{Week 4}

Happy Halloween! Doesn't really feel like it here haha. Although tom will be interesting because it is the day of the dead holiday for them, and i guess everything is shut down and everyone goes to the cemitary and it is difficult to get stuff done. We will see what we can do! we also have a FHE activity planned for tom where we will be picking chestnut! wahoo!!! should be fun though! it is crazy cold here! just like Idaho, who would have thought! haha English course continues to be way awesome! there is one lady in there that is awesome and said she doesn't even come for the English she comes for the spiritual thought. she should be coming to church this Sunday and hopefully we can begin to teach her. it was cool i was teaching the plan of salvation and people started talking and she yelled at them and told them to shut up because what i was teaching was important! haha i also made Alfredo this week and it was pretty good! haha just like last week we have been doing finding!! my companion said he has never had as many people interested or given out as many book of Mormons as he has with me! haha and he is convinced I should do every door approach because he thinks people can feel the spirit more when i talk! so that is awesome to hear! hopefully i can keep my greeny spirit up. last night we finally had a dinner appointment with a member which would have only been my second, but right before they call and cancelled. we were bummed out and continued to do house. about 30 min later we knocked on this ladies door and she answered and I did my thing and talked about prophets and the book of Mormon, and she invited us in. her friend was there also and the both sat down and we taught our little message. the spirit was about as strong as i have ever felt and the one lady was in tears! they seemed extactic about our message and both accepted books of Mormon and hopefully will be in church this Sunday! so turns out that not going to that dinner appointment was a huge blessing, the Lord works in mysterious ways!!! I love missionary work! Just helping one person feel the spirit makes having 200 doors slammed in your face, people waging thier fingers in you face and having people yell at you all worth it when you have helped one person come closer to Christ! we are in pescara today for pday. it is a very nice city on the coast! makes me want to go hop in the water! and amazing as all the Italian food is, we went to an all you can eat Chinese buffet today!!! and it was incredible!!! ahhaha and had all you can eat gelato, which really is all it is cracked up to be! only got 2 more weeks then i am no longer a greeny!! that will be cool! i always have tons to talk about then i get to the computer and cant think of anything! just so grateful everyday that i am here and decided to come on a mission. i do miss yall like crazy but know yall are doing good. i know it sounds crazy but i also miss taco bell like crazy! haha but eating fresh food ,and besides the 3lbs of gelato i ate today, mostly healthy food, i can really tell a difference and just feel great! here in pescara they have huge outside markets! cant wait till i am in a city with those! my companion got a sweet suit at one for 50 euro! also looking forward to getting some new ties! well i love yall so much!!! and truly hope yall have a great week! Love, Anziano Bird

L'Aquila update

Another week gone already! It really is amazing how fast the weeks go, and I have a feeling they will go faster and faster. This week was a great week! We have been teaching English course since I have been here, but they only started it about 2 weeks before I got here. We have it every Monday and Thursday evening, it is awesome! It is one of my favorite things to do. Very entertaining also, their accents are soooo funny, makes me hope mine isnt bad haha. I taught the spiritual thought at the end of Mondays lesson and it was awesome, we have 3 people in the class that seem very interested in the church! So hopefully we will be able to teach them! It was kind of a bummer this week we had to drop one of our investigators cause she was not keeping any commitments and just wanted to be friends. She also made us pizza every time we went over so I will miss that also haha ;) So now we only have one investigator and he has cancelled our appointments like 4 times now so we will see. So, we have been doing finding pretty much everyday, allday! It is something that I have grown to love very quickly, cause if you dont, you will be miserable. But street is definatly my favorite, you get to walk around Italy! It is definatly harder, you get alot of people just wag thier finger in your face and keep on walking, or the ones that completely ignore you, or literally run the other way! haha at people dont want to make eye contact with you most of the time, that is why switching it up and doing house is nice, because you at least have them trapped for a second! That is if we are lucky enough for them to answer the door. But read an awesome scripture in D&C 75: 20-21 today, makes ya want to shake people and tell them all they are missing out on when they so easily reject you. Yesterday we did house all day, had no success until the very last house we knocked on. A young girl answered so we started to talk and she actually listened. Then we got to talking , and she was Catholic, and she told us she would believe there is a living prophet today and she said this on her own, "I also think people in churches should not get paid for their services" so I was super excited and she was also very interested in English course, so the Lord will bless you if you have faith and work hard! Sorry I wont be sending out too many hand written letters cause it is pretty spendy for a poor missionary haha, but I love to receive them! I love hearing from everyone and how yall are doing. P-days are also super nice because there is a basketball court not too far from our house so we get to go shoot around every week, and hand out pass along cards haha. It is actually pretty cold here in the mornings but usually warms up, but never thought i would come to Italy and be freezing outside, we will definatly be wearing jackets from now on! next p-day will be Halloween and we will be spending next p-day in a town about an hour away, I forgot the name but should be a fun day. One of the newer converts, Roberto, is 22 and he is awesome!! and his family owns a shoe story in town and their are a bunch of clothing stores nearby so he is gunna show us around and teach us about style! haha the style is defiantly different here but I like alot. that first day I noticed alot of the older missionaries had those side bag things, or man purses, and I was making fun of them, but everyone has one and they are actually super awesome!! so I will keep my eye out for one of those. Cant think of too much else to say, all the days kinda blend together and we do a lot of the same thing, but I love it! Going to pick up ingredients for Alfredo sauce today, since it is not Italian, and they think it is hilarious that we think it is. Turns out like 3/4ths of the things at olive garden are not Italian haha. We made brownies for our English course last week, they were kinda gross, but they thought they were the greatest things ever. And one of the ladies in the ward attempted making banana bread with our recipe, it was good, but nothing like home haha. Love ya'll and hope everyone has a great week! love, Anziano Bird

