c'era una volta...

I'm in Rome!!! So so so so cool. I think I'm here to make sure I never think about going home. Wow. Wow wow wow. I saw the Pope today! And the Sistine chapel! It's AMAZING! Okay, so last Wednesday aside from packing we did a whole lot of other stuff, including seeing Sorella Mandorino. That was fun, she's a cute old lady. She wasn't very happy when Sorella Jones told her that we didn't need focaccia, so she gave us pastries and she gave Sorella Jones a sweater instead. Haha. The Bari Sorelle slept at our house on Wednesday night, and then Thursday morning dark and early I left--woke up at 4,50, the capi zona picked me up at 5,40, the train came at 6,15. And at 12,15 we arrived in Rome. Trains are nice, by the way. In Rome, Anziano Crawford tried to drive us home from Termini with all my luggage, but he had left the GPS in the office so we drove around centro for a while, and saw the Colosseum (!!!!) and a pyramid that they apparently stole from Egypt, and then...

Hello! I hope that Tommy's doing better. Ouch. That makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Mamma mia. Good thing they don't have basketball things in Italy, because nobody has yards!!! Of course crossing the street is like playing frogger but in spite of the insanity that is Italian driving they are generally fairly polite. But ouch... So I'm GOING TO ROME!!! I'm going to Rome I'm going to Rome I'm going to Rome! Yeah. I'm kind of excited, Taranto is a little pesante, three transfers of nothing but finding work gets kind of exhausting. Hopefully we're closer to getting investigators that actually want to see us in this city but even the ones that come to church never want to see us, and in a ward where 120 people show up for sacrament meeting it's pretty stinking hard to ever see members. So. I am sad to leave our inactives, they are my favorite, they like us, and they are actually progressing. But Rome. Oh the things I can do for p-day. So th...

Hello!!! Well, I'm tired. We got up to catch a 6,20 bus to Bari that never came :( but I guess at least the one at 7 came so getting up early wasn't a total waste of time. Let's see what we've done this week. Last Wednesday we went to see Patrizia. I really love that woman, she is great and I wish that the members would get involved with her!!! It's kind of frustrating that they don't. She is definitely making progress, and she wants something in her life to change so I hope that she realizes that the thing she needs to change is that she needs to come back to church! That's what we're working with her on. She has been in England this week to visit her daughter who is going to school there. She'll get home tomorrow night and hopefully she had a good vacation. We probably won't see her this week though because catching up on work is always stressful. After that we looked for a few people and weren't able to contact them, but in the end it wa...

Hello! You have a date for my homecoming? That's weird...What am I speaking on? Yeah, Alex is going to be home really soon. His parents are picking him up, but he'll be speaking in his ward on Halloween. I sent a letter to his house today, that was weird. The address is sooo much shorter. Well, this has been a good week, although it's weird because we still have no investigators that we're seeing, we're talking to tons and tons of people but if they don't listen then you can talk at them all day and it doesn't make a difference. Last Wednesday night we basically just meandered around centro (we got to take our pday hours at night since we spent the morning at the questura) and got gelato. We talked to a man on Lungomare who told us over and over that he wasn't on drugs, just nervous. Methinks thou dost protest too much? We went and talked to Carlotta again, and gave her a Book of Mormon. It was good. She really seems to want to understand. However, it ...

Hello famiglia mia, Well, another week has past. Did I tell you we still have mice? We do. One ran across my companion's foot this morning as she was cleaning the bathroom. Hahaha...I probably shouldn't laugh but she screamed so loud! Mamma mia. Weeks go by fast. And things rarely go as planned. :) Last Wednesday for p-day we went on a tour of the Aragonese Castle by the Ponte Girevole. It was pretty cool, the Anziani were late so we talked to the marines who run the tour for a while, they got to practice their English. The 18 minute movie, in English that was not by a native English speaker was kind of painful. But then we went on a tour of the whole castle, and saw a cat they had found in the corner and all the towers, and maybe a torture chamber, and acquaducts. It was pretty interesting. It was a military fortress, not a princess castle. After that we were going to go see Sorella Basile, so we got on a bus...the wrong bus...the bus that takes 2 hours to do it's giro. ...

Carissimi, So this has been a good week. Last Wednesday basically all we did was clean, that was tons of fun. Then Wednesday nigth we packed all of Sorella Askew's stuff into the zone leaders' car and drove up to Bari. In spite of having a suitcase in the middle of the seat, that was a lot more fun than a bus ride would have been, I think. Plus, we got to go to the Bari Poggiofranco ward's GANS activity (GANS=giovani adulti non sposati= YSA) and learn how to make panzerotti. Fun stuff. I think it's really cool that Sorella Jenkins is serving in Bari, we've been able to see each other many times during the mission and it's been great to continue to be friends with her even after the MTC. We had to wake up bright and early on Thursday morning, Anziano Hansen came at 6 to get Sorella Askew and drive up to Foggia to pick up a mini missionary Sorella and to continue on to Rome. And Sorelle Jenkins, Tinoco and I went to the train station to say goodbye to Anziano Fern...