Goin' to Rome!

I got transferred. That is to say I am being transferred this week to Rome 3. I will be the Zone Leader there. I don’t think I am this Zone Leader material but the Lord does. I am excited to see Rome. Rome 3 in the center of Rome by the Vatican and Coliseum and stuff like that. That should be pretty cool.

How was Otranto? Pictures?

I am going to try to send a few! It was a really cool city. We ate an expensive fancy meal at a fancy restaurant with the money we had put away. It was really cool. We took our roller blades down there and cruised around the whole town. It was super cool. There are quite a few famous things there. A huge mosaic floor and the bones of 800 martyrs. I really liked that town.

With Elders Maxwell and Bahme.

What was the best thing you ate this week?

The meal in Otranto. It was a 5 course meal. All sea food caught locally. 

What was church like yesterday?

Not many people showed up. I would have thought after summer ended people would start coming back but it seems kind of the opposite. It was my last Sunday so I was able to say goodbye to all of the members. It was good. I have really enjoyed my time here in Lecce. I really liked it. The branch is trying to organize a branch activity for me on Wednesday to go bowling but I think that I will be transferred by then. I am also sad that I will miss the Halloween party that we have been planning. Well... I guess that is life though. 

This week has been a little rough. We did mostly street contacting. We were able to meet with Jimmy McFoy though. He is really cool. He is now trying to quit smoking but he has quite a few problems that he is going to have to overcome.

Well that is about all. Next week I will email from Rome. My new companion is named Anziano Budd. I believe that is his name? Never met him before.

Free Masons and Less Active Work

What was the most interesting place you visited this week?

Today we are going to a city called Otranto. It is supposedly a really cool beach city with a castle and what not. President always talks about it whenever he talks with the Lecce Elders about going there for a P-day. We have planned to take a train down there and then rollerblade around the city. It should be really fun. Other than that we mostly just stay in Lecce. The small cities are filled with really old dying people and nobody is on the streets. So it’s more effective just to stay here.

Who was the most interesting person you talked to this week?

I talked to a man who was a free mason. There is a small free mason club here in Lecce. All of the masons are very proud to be masons and always have pins of their guild on their jackets. All he kept saying was he was a part of a guild designed to save humanity from political and religious evils. He was not very interested but he was a very interesting man.

What was the hardest thing you did this week?

For some reason this week we met with a lot of less actives. They all could meet with us. But... Less active work is sometimes very hard... Because it is always pride that keeps people from coming to church. Also a few of the people we met with probably should not have been baptized because they really did not understand what they were doing (3 of them had no clue who Joseph Smith was... Wow...). That is always a little hard and frustrating.

What was your miracle of the week?

We have a friend here in Lecce named Slim who works at the castle. His name is not really Slim but he likes to be called that. But after 30 years of dating various women he has decided to get married. He proposed to his girlfriend a few days ago. It made me really happy.

Well that is about all for me today!

Funeral Sunday

What was coolest thing you saw this week?

One of the first things that comes to mind is me and Anziano Jones were doing exchanges this week in Lecce and we were talking with a nice couple next to the Roman Theater in Lecce. But as we were talking to this woman all these crazy people started coming up to us (seriously tons!). One would leave and 5 seconds later another one would come. Asking us all sorts of questions. After about 10 minutes of people coming up to us we finally managed to talk to the couple again. It was super strange. 

What was the hardest thing you did this week?

This week we had a really awesome member named Nicla die here. Almost of the branch was baptized thanks to her and everybody knows her. She got cancer and became very sick. I had the chance to home teach her and to clean her house. She also used to teach Gospel Principles with me. She was really an awesome lady. Her husband Kim is really awesome to. He is American.

What were your duties church yesterday and did you have any investigators?

Yesterday in church we did not have really anybody in church because Nicla died yesterday morning. All the members except for about 5 went to the hospital. So we did sacrament with about 0 people in church and then we all went to the hospital. In Italy they do the funerals within 24 hours of the death. In the hospital they had small chapels below where people can meet and say their regards.

