Sorry for the late email! Technical difficulties and the like

Ciao all you beautiful people!

     It seems that I can only send emails from a computer right now thanks to the technical difficulties that define my phone right now. So, it will be a while before I will be able to read your responses, if any for this week. Other than this, there is not a whole lot to report on. i'll just start with last monday and then continue on from there.

Stats: I don't remember right now, but there is a plus 1 for gelato and pizza for this week.

Monday: We went to the colosseum. Super awesome, super italian, super hot and super long wait times. Overall, super. When all the sights had been seen, we went home and applied some sunscreen to our burns in an attempt to make them feel less burned. it was not a very sucessful gambit.

Tuesday: We did a little bit of suit shopping, and one of the anziani sold a silver ring that they found on the ground a few weeks back for 37 euro. Not bad when you consider that it was basically free money! we then had english course and it was very sad, with only two people that showed up. the teachers outnumbered the students two to one. we decided to change that.

Wednesday: we were supposed to have district council on thursday, but because we decided to hand out 356 english course cards, we pushed it back to see who would show up to this course tomorrow.We then treated ourselves to some gelato and then went home to relish in a day of hard missionary work completed.

Thursday: There was a WWE start to the morning where for fun my companion and a member of the other companionship started to wrestle for no particular reason, and for six minutes the other two of us who were watching the match also recorded a piece or two of it.We have a saying here in the mission that goes "Attack the day!" but i'm pretty sure this is not what they have in mind when they say things like that.it was all good fun and nobody was hurt. we went and bought stuff for a tiramisù and then had some studies and the like until we went to english course. The number of people we had there was two. Usually we have four, but we had even less today. We're still waiting for new people to show up, but we're planning on giving out 1000 cards sometime this coming week and then maybe english course won't be so sad.

Friday:  We had an "Area Book flush" because the church wants to be compliant with European privacy laws and that means calling and digitizing everyone in the physical areabooks, and burning the paper after that, more or less. If we don't, it's illegal and not the image we want to give to the church. Once that was all said and done, we ate food and then parted ways.

Saturday: District council! We celebrated the birthday of one of the sorelle in our district and then we ate gelato because a birthday is a good reason to do that. After that, it was a wild experience of busses and walking home just so that we could do more work! Fun times!

Sunday: We attended church, I made bread, and  we all had a wonderful time talking with the members and then calling all the other people in area book that we had yet to call. i made the mistake of thinking i was talking to an african and started to talk to them in english, calling him Jesus with a hard J, but the answer on the other end was a confused spanish man who speaks italian. Thus, I had to change the pronunciation of the name and then try to hold a serious conversation through my own laughter at my little slip up and the unrestrained laughter of the three anziani who happened to be listening at that exact moment. a fun time in the life of anziano Anderson.

     There won't be any photos this week because my photos are not on this computer. Maybe next week, we'll see.

Anziano Anderson

And now we wait

Ciao tutti!

I have had a baller of a week in the sense that we found a few people with interest in our message, we have accumulated one new person to teach, and a few other people who are just super fun. 

Pizzas: 50ish

Gelati: 47ish

Books of Mormon: 78

     Monday. Lots of calls to family and a trip to some catholic churches all over Rome before Alì Babà and a kebab roll the size of my forearm. There were a few things discussed that lunch about life and how we are all much better people now that we have served then we would have been if we decided to stay home and not serve. The testimonies of many far outweigh the testimony of one. That's also why we have the book of Mormon, to read along with the Bible... Funny how that works 😂😂

     Tuesday. Aside from a lot of phone calls made in an attempt to "flush out" the phone (we made about 50 of these calls) we tried to teach English course, but my companion misplaced his metro pass on the metro the day before and so we had to take a bus that got us to the church. We showed up with five minutes left of class and then we were greeted by the other Anziani who were already there. Yay unreliable bus systems in Italy!

     Wednesday. I went to the hospital for my report and I'm happy to say that I don't have cancer! Just little bumps that like to form for no particular reason. Yay! After we spent more than a reasonable, but an entirely necessary amount of time waiting for results, we received them!

     Thursday. My companion and I had a fun morning where I was stamped quite literally with the address of the church and the hours for english course before we left the house. I then had to change and wife we were outside, I was crapped on by a bird. Luckily all I needed to do was roll up my sleeve and then the problem was *mostly* contained. I taught english course shortly thereafter and treated myself to a nice cornetto afterwards.

     Friday. We had an appointment at the temple that had to be re-scheduled because the man we were going to meet with accidentally cut himself up pretty bad at work just twenty minutes before our meeting. On the way back from the the temple, we gave away two resteration pamphlets and with them, our number. Good save on a bad appointment. On the way home I was told that I needed to make cinnamon rolls for district council he next day, so I stayed up until about midnight cooking some cinnamon rolls. 

     Saturday, we ate those rolls for breakfast at the temple for district council. After which, we went home and then cleaned up a little bit while doing weekly planning.

     Sunday. This was the best day of the week because we celebrated Anziano bellazetins birthday and also my halfway point in the mission. I have 364 days left before I come home. Sad to think about and also really boggling to my mind. We had a lesson at the temple after church and so after a lunch of pasta, we went and met with the same guy we tried to meet with on Friday, but he showed up this time. He accepted the message of the resteration, the book of Mormon, and we made a follow up appointment as well. On the way home, we made another friend on the bus ride and we got his number after we spoke to him about the rigors of missionary life and the things we do. He was super enthralled and we discovered that we live very close to one another. Good day.

That was my week, more to come! 

Anziano Anderson

Transfers and some crunchy bread

Buongiorno tuttttiiiii!

The Stats, then the week! 

Pizza: 54

Gelati: 40(?) I don't have my journal with me so these numbers are a rough estimate...

Books of Mormon: 73

Alright! This will be short and sweet, as today we plan on going to Rome and just booling around.

     Last Monday was fun, we had some rain that day so most of our activities were inside, but there was plenty of time to call our families and then go to a members house for some dinner (which is always enchiladas, not that I'm complaining, because I love enchiladas) and we were given a mountain dew afterwards. Those don't exist here in Italy, so we drank them with gratitude.

     Tuesday was an experience as we were able to teach a piano course and then we taught English course with little time for lunch that whole day, so we just didn't eat until that night. It was fun though, and I would totally do it again! 

     Wednesday was a "train the trainers meeting" because anziano Inkley was told that he was going to train this coming transfer. That meant we needed to be up at five am and then at the table before 7:00. Because I'm not training, but instead just the companion of the trainer to be, I needed to awake at 5 am so I could sit outside of the meeting room for two hours. I took a nap /studied the language. After the meeting, Anziano Inkley had his hair cut, and I was asked by an old man who lives outside of our apartment and literally just watches pigeons all day (I've never seen him do anything else) to step on a piece of very crunchy bread that the birds he watched couldn't break through. It was an interesting experience and that's how the day went.

     Thursday is the day that I received Anziano Bellazetin as my new companion after waking up once again at 5 am to be at the right place at the right time. The man loves marvel, and can quote verbatim the whole infinity war movie. I'm keeping a list of the sky things he says and so far, after four days, I have acquired some of the weirdest words Strung together. It's a good time here.

     Friday was metro finding and some gelato. Not many notable things happened there, but we had a great experience with finding and there was a prepared family who readily exchanged numbers with us.

Its a grand old time here! Ciao for now!