We Get Home Dead Tired, But I'm Loving It

Buon giorno tutti! Wow, this week has been uniquely different then any of the others in the mission thus far. Anziano Marino is such a hard worker. I think I said last week that he is from Pisa, so he lives in his mission and actually has a girlfriend in the Torino ward. It is kinda funny because he basically can't serve in both the firenze and torino zones. He doesn't care too much though because he lives here and has seen it all. I am so glad I got someone that likes to work hard though. I have definitely worked hard with my other companions but we would do stuff that was definitely not productive for the work. In my head I've known all along what hard work means but I kind was just following the senior companion and not wanting to put in my say about how we could work harder. It is really good though with Anziano Marino he hates the senior comp, junior comp thing and now we both just do it together. He is on his 7th transfer and speaks English. It isn't very good but its "abastanza bene" (well enough).

Well long story short about the baptism with Domingo, it didn't happen this week. I don't want to point fingers but basically we have a depressed and lazy Ward mission leader that forgot to do just about everything(put together the font, make a baptismal program). This was all after I called and reminded him multiple times throughout the week. Domingo was totally cool about it all though. We are instead having the baptism this Sunday. We probably could have still had the baptism after church as opposed to before like it was planned. Our bishop thought that it would just be better next week.


So yeah, I bought a really cool journal from a bookstore a couple weeks ago for like 20 euro. I also bought a companionship tie with anziano bolnick last week. Those are probably what you saw. I will be sure to notify you when I buy stuff. I don't plan on buying any suits or anything really really expensive(atleast for now). I couldn't write yesterday because I guess the myldsmail was down all over Europe.

Anyways, this week me and Anziano Marino have been just killing ourselves. We have been teaching lessons, doing casa (tracting), inviti(street contacting), and we get home dead tired but I'm loving it. We are really pushing to use every second of our day wisely. We might even switch to bikes pretty soon because the buses just don't come soon enough for us. It has really been a cool team thing that we are just pushing each other in every aspect of the work. We are seeing small little miracles everyday and I really feel the work can get even better. The last transfer was a real break out transfer for Pavia. We saw more success in Pavia last transfer then it had seen for awhile. I feel that this transfer is going to be so so so much better.

A really cool thing happened on Monday. We chose this area a little ways from our apartment. We did casa in that area for a couple hours and didn't see any success. I was dead tired and literally felt like I couldn't walk another step haha seriously. I said "anziano, we gotta sit down for a mintue". We walked to a park that was super close and found a bench to sit down at. We made our daily phone calls to set up appointment and what not. After about 10 minutes and our daily calls I followed Anziano Marino to a street really close by. It was a small little circle and he asked, " how do you feel about this street?". I immediately just knew which one I wanted to do. I pointed to a palazzo (building) and we did it. We found this lady who was at first hesitant to keep the door open after introducing ourselves but we talked for like 10 minutes. We set up an appointment for the next day and went on just being spiritually edified the rest of the night.

It was super cool and the lesson on Tuesday with her went really well. Her name is Lina and is from the Ukraine. She is super,super nice and doesn't have a real big religious background. We bore strong testimony of having a loving Heavenly Father and talked about the Book of Mormon. She asked, "how can I feel and know that this is true?". We explained through prayer and study of the scriptures. It was super spiritual and you could really see the desire in her eyes and in her words of wanting to really know the truth.

It is good to hear from you all and to see how you are doing. I hope Andy can do well in the marathon!, dance is going well and that Hill's team is getting better. Sorry I haven't written much, my hands are so tired haha. Keep up the good work everyone, and know I pray for you all as well. Give Sawyer boy some Eskimo kisses for me.

Ciao.