16 June 2010
Dear Mom,
Haha, don't worry, I still love you even if my birthday card will be late. Just don't send it to Catania (mission home or my apartment) (because this transfer is only five weeks, and then the next one is only five weeks, to get us on track with the Rome mission's transfer schedule--and I've been here since January and with Slla Williams since March so we're going to change in a week and a half or else we're both going to be here forever). I've bought some clothes...I figure I gave many of mine to Christy and I need some when I get home so...thanks for the birthday money!!!
The news of the week is that it is now summer. When we woke up this morning it was 85 degrees in our bedroom, without sunlight, and this is only the beginning. Another reason why leaving Catania might be nice. :) It's a hot city. It's hot...it's survivable outside I guess, and if you're next to the window on the bus and there are no stoplights there's a nice breeze. If the bus is stopped though, it's nasty. And everybody stinks. I guess it's a good thing that summer is relatively short in the overall scheme of things, but it would be nice to go to the beach like everybody else. They pretty much live there and there aren't that many people in the city during the day.
I got 10 mosquito bites on Monday. And I got mosquito repellent yesterday. :)
My shoes rub the bone on my big toe so that there's a big bump there now and it's kind of sore yesterday and today. There's not really much to do about it though since shoes are impossible to find and I'm not going to spend 50 euro for something that will fall apart just as fast as the market shoes.
So we've had a really good week. We've been working hard at talking to everybody.
Thursday we had an appointment with the Branch President's wife. She's awesome. She started dating her husband when she was 17 or something, and they served missions together (he was in Milano, she was in Roma) and then they got back and after a while got married and then they got back from their honeymoon to find out that the company he worked for had to fire some people and he was one of them. And it's really not easy to get work in Sicily but they did okay both working until she got pregnant so now he works for the airport in Rome and only comes home for Saturday and Sunday, and he's the Branch President so that takes up a ton of time, and the baby is now one year old, so it's just kind of been really stressful. But she's really great and Emilia, the baby, is adorable, she has the biggest smile.
Friday we put up some flyers for this David Glen Hatch concert that's going to be on the 25th. I'm not exactly sure what the deal is but apparently they organized it to create missionary opportunities and now they're worried that nobody will come because Italians are just kind of lazy about getting places--they don't like planning in advance or committing to things. It is free, however, and people like that. But anyway. Friday after planning and pranzo we went and had a lesson with Lada, from Russia, that was fun. She has a hard time understanding Italian, but she wants a Book of Mormon in Russian--the mission home didn't have one so we're waiting for that to come in. They did have pamphlets though, so we gave her the one that talks about the Restoration. I'm glad that Italian uses a normal alphabet. :P But she's a nice lady. Her son's coming to live with her for the summer. Then we went by a couple of referrals, and that was pretty much the night. We talked to Edur from Venezuela and got her permission to send her number to the Anziani in Lecce, since she's up there now. We also met a few people who knew the missionaries a long time ago. There was an inactive who stopped us and talked to us--she's been inactive for about thirty years, since she got married, the usual story. But she was nice, and her younger daughter might come to English Course in the fall. And we met a girl who knew sister missionaries in Romania about 7 years ago, but lost contact with them five years ago, but she's way nice.
Saturday we went and did home strada and casa in the morning, and then stopped by the Bruno family. Sorella Bruno is the caregiver for her mother and her mother-in-law, and her husband got knocked over by a car a few weeks ago so she had to take care of him too and so it's been a little stressful. They're a super cool family. Anyway, then in the afternoon we met Jessica and Valentina from English course and got ice cream and had a lesson. We're going to try and start teaching Valentina since she's done with school now, and Jessica at least wants to know where the church is in Malta if she works there this year, so that's good. She had a baptismal date but her mom wasn't happy about it so she decided to stop talking about anything related to the church. But they're both cute girls.
We had an appointment with the Rizzo family and they are awesome! It was their turn to teach us, so they pretended like they were missionaries and they gave an awesome lesson about Joseph Smith and the second half of the first lesson. They were way excited, and they bore testimony a lot and left a direct commitment and were just super great. Unfortunately they did feed us gelato, and you just shouldn't eat gelato twice in one day. Especially if you like the ice part more than the cream part (fruit is better). Communque.
Sunday was a conference to remember. It was for all of Europe, maybe? Broadcast, with some guy and some lady and Elder Bednar and President Packer. Anyway, something was broken or something, and they had to get the conference through the internet but the bandwidth was too big to get in both English and Italian, so for the first too people we had nothing, and then they figured that if they just gave the Sigonella Branch sound without picture, and the Italians sound and video, that it would work. So we heard the last half of Elder Bednar's talk and all of President Packer's, but everybody was kind of stressed until then I think. Especially since the Messina and Gela branches had come to watch with us.
