Rain, Rain, Rain

Well another week has come and gone and I have now been here in Pescara for a full month. Next week are transfers, and I am pretty sure me and my companion are sticking it out in Pescara, this will be her last transfer before returning to the USA.

It seems that there have been requests for more of the mission life details as in investigators, ward members, and my daily schedule.... hmm... I guess my boring email from last week just didn't do it for ya, ha ha. ok I will see what I can do.

We wake up at 6:30 every morning and do 30 minutes of exercise and then eat and shower and do personal and companion study for an hour each. By 10 we leave the apartment for appointments, or finding work. we return to the apartment for lunch time and language study at 1:00 and are back out at 3:00. We don't take a dinner hour we just stay out doing appointments or other finding work along with the occasional ward choir practice. We are back home by 9:00 and we plan for the next day and then have time to write in our journals then lights out at 10:30. Our ward here in Pescara is a pretty nice size ward. Not huge, but we fill the chapel. There is only the one ward. I still don't know all the members by name. It is difficult to remember all the Italian names, for me it is just like memorizing more vocabulary since I am not used to hearing these names. The ward members are very friendly and they are patient with my limited communication abilities.

We have a handful of investigators we are working with right now. A few that are so close to baptism, and yet so far away. One woman thinks she is too old and its not even worth it for her to be baptised, another is without the support of her family and she fears that by being baptized she will cause problems at home. We are also working with inactive members and the ward members trying to get them excited about missionary work. We have a family that we found my second week here. They are from Romania. The father is very friendly and loud and just loves to talk and talk, his 9 year old daughter is pretty much the same. She is very dramatic and loves to act out stories as she tells them. The other day I was asking her about the music she liked to sing and she got all excited about High School Musical (its huge over here) and was trying to sing some of the songs. ha ha Only because she doesn't know English she was not really pronouncing any of the words right. She got really excited when she found out that I knew the same songs.

As far as finding work goes, we talk to people on the street, or do 'house' and recently we have been trying to organize the past and potential contacts list left by other missionaries. When we do 'house' we aren't knocking doors like you might imagine, but instead standing out side of apartment complexes buzzing each apartment one at a time. There aren't really a lot of houses hear and even when there is a house or two, they have a buzzer that you talk into.

Hmmm... hopefully that is a good enough description of my life for you.

Now for some stories. So here in Pescara a lot of people use the bus system, and every so often a bus police man gets on to check for tickets. Well the other day there were two boys who did not have tickets and so the bus police was writing them up, but then it was their stop so the police man was like, ok we will get off here and I will give you your fine. so they step off the bus and one boy just takes off. the cop is kinda caught of guard and he turns to the other boy who also looks a little surprised. He shrugs and then takes off running in the other direction. ha ha and the cop just yelled after him "Dove vai!" ha ha "where are you going?!" It was pretty funny to watch.

And my other story, everyday we pass this sign for a restaurant called Buffalo Bills American restaurant, and we always joke about eating there. So today we decided we were gonna do it. We didn't know what kind of food they had so we were just gonna go check it out. Well we walk in and it is a sit down restaurant and it is western themed. We glance at a menu and see it is kinda pricey so we are debating about whether or not to stay and the owner comes and shows us all the great deals on the menu so we decide, well we might as well just stay. So we order our food. I choose the big burger and Sister steensen got the chicken. Now I was expecting a hamburger, you know a bun and some toppings...nope. It was just a big hamburger patty and some french fries. ha ha. And it kinda tasted slightly like meatloaf. Needless to say, I don't think Bill has ever actually been to America.

Ok, I have written a ton, hopefully this will make up for my lame email last week. I love you all and I hope life is treating you kindly!