Messina, Sicily - 7/27/2011

Ciao e come state!

We baptized a guy last Saturday! yeah!!! it was awesome!! I am attaching fotos of it. Carlo is the one in the middle and he was baptized by brother mana. It was really an amazing experience to see Carlo grow and come to understand the truthfulness of the gospel. Even though he couldn’t really understand a word we were saying and we always taught him through sister manas translation to tagalog, the spirit still testified the truth to him. I didn’t matter what language we watched the restoration in, whether it was English, Italian or Tagalog he cried every time. The spirit is so great because it’s a universal language that everyone understands. And the blessings are innumerable. The spirit was very strong at the baptism too. Setting up was a little crazy though because we couldn’t get the hot water working and the font was filling up to slow so we had to use buckets to fill up the font haha. that was exciting. But everything went well and Carlo is happier than ever. His wife and kid back in the Philippines in manila are now meeting with the missionaries there. =)

Other than that not much too talk about this week. Just like last week I’m in Messina again. Messina is a lot nicer than Catania in the way that there is no humidity here, therefore it’s not as hot =) It reminds me a lot of Ventura actually because it’s a bunch of citrus orchards right next to the ocean and it’s real nice. Monday for ddm we celebrated Christmas in July (it was the sisters idea) but that was actually way fun. after we did training and stuff we exchanged gifts haha. I got cookies haha not to bad. We had a ping pong ward activity last Saturday. That was lame though because there was this one member fratello bruno who was just laying everyone to waste and wouldn’t give any one a chance =P. Today we finally get to play some calcio (I think Calcio is Italian Football)! I've been waiting my whole mission for this! we hare playing with the anziani from Messina, Catania, Reggio, and a couple of the members here.

The work here is going great. It’s a little slow but we're working on it. We have been doing exchanges for the last few weeks so we haven’t had much time in Catania, but things will start to pick back up soon. It’s all about aligning my will with the Lord’s will I’ve decided. I could serve with all my might and strength and I would look like a good missionary but it would profit me nothing. My mind and heart must surrender to the Lord’s will and I can’t do good but inside fight it. It’s the only smart thing to do. and in the end it’s easier.

I hope you guys are all doing just excellent and I miss you all, but not so much that I’m always preoccupied about home haha. Stay outta trouble and be excellent to each other.

Vi voglio bene e Ci sentiamo

con amore,

anziano hill