In the afternoon we went to Villa Chiara, the rest home that Sorella Catania works at. She talked to us at church today and asked why we don't ever visit the old people, and asked if we wanted to come sing, and we said sure. So we went and sang hymns and they loved it. There's one lady, named Cettina (pronounced "chettina" in English) who was singing along with us even though she didn't know the songs, and it actually worked pretty well. Cute people.
Monday we talked to a lot of old guys at bus stops. And in the evening we had a lesson with Biagio and Irene. It went pretty well I think. Biagio isn't able to see the difference between things that he personally believes and the actual doctrine of his religion, so he's kind of really confused about the fact that he agrees with everything we say and that he feels the spirit. Irene is more capable of recognizing the differences, and maybe a little more wary of what we're teaching, but she is seeming to be more interested. They're a really cute family. She's in school right now though and it's test time, so they can't see us for two weeks. But they're going to pray to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet.
We were home at 8:45 and there was the Italy-Paraguay game on at the sports betting place under our apartment, and President gave the Anziani permission to watch if there were members and investigators involved so we decided to watch for 15 minutes. And ended up having an interesting lesson with an old man under there. He doesn't believe in the Bible because who would actually believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish? :) Did you know that the story of Jonah is what inspired Collodi to write Pinocchio, by the way?
Yesterday was zone conference. The last one in the Italy Catania Mission, how weird. It was good, I'm always a fan of zone conferences. We didn't have time for much after that. We talked a lot about unity, and about obedience. We had a culture lesson from Anziano Sapio about how we need to remind these members that when they went to the Catholic church they were dead silent constantly, and how it makes no sense that they've found a church that they know is true and know is God's so they've decided to no longer be reverent. OOH. There are some big reverence problems, and none of us had ever even thought about that--but it's true, and it's weird, and I'm sure our Branch President who has been trying to get these people reverent for a while would love to use that example.
Today we went to Giardini Naxos. Well, actually we got off the bus a stop too late and never made it to whatever is supposed to be there. But I sat by a man named Joe Meeghan from Dublin, he was way nice. He's seen missionaries around there, and he says he's really impressed because most youth he knows don't believe in anything so it's really great to see faithful young people who believe in things and want to help others too. That was kind of cool to hear. He's a retired math teacher, now he tutors people for the big exam at the end of secondary school, and he and his wife are here on vacation. He prefers Croatia though.
Well, I love you, I hope that you have a wonderful week!
Happy Father's Day, Dad!
Love Eliza
Haha, don't worry, I still love you even if my birthday card will be late. Just don't send it to Catania (mission home or my apartment) (because this transfer is only five weeks, and then the next one is only five weeks, to get us on track with the Rome mission's transfer schedule--and I've been here since January and with Slla Williams since March so we're going to change in a week and a half or else we're both going to be here forever). I've bought some clothes...I figure I gave many of mine to Christy and I need some when I get home so...thanks for the birthday money!!!
The news of the week is that it is now summer. When we woke up this morning it was 85 degrees in our bedroom, without sunlight, and this is only the beginning. Another reason why leaving Catania might be nice. :) It's a hot city. It's hot...it's survivable outside I guess, and if you're next to the window on the bus and there are no stoplights there's a nice breeze. If the bus is stopped though, it's nasty. And everybody stinks. I guess it's a good thing that summer is relatively short in the overall scheme of things, but it would be nice to go to the beach like everybody else. They pretty much live there and there aren't that many people in the city during the day.
I got 10 mosquito bites on Monday. And I got mosquito repellent yesterday. :)
My shoes rub the bone on my big toe so that there's a big bump there now and it's kind of sore yesterday and today. There's not really much to do about it though since shoes are impossible to find and I'm not going to spend 50 euro for something that will fall apart just as fast as the market shoes.
So we've had a really good week. We've been working hard at talking to everybody.
Thursday we had an appointment with the Branch President's wife. She's awesome. She started dating her husband when she was 17 or something, and they served missions together (he was in Milano, she was in Roma) and then they got back and after a while got married and then they got back from their honeymoon to find out that the company he worked for had to fire some people and he was one of them. And it's really not easy to get work in Sicily but they did okay both working until she got pregnant so now he works for the airport in Rome and only comes home for Saturday and Sunday, and he's the Branch President so that takes up a ton of time, and the baby is now one year old, so it's just kind of been really stressful. But she's really great and Emilia, the baby, is adorable, she has the biggest smile.
