Catania, Sicily - 5/25/2011

Ciao!

Well I’m in the field now. I’m trying to figure out this strange Italian keyboard. The letters are in different places and my backspace button is sticky :P

Allora. So as you probably got the e-mail from president Kelly, I have arrived safely in Italia after many hours of plane travel and then took a 10ish hour train ride all the way down the Italian coast line to the città di Catania in Sicilia. Something to learn about Sicilians is they don’t speak Italia, they speak a dialect that sounds nothing like Italian so basically everything I learned in the mtc is pretty much useless. Not even the Italian anziani here from up north understand the people here in Sicilia. Pero sto provando. My companion is a great guy his name is Anziano Medina and he’s from san diego. He’s a zone leader of all of Sicilia and has a lot of stuff he has to do. He’s in Rome right now for a mission conference and gets back later tonight. I’m currently on a split with anziano botella. He’s Italian and doesn’t know much English so these last few days have been fun. Here in Catania me, anziano medina, and a companionship of sisters makes up all the missionaries here in Catania. It’s very difficult because this is a huge city for only 2 companionships. We finally got a car last night after having to walk everywhere this last week. People here drive like maniacs. At intersections they have theses blinking yellow lights that basically mean it’s a free for all. Everybody kinda just drives through the middle praying they don’t hit anything. If there’s space you go in it or you’re driving wrong whether or not it’s a lane. Everybody here is very poor and they don’t have many jobs here also. Most people are unemployed. Oh and everybody smokes here. EVERYBODY. Its pazzo. The number one problem we have with investigators is that they can never give up smoking. People here start doing it from a very young age around 13 and then they do it the rest of their lives til it eventually kills them. I guess people here don’t really know the effects of smoking and the reason why your whole family died from lung cancer is because they all smoked. They are so oblivious. How often do you find yourself teaching someone about the word of wisdom and they try to explain to you how healthy it is to smoke? Ignorance. Other than that the people are way open about everything. I love it. You just start talking to some random guy on the street and he spills his whole life story out to you. The Italiani seem to be in love with this guy named padre pio, we call him papa P or the anti-christ lol. Apparently he suffered for a third of the worlds sins when Jesus appeared to him and stabbed him 3 times in the hands and in the chest and the Catholic Church sanctified him. Everybody prays to him. It’s hard to explain prayer to the Italiani because they have always prayed to saints and never to god directly. When we teach them about prayer sometimes they pray and start praying to "Saint Joseph Smith" and we have to stop them and explain praying again. Praying to God is one of those things I guess that was lost during the apostasy and I think that the fact we can pray directly to our father in heaven in a huge blessing. No middle men. God cares about every single one of us and wants all of us to talk to him always and let him know how we're doing, like any good father would.

We have a ward here and a beautiful church building. The ward is pretty big and the members are wonderful. When I went up and bore my testimony in Italian in front of them all last Sunday they laughed at me so I guess I said something right. haha The bishop is a great guy. We taught a lesson with him the other day and his testimony could bring down walls because it was so powerful. Also here in Catania there is an American naval base so we have an English branch after the Italian ward. There are a good 40 members in the English branch and many are families. Its nice going to a church meeting I understand. Since we have the naval base here the American members bring us all kind of American food like peanut butter, oreos and many other wonderful things that you cannot get here. A sister there also said you could mail packages to her house on the base and you won’t have to worry about it being taken and destroyed by the Italian customs agency. She gave me her address but I left it at home so I’ll email it to you next time.

The weather here in Catania is basically southern California. If I closed my eyes I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between here and LA. I’m trying to think of what else I can say. I love Italians, I love this city and I never wanna leave haha. This place is wonderful. The parks and plazas are beautiful and the walls are covered in graffiti, but not bad graffiti, not like America where it’s profane the graffiti here is usually a message to a lover or a memorial to someone dead or really cool pictures. Many say "TI amo" or "Onore a" I’m looking at one right now that says Ti amo Popli.

Well that’s all I can think of for now. We have 5-6 investigators 2 of which a baptismal dates. FANTASTICO! I miss you all and hope you are all "State Sceliendo il Justo"

Vi amo e Ci vediamo

-Anziano Hill