So yesterday we all met as a branch and organized how we would help the family and then late that night we went and did the sacrament as a branch in their home. We sang hymns and it was a really tender moment. I blessed the sacrament. That was a really tender memory for me this week.

Today we had the funeral in church. Lots of people. Lots of work transforming the church into a suitable place for a funeral. After emailing we have to clean it all up.

What was your miracle of the week?

I really like branches how they can come together to help out a family. Especially these Italian Saints. They have to give up a lot to be members here. A lot. So the church then becomes their family.

Meet the Mormons?

I read something about it on lds.org during conference. But... I think it is only in English so I don’t know if it will be of much use here. That is super cool that the church is making movies and is all about social media now.

What Do I eat each Day?

Pasta. Lots of pasta. I have been trying to mix it up with rice. But Italians eat different kinds of pasta everyday so that is all they sell in stores. It is really hard to eat diverse. 

Duties of a District Leader?

I plan the weekly District Meeting where we talk about work and I give a training about various things. This next week I am giving a training about the pre-Earth Earth and learning to love.

Do I miss Sicily?

Sicily was awesome. I really loved Sicily. I would love to go back. But I don’t think that is what is going to happen to me. I honestly don’t know if I will ever see that island ever again. Sciacca and Palermo are just so hard to get to. I really love Sicily though.

General Conference

Here are some questions that mom sent to help make my letters better. Thanks MOM!

What was the best thing you ate this week?

For General Conference I made some tacos with my tortilla recipe. I also made some salsa for Anziano Maxwell! It was really good. But it needed some cilantro. Conference was really good. We watched it in English in one room with two visitors from France (one of them, Robi, lived here a few years ago and served a mission) while the members watched it in another.

What was the hardest thing you did this week?

Mostly the same struggles of trying to find new investigators and trying to use our time effectively.

What was your miracle of the week?

This week I had 8 new students come to my English course from the University! It is awesome! I really hope that they stay because it will help our English course there a lot.

I am sorry if this letter is very short but today I have to fill out a bunch of stuff for BYU to go back there next fall.

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.

Doing Well - Short Email

We are doing well in Lecce this week. Me and Anziano Maxwell are working hard. So this week we have the Elders from Brindisi down here and we don't have much time because we only have 2 computers.

Tomorrow we will have an exchange with the Zone Leaders Anziano Romano and Sorrgiacomo because there was a sister missionary who left he suit case on the train but the train ended up in Lecce so we had to pick it up. So they will come down here to pick up the bag.

I am happy Anziano Jones is now in our district. We just finished up P-day with him. Me and him were in the MTC together and it is cool to see how people change.

Lunch with Anziano Jones

We are happy here and are finding more people to teach now.

Sorry this email is short.

Awesome New District Leader

Well, we are working hard and doing our best here in Lecce. This week we tried passing by the less actives here in Lecce whilst finding new investigators, and we had a lot of good experiences doing that. 

This week in church it was really strange. It felt like nobody came. I thought the summer was supposed to be over and people would be coming back! Super strange. The branch president was gone this week so I was the presiding priesthood authority. It was kind of funny to take the sacrament first and lead all the meetings.

We got the transfer calls this week and me and Anziano Maxwell will be staying together. However, Anziano Calchera is leaving the district and we will be getting Anziano Creg Jones. He was from my MTC district. He is a really solid guy and a good missionary. I have not really seen him since the MTC though! It will be good to talk with him again. I am also the new district leader.

The work in Lecce has slowed down a lot. Not really sure why? I don’t know if we technically have any more investigators at this point. It is hard, if not impossible, to meet with people so I think we will be starting from scratch again. Woof. We have the faith to find new people though.

No matter what happens during the week at the end I remember I am a servant of the Lord and that makes me AWESOME.

This was after a super rough lesson and this was all I wanted to do.