Friday we put up some flyers for this David Glen Hatch concert that's going to be on the 25th. I'm not exactly sure what the deal is but apparently they organized it to create missionary opportunities and now they're worried that nobody will come because Italians are just kind of lazy about getting places--they don't like planning in advance or committing to things. It is free, however, and people like that. But anyway. Friday after planning and pranzo we went and had a lesson with Lada, from Russia, that was fun. She has a hard time understanding Italian, but she wants a Book of Mormon in Russian--the mission home didn't have one so we're waiting for that to come in. They did have pamphlets though, so we gave her the one that talks about the Restoration. I'm glad that Italian uses a normal alphabet. :P But she's a nice lady. Her son's coming to live with her for the summer. Then we went by a couple of referrals, and that was pretty much the night. We talked to Edur from Venezuela and got her permission to send her number to the Anziani in Lecce, since she's up there now. We also met a few people who knew the missionaries a long time ago. There was an inactive who stopped us and talked to us--she's been inactive for about thirty years, since she got married, the usual story. But she was nice, and her younger daughter might come to English Course in the fall. And we met a girl who knew sister missionaries in Romania about 7 years ago, but lost contact with them five years ago, but she's way nice.
Saturday we went and did home strada and casa in the morning, and then stopped by the Bruno family. Sorella Bruno is the caregiver for her mother and her mother-in-law, and her husband got knocked over by a car a few weeks ago so she had to take care of him too and so it's been a little stressful. They're a super cool family. Anyway, then in the afternoon we met Jessica and Valentina from English course and got ice cream and had a lesson. We're going to try and start teaching Valentina since she's done with school now, and Jessica at least wants to know where the church is in Malta if she works there this year, so that's good. She had a baptismal date but her mom wasn't happy about it so she decided to stop talking about anything related to the church. But they're both cute girls.
We had an appointment with the Rizzo family and they are awesome! It was their turn to teach us, so they pretended like they were missionaries and they gave an awesome lesson about Joseph Smith and the second half of the first lesson. They were way excited, and they bore testimony a lot and left a direct commitment and were just super great. Unfortunately they did feed us gelato, and you just shouldn't eat gelato twice in one day. Especially if you like the ice part more than the cream part (fruit is better). Communque.
Sunday was a conference to remember. It was for all of Europe, maybe? Broadcast, with some guy and some lady and Elder Bednar and President Packer. Anyway, something was broken or something, and they had to get the conference through the internet but the bandwidth was too big to get in both English and Italian, so for the first too people we had nothing, and then they figured that if they just gave the Sigonella Branch sound without picture, and the Italians sound and video, that it would work. So we heard the last half of Elder Bednar's talk and all of President Packer's, but everybody was kind of stressed until then I think. Especially since the Messina and Gela branches had come to watch with us.
In the afternoon we went to Villa Chiara, the rest home that Sorella Catania works at. She talked to us at church today and asked why we don't ever visit the old people, and asked if we wanted to come sing, and we said sure. So we went and sang hymns and they loved it. There's one lady, named Cettina (pronounced "chettina" in English) who was singing along with us even though she didn't know the songs, and it actually worked pretty well. Cute people.
Monday we talked to a lot of old guys at bus stops. And in the evening we had a lesson with Biagio and Irene. It went pretty well I think. Biagio isn't able to see the difference between things that he personally believes and the actual doctrine of his religion, so he's kind of really confused about the fact that he agrees with everything we say and that he feels the spirit. Irene is more capable of recognizing the differences, and maybe a little more wary of what we're teaching, but she is seeming to be more interested. They're a really cute family. She's in school right now though and it's test time, so they can't see us for two weeks. But they're going to pray to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet.
We were home at 8:45 and there was the Italy-Paraguay game on at the sports betting place under our apartment, and President gave the Anziani permission to watch if there were members and investigators involved so we decided to watch for 15 minutes. And ended up having an interesting lesson with an old man under there. He doesn't believe in the Bible because who would actually believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish? :) Did you know that the story of Jonah is what inspired Collodi to write Pinocchio, by the way?
Yesterday was zone conference. The last one in the Italy Catania Mission, how weird. It was good, I'm always a fan of zone conferences. We didn't have time for much after that. We talked a lot about unity, and about obedience. We had a culture lesson from Anziano Sapio about how we need to remind these members that when they went to the Catholic church they were dead silent constantly, and how it makes no sense that they've found a church that they know is true and know is God's so they've decided to no longer be reverent. OOH. There are some big reverence problems, and none of us had ever even thought about that--but it's true, and it's weird, and I'm sure our Branch President who has been trying to get these people reverent for a while would love to use that example.
Today we went to Giardini Naxos. Well, actually we got off the bus a stop too late and never made it to whatever is supposed to be there. But I sat by a man named Joe Meeghan from Dublin, he was way nice. He's seen missionaries around there, and he says he's really impressed because most youth he knows don't believe in anything so it's really great to see faithful young people who believe in things and want to help others too. That was kind of cool to hear. He's a retired math teacher, now he tutors people for the big exam at the end of secondary school, and he and his wife are here on vacation. He prefers Croatia though.
Well, I love you, I hope that you have a wonderful week!
Happy Father's Day, Dad!
Love Eliza
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