It is still pretty hot here and we don’t have to wear jackets yet—thank goodness.

Anziano Cicon is a good man. Very serious. But a good man. He doesn't really talk much and in the apartment he reads this old, like 1960 copy of the Book of Mormon in his bed every night and keeps to himself in the mornings, but he is nice. I actually find myself trying to lighten up the mood when we are with people but he is very serious about things. He is from California, went to BYUI for a year and plays water polo. So that is Anziano Jacob Cicon (pronounced Sison but the Italians say Chicken. Hehe… He hates that.)

Last week we went fishin’. We didn't really catch much but we learned how to fish in the sea and how to fish for Octopus. The people we went with said in the summer the Octopus are everywhere and super easy to catch. We BBQ’d and played beach games. It was a fun time actually. The sea is super tempting to jump in though! The water is super blue and lots of people where snorkeling.

This week we have a ward activity...CAKE NIGHT! Everybody is making a cake and bringing it to be judged. I myself think I will make Pumpkin Chocolate chip Bread or Zucchini Bread. I think it will be a big success! This week I perfected my Banana Bread recipe as well. I have made it a few times but this time was especially good. Also learned how to make some good Arancini and Lasagna from a member.

I conducted a good week long study of Charity during personal study this week and the bulk of what I learned is in Corinthians 13. Essentially, we can have all the spiritual gifts in the world and bring millions unto Christ. And that is great and you are building up the kingdom. But unless you have it in your heart and are doing those things out of free will you are not profiting anything. I also have gained a huge appreciation for the Bible here on the mission.

Everybody here knows the Bible like the back of their hand!

Language is still struggling but I am always trying. 

Thanks for all you do.

Ciao Ciao Ciao.