7/4/2012 - Bitonto, Puglia

Sup ya'll (thought to start this one with an American greeting)
                 What a wonderful day to celebrate how awesome America is and has always been, being the promised land for the gathering of Israel, the land of endless green hills and rivers, the land of freedom where the saints of God will build Zion and live in peace forever. CHOICE ABOVE ALL OTHER LANDS! So we really do have reason to celebrate today. I hope you all are having fun today. Oh how I miss going to those good old parades in Ojai as a kid. I may take my kids there one day even if Grandma Nancy doesn't live there anymore. So today we came here to Bari (where we still are) and met up with a ton of other missionaries. We all played soccer and ate some good old BBQ hamburgers and stuff. It's been way fun but I’m exhausted because it’s like a 36 degrees here and the humidity is outta the roof so it feels like 100000000000000000 degrees.
                 A miracle this week is that we found a new investigator that is awesome. We had a helping hands activity this Saturday that was wayyyyyyy fun. We went to an institute and spent the day with special needs people. We had a little party with them and really made their day. It was super nice. A member brought a friend to the activity named Piero; he wanted to help out and enjoys serving others. He really loved the activity and the member also invited him to church the following Sunday. He came to church and we did a lesson with him and during fast a testimony meeting he really felt the presence of the spirit and told everyone he felt something good there. The members got really excited about it all haha. We left him the Book of Mormon and all the invites and everything. We saw him at English course yesterday and during the spiritual thought some the students were having a discussion and Piero came in and told them that he was a member of our church and kind of explained the Book of Mormon. WHAT!?!? That blew me away a little when he said that. I guess we gotta tell him he's gotta be baptized next before he can go around telling people he’s a member of our church but still that was a really neat thing. I'm quite excited for him. Hope it continues to go well like this.
          We have done quite a bit of service activities this week too, working at the old people home and at an alzheimers place. Old people rock! We usually get all dressed up and feed them! It's funny because a lot of them are just like little kids again and scream the whole time telling you "I’M NOT HUNGRY" or "STOP, I WANT THE BANANAS!!" but the nurses say you gotta feed them anyways no matter how hard they scream for help so it’s a bit of a battle.

Also there were the soccer games this week. I sent you the video of the one against Germany. WE DESTROYED THEM. However this Sunday Spain put us right back into our place in the championship with a 4-0 loss =( ouch. They had the advantage though because one of our players got injured and wasn't allowed a replacement so we were down a player the last half of the game. We can say Spain got lucky. The Italians returned to normal and no craziness. I can only imagine what would of happened if we had one. 
          I love you all and miss you. Got some emails from many members of the family this week. I'm glad everyone’s thinking of me =) I’m always thinking of you guys. State mi bene! Vi voglio bene e ci sentiamo!
                      Con amore
                                Anziano Kyle Hill