Love the Italian Members

Hey! How are you all? Things here are pretty good. Nothing too new. Tomorrow is zone leader conference! So we will be having a fun road trip with the zone leaders of Taranto. Zone leader conference is always a lot of fun. It is nice to get that spiritual boost to become a stronger, harder working missionary. No I haven't done any exchanges yet but after zone leader council we will start doing exchanges with the zone. I love working around other missionaries. You grow from every missionary you do an exchange with. So I'm really looking forward to that. This week we had a family home evening with the Diciolla family. They are great! It is amazing hearing the conversion stories of members. They have such incredibly strong testimonies! I love the Italian members so much. They have worked hard for this temple. They are so excited for it. So is everyone getting ready for Christmas back home? The Italians are. A few neighbors of ours have put Christmas lights out on their balconies. We are planning a sweet activity here for the ward. Santa Clause is going to come and everything! Should be fun. I'm so glad you got to go to the homecoming of Anziano Miller! Haha what a guy! I miss that kid. We will definitely hang out after the mission! He was a great missionary. Yeah for Christmas you can do whatever. I won't be sad about not getting a package. Don't worry about it. Which reminds me. I need to know something that you all want from Italy that I can bring home for you, so that I can start looking out right now. Also I don't know about the whole shopping situation with me for new clothes when I get back but sales go on here in January and you can get clothes for cheap here. A pair of jeans here costs like 20 euro or less and in America they usually cost around 40 dollars. Well I really miss you all a ton. Thanks for writing every week! Love you!!

Lot's of Finding

Hello! So things around here haven't been too exciting. We did a lot of finding this last week! That was cool. We found a few potential investigators. The work seems to be slowing down a bit with the cold weather. No one wants to talk to missionaries when it's cold on the street. It's been raining a lot lately. But we won't let that get us down. The craziest miracles happen when you push through rough times. So we hope that we can keep it up. Tomorrow we are having a Thanksgiving activity with our english course. We are going to make lots of food and our students are bringing food as well! On Sunday a sister missionary came to church with her family, Sorella Heiner. So we had a huge lunch in church together with them and the members. It was sweet. Her Dad is a Scientist and is a straight up genius! It was fun talking to him. Her parents are sweet! Then in a few weeks my MTC teacher is coming with his wife to visit. So it will be good to see him again. That's cool Tate learned sign language. I wish I could learn it. I can't wait for you to meet Anziano Miller! haha What a guy! ha You have to tell him to write me! I love that guy. Glad to hear things are going good back home. Everything is going good here. Be sure to send my love to everyone at Thanksgiving! Love you tons! Ciao!

Zone Leader Again

Salve! I'll just cut straight to the transfer news, just to get it out of the way. I am staying another transfer here in Bari with Anziano Hurlburt and I am going to be zone leader again with Anziano Periera. So that will be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to working a lot more with other missionaries and doing exchanges with them. That was probably the biggest event of the week. Other than that we have just been finding a lot, as usual. It has been fun. The sisters in our district are staying the same as well and Anziano Nelson is going home and so Anziano Jones will be with Anziano Green. I talked to Anziano Miller the other day. I told him that you and Dad might go to his home coming and he said he is excited to meet you and wants to go out to dinner with you and Dad and his parents to talk about the mission experiences that we had. I love Anziano Miller. He is great. It will be fun hanging out with him after the mission. I feel like we are going to be good freinds for life. I can't believe Tate is home! You will have to say hi to him for me. Yeah even a job like that would be great! Oh yeah this week I had to fix my glasses which cost like 20 euro so I had to use the American express but you can just take it from the money grandpa gave me. Well Dad sounds like you had a crazy fun work trip! haha How was St. George? Did you have a good time? I hope so. Well yeah nothing really new this week other than transfer calls. Oh yeah for English course this week our students wanted us to teach them slang! haha It was pretty funny hearing all of the old italian ladies say the slang that the youth of America say. Well got to go! Love you tons!!!

Halloween Party was Awesome!

Salve! This past week was really fun. The Halloween party was awesome! We set up an awesome haunted house and had fun scaring people. There was music, food, games and other fun activities for the little kids. We also had a pretty good turn out. We really want to start doing more parties here. We are already planning a thanksgiving party and a Christmas party. The ward also seems to do lots of activities in church like concerts. This week they had a few doctors come to raise awareness on Parkinsons disease. We also tried pulling a sister missionary move and made cookies for a few members and brought them a small spiritual thought. It actually worked out pretty well. We felt that we made a stronger relationship with the members. Who doesn't like cookies!? The weather here is starting to get cold. So the work seems to be slowing down a bit. But that gives us a great chance to do some more finding! ha In the Italy Rome mission you get to do a lot of finding. Sounds like Dad is just getting destroyed by work. Tell him to not get a hernia! haha jk. Sounds like things are going good. If you do ship a package, the mission office would be better either way. I hear that packages get lost here in Bari. But you dont have to send me a package because I only have a little bit of time left and I'm sure I won't be able to bring any of the stuff home. So you don't have to worry about it. Grandma and Grandpa are too nice. Did they get my letter yet? Well today we are going to Foggia for our preparation day and then we are doing an exchange with the missionaries there. So I better run. Love you tons!!!

Happy Halloween

Ciao tutti! Happy Halloween! They kind of celebrate Halloween here. They don't do trick or treating but they have stores that sell Halloween stuff. So, since they don't really celebrate it here, us missionaries here in Bari decided to throw a huge American Halloween party for the members and our investigators. We will have a trick or treat activity, games, music and tons of food! It's going to be sweet. And best of all we made a mini haunted house in the church! So we have had fun planning for that and setting everything up this week. We are hoping we will have a good turn out. We found an amazing investigator who we are teaching. She is from Swizerland and her first language is english. So she speaks it perfectly. She asked us why we are always smiling. haha We told her cause we are happy. She then asked us why. We then explained that we are so happy because we have something special. The true knowledge of the gospel. She explained to us that her parents are missionaries for another Christian church and that she had lost her faith with confusion and trials in her life. So she wants to meet with us every day! She reads The Book of Mormon and told us that she cries when she reads it and then she also cried when we taught the restoration at church this week. She says she cries cause she feels different, a peace or comfort that she hasn't felt before. So we have been excited about this success. I hope that she will continue to follow this path. So you just never know what just smiling on the streets is going to do for you. That is interesting Dad. Thanks for sharing I totally agree. I think that it is that knowledge and application of the gospel that, when put together, is the recipe for a complete change of heart and eventually people can see that you radiate with the light of Christ and others can recognize you as a true disciple of Jesus Christ. The best part of the gospel is that we can change, true repentance is what brings a true change of heart and can make those weak things become strong. You truly find a strength in seeing first hand those weaknesses become strengths when they are left behind as an old part of your life, asking God for forgiveness and never doing it again. I know that with that constant change of heart you can find the true happiness that the gospel intends on giving us. But it is always up to us whether we do it or not. Well I hope you have a great week. La chiesa è vera! Se non lo sapete, trovate un vero desiderio nel vostro cuore, cercate una risposta da Dio, e man mano scoprirete questa bellisima verità per voi stessi! Buona Settimana! Vi voglio un mondo di Bene! Love you tons!!!!