Ocean Baptism

Mom and Dad gave me this little format to make my letters better. I will be the first to admit that my letters have been getting a little junky as of late. So I will try to make them better! 

What was the best thing you ate this week?

This week I actually learned how to make some pretty good homemade tortillas. Super simple: lard, flour, salt, and water. I made us some breakfast burritos. They turned out really nice! Here in Italy we eat pasta about every meal (because that is what everybody else eats and it is what is in the grocery stores) but it is always nice to try out something new. I taught Anziano Maxwell how to make Banana Bread as well. We made the bread from our English Course in an attempt to have some good student retention. I hope that they liked it. I also hope they come back to English Course.

What was the hardest thing you did this week?

This week we did a lot of finding but there was this one day when we stopped a lot of people and they actually listened to us... But... It was just soo frustrating that I thought I was explaining something simply, like the Book of Mormon, but either they refused to understand, I was explaining it badly, or they couldn’t understand my Italian. It is really frustrating and makes me really sad. I don’t know if I explained myself very well but doing hours of finding and having good conversations just ending with people rejecting us is really heavy. But in the end it is nice to at least educate people about who we are.

What was church like yesterday?

The Branch President came back! I was no longer the presiding priesthood leader. However, there were only about 16 members in church today. Luckily there was a big group from Switzerland who came that made the church seem a little bigger. We had two investigators come: Viviana and Jimmy McFoy (He is rad). I had to teach the Gospel Principle lesson again because the branch mission leader was gone. The Elders Quorum President, Franco (everybody just calls him by his first name. That was super normal in Sicily but here they at least call people by their last names except for him), invited us to lunch. Viviana cooked us some pasta and we all ate at his house. It was nice.

What was your miracle of the week?

We went to Brindisi this week for a baptism they had. I had to do the interview this week as well. This investigator has been coming to church for about 3 years. She is a little... funny... Just recently she stopped taking her super strong medication and was stable enough to be interviewed. She had been interviewed in the past but she did not make it very far because her medications kind of fuzzed up her mind. I felt like she was ready to be baptized. They did the service in the ocean. It was pretty sweet. It was super windy which made about 7 foot waves and in the background of the baptism there were a bunch of surfers.

 

For P-Day we went roller skating. We picked up some blades and cruised around town. It was really fun.