October 17, 2012

Hey hey everyone! This letter will be a little backwards because the last couple of days have been so cool I have to tell you about them now! So yesterday we got on a bus in the morning and headed to Rome for zone conference! Zone conference was amazing and really gets you pumped up to do work! Got to bear my testimony because I am a greeny, only get to bear my testimony there one more time and that is when I leave....seems weird. The food was amazing and it was good to finally get to Rome to get my package from Jess and also a letter from her and Dad. I haven't opened them yet, I am waiting to get home. For packages (which don't feel obligated so send, I could always use the money instead) are better to be sent to the Rome piazza address which is the mission home, but letter are best if sent to my city, I can get them sooner that way. just make sure it isn't right before a transfer haha. So we left the church and did splits with Anziano Kearl and Cassalis. I went with Anziano Kearl and they are in Rome 5 which is almost brand new so they dont have an apartment in their area so we had to drive like 30 minutes to English course, which went awesome!! President Kelly also promised them a baptism from that English course and the lady I talked to for a while was awesome! This is Anziano Kearls first transfer so he had no idea how to get home, and it was already 930, which is when you are supposed be home, but they have permission to be out later cause they have to drive so far. good thing we had a gps right? wrong! we typed in home, thinking it would take us home, it ended up taking us to this totally different part of Rome, but I loved it because this part was Really Really nice and we drove past the Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati dealerships! haha We ended up getting home about 11! there were 6 of us in the apartment and was nice to switch it up from just being alone, the other 2 are the APs and they are awesome. So we will be hanging out in Rome today seeing the Colosseum and possibly the Vatican, pretty lucky to see all this so early in the mission! The week in L Aquila has been awesome as well. On Friday mornings we do service and we go to the homeless shelter and help out with preparing, serving, and cleaning up with lunch. We don't have a ton of investigators (2) right now, so we do a lot of finding, which I love! Talking to Italians is fun! I talked a little about Roberto last week, he believes a lot of things about our church but doesn't feel he is receiving an answer to his prayers. Elizabetta is our other investigator and she loves when we come over, she makes like 3 pizzas and it is awesome. It is hard because she has a daughter that is completely aithist and yells and argues with everything we say. We went over Sunday and the daughter is about 20 and we brought one of our members who is about to go on his mission, and they argued most of the time, then it was super cool because when they were arguing the spirit wasn't there, but when they stopped to take a breath i boldly started in with my testimony, and everyone got completely silent, he son hung up the phone and all eyes were on me, and they were hanging on every word, it also helps that they have to listen super closely to understand what I am saying haha but then my companion bore testimony and it was super spiritual and the daughter couldn't say anything after that, so that made me happy cause she was scary! haha So much goes on every week there is just too much to say, but just know that I couldn't be happier, and to wake up in Italy every day.... there is no feeling like it, and to know we are doing the Lords work, and representing him is just an amazing experience. I love yall so much and hope yall have a great week! oh also ate at a members house and she was pourtorican or something so she made enchiladas and they were soooooo good! The food here is amazing, but that craving for a microwavable burrito just wont go away! haha also they figured it out, and statistically, we had a 1 in 500 chance of being called to Rome, Italy on our mission.... jackpot! love, Anziano Bird

I finally made it!

I finally made it!!! Felt like this would never get here! I guess the wait makes it that much better! Italy really is all it is cracked up to be! And the people are amazing, and I am blessed here in L'Aquila to have such a great branch with great members! The work has been incredible so far, when I arrived we had one new investigator, so my second day we went and taught him. His name is Roberto, he is awesome, had another lesson with him today and I extended the baptismal invite! It was awesome, and he is open to the idea. Pretty crazy story, so it was my 3rd overall day in Italy when we taught him for the first time, and we were waiting for the bus afterwards and a lady approached Anziano Fiala and I so I was thinking that was awesome someone was coming out of thier way to talk to us. She was very emotional and kinda freaking out, I didnt understand anything she said, and she walked away for a second, so I asked Anziano Fiala what she was talking about, and he said she said someone in her family was possessed and wanted to know if we could do an excorsism, so we called our mission president and he said to tell her that we were not trained to for that haha so that was super exciting!! And I gave her a Book of Mormon, my first one given out! The day we traveled was a fun day because it finally felt like I was a missionary, and it is so fun to just be able to talk to people and share our amazing message with them! Didnt get alot of sleep though so I have been alittle sleepy this week. But this week has been so cool! Even though I cant comunicate super well yet, I can do ok and my companion helps out alot! we were waiting for a bus the other day and I started talking to a lady and we ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and leaving,we got a call the next day saying we had a referral from mormon.org, and appearently that never happens! so we got the phone number for the person, and about 30 min. later, that number calls us! Turns out a different lady at the bus stop had overheard us talking to that lady and had gotten our number from her. This was Saturaday morning and bc of the time difference our first confrence session wasnt until later, so we invited her to that, and she came! and she loved it!!! so she came back Sunday also! and loved it! but.... she was here for school and she was moving back on Sunday night...luckily where she is going has missionaries, but she was the golden investigator and was awesome to have that experience! There are lots of mountains here so they do get snow here, which I was not prepared for, but should be awesome. We have quite a few young people in our branch and they are just awesome! First day experience here was awesome, felt like my head was about to explode from all the sweet things around me! I dont even know where to start to tell ya'll about how amazing it is here! also, nobody told us we were going to be getting to use bmw's for our mission! pretty sweet! bus, metro, and walking! alittle mission humor for you :) haha as you now probly know, my pday is wednesday and I think we are 8 hours ahead of ya'll in idaho and utah, and 7 in north dakota. i wish you could bring your family on your mission so ya'll could experience how awesome it is here! love ya'll and hope ya'll have a great week! Love, Anziano Bird