January 22, 2014

Hey, Dad!! Ya,I've gotten pretty used to my area now...pretty much. Flip! My collega and I get lost all the time and he's been in Brescia for three months!! It's pretty fun though! We'll be walking around trying to find a house or something and then I'll go, "where are we?" and then he'll go, "I don't know." "You've been here for three months!! How do you not know where you are?!" And then we have to pull out the map and find out what street we're on. We get pretty good navigating by maps! :)

This past week has been a little tough for me. One, apparently in Brescia, it's illegal to do publicity of any kind while you're on some transportation device of the city...which means we can't really proselyte when we take the buses and stuff. Lame. I was trying to work on my contacting skills!! And we can't ask "interrogating questions" or something like that. I was upset. Missionaries have been here forever doing that stuff and we can't do it anymore! Our district leader told President and then President said, "well, go find out what the law says and then get back to me." Okay. We'll find out today what it says but who knows? We'll see what happens!

So, Marco is doing pretty well. He's a nice guy! He makes gnocchi for a job (that stuff is super heavy!! Once you eat some...Buona Notte!! You're a goner! And the worst thing is, you don't feel it until after 10 minutes or something when you eat it! You can have a little bit and then think, "oh, that wasn't too bad. I'll take some more". Ya, you better take a nap after) and he's just really happy! Also, he decided to hang out with the youth and went bowling with them for their activity! How cool is that! The youth here are really cool too!! They love to try and speak the little english that they know and it's usually, "Hey! Sup', dude!" and that's about it. There are two returned missionaries that served in Roma and they're super cool also!! Also a lot of fun! Anyway, I only taught Marco once and he has a concern about whether or not you can have a family after this life...so, we get to teach him about temples and eternal marriages next time! Good thing too because he's 32!

So these past few weeks I've been here, we've been trying to clean up the records and the such here. Since missionaries have been here for a long time, there are tons and tons of people that have been taught at least once but then dropped for some reason a few years ago. Well, if they had interest before then they probably still have some interest somehow. So, we've been making tons of calls and we've set up a lot of appointments but some fell through. But we still have a lot of calls to make still because under our contacts list there are people that have been found on the street but never taught!! In fact, there was one lady that I called and she said she didn't remember who what the missionaries were. But then I asked her if she remembered the "Mormoni" and then she said that she remembered and that it was two years ago that the missionaries got her number! And she's never been taught! We got a lot of potentials to cover! :)

So, the work is progressing forward here in Brescia! We have one Bap date and her name is Briseda! She's from Peru. Hopefully, we have another baptism soon! Also, just pray that our teaching pool EXPLODES from all of these potentials that we have from, who knows how long, but I'm excited!!

Love ya!
Anziano West