c'era una volta...

SO let's see...I'm in Ragusa and it is beautiful. We didn't really do anything too exciting last Wednesday, but I met the Anziani who are in our city. Anziano D'Auria and Anziano Sapio are both Italian, from Napolia and a small city outside Napoli. They are both recent converts and older--A. D'Auria is 26 I think, and A. Sapio is in his 20s too. But they are really impressive Anziani, and they gave up a lot to come on missions, it's pretty cool to get to work with them. Plus it's proof that there are Italians waiting for the gospel. Thursday was my first District Meeting. We met at church, which is a converted garage. It's a nice converted garage, but still a converted garage. It does have all the things that a regular chapel does though, just on a much smaller scale and the chapel itself subs as a cultural hall because it's the only big room. Our district is the Ragusa Sorelle and Anziani, and the Gela Anziani, so six people. The Gela Anziani cover ...

Hi! Well, I'm here, in Italy and in my first area. We got our bags back last night, I think they just sent them on a later flight because there wasn't room on our plane, but the airport called last night to tell us they were there, and everyone got all their luggage, which is a good thing. Last night we did some paperwork to get started on our "permesso" which is basically the Italian visa, getting a visa from the consulate really isn't good enough for an extended stay. So that took forever and unairconditioned buildings with closed windows are pretty hot here. The building had a really old elevator that looked like there was no way it could possibly run, but it did. This morning we got up and ate breakfast and such--waffles and nutella. Then we had to stay upstairs while all the trainers got there and president Toronto talked to them. So we could hear them all talking and laughing but we couldn't see them. The mission home is gorgeous, by the way, it has four...

Buon giorno famiglia! Well, I’m down to my last week in the United States. We have our flight plans and we finished our last TRC appointment, and we’re almost ready to go. I guess it’s gone by pretty quickly; there’s not much time to think about it though really, and looking back on the first few days, it feels like ages. But I’m almost done here, and I guess we’ll see how everything goes next week. I’m not sure when p-day is or when I’ll get the chance to write or email next, but that’s okay; I’m sure I’ll get to soon. So this week’s devotional, we heard from Elder Sybrowsky. He has 9 kids, and 8 of them have gone or are currently serving on missions, and the ninth is putting in his papers at the end of this month. One of the big points of their talk was remembering the people who brought their family into the gospel, and where it all started and who it all started with. And they asked us to all think about it and I really don’t know who started it. I knew on Mom’s side, Oma and Opa w...

Hello! So, it's the last week here, fun stuff. We got our travel plans last Thursday, which was pretty exciting. So here's the deal: we leave the MTC around 5:30 am Monday. And our flight from Salt Lake is at 8:35 am, and we fly to JFK and we're supposed to be there at 3:25 pm eastern time. And then our flight leaves at 4:50 pm eastern time. So I'm not sure exactly when we'll call home, if we'll have time in Salt Lake before we get on the flight for a few minutes or what. But I don't think it looks like we'll have a lot of time in New York, because an hour and a half is a fairly short layover all things considered. But we'll see, it's one of those times that I'll call. So we leave New York at 4:50 and we land in Rome at 7:55 am. Then we leave Rome at 10 am and land in Catania at 11:15 am on September 15 th . So, we spend the whole day traveling and going way forward in time, it should be pretty interesting. We're excited to get going. W...

Buon Giorno famiglia mia! How is everyone? This past week has been a good one. I've learned a ton, and we've had great speakers and such. Elder Scott spoke last Tuesday and it was incredible. It was like being blessed for an hour straight, no kidding. He's a very captivating speaker, he doesn't get super excited like some do, but he's amazing. They always start off Devotionals and Firesides with a ten minute (okay maybe three) eulogy of the speaker---where they go on and on about every job and calling they've had, and President Smith (the MTC President) did his best to do that but Elder Scott stood up and said something like he's not dead yet, and "just tell them I love the missionaries." Then he started his talk by asking everyone who was learning a language to raise their hand, and there were a lot. And he talked a bit about learning languages and then used his Apostolic authority to confer upon us the gift of tongues, so that we can speak and te...

Hello everyone! So this week was pretty great. I'll save about 5 minutes so if you decide to write me an email I can come and print it out later today. Elder Scott was our devotional speaker on Tuesday, and he was INCREDIBLE. He conferred upon us the gift of tongues as an apostle of the Lord, and he also gave us an apostolic blessing of safety and protection as a shield around us. And he closed with a really powerful testimony. He's amazing, I'm really glad I was here for that. We got one new sister last week. She's really nice and she seems to be fitting in well with the group. So we've enjoyed having her here. Both of our original teachers have now officially left us. And Fratello Stubbs who served in Catania is really good. Yesterday we met Fratello Clarke, and he was in my Italian 321 class last winter. Which is kind of funny, because the other day I was thinking about people who were in that class who might be good teachers and I thought of him and wondered why...