Buona Settimana

Cari Amici e Famiglia,

It was a good week here in Cosenza.  We were able to get a good amount of service and member work in.  I also received my travel itinerary for when I travel home.  It will be a long day of flights from Rome to New York to Utah to Idaho.  Anyways this week on Tuesday we got a call from an unknown number who turned out to be a member from Portugal who had moved a few weeks ago to Cosenza to study at the university here.  She had been looking for the church for a while and had called the mission office in Rome and received our number.  Later we had some lessons including one with a new investigator who is making great progress and actually began to read the Book of Mormon.  Unfortunately for us and fortunately for her she got a job in England and left last Friday.  Hopefully she will continue to study with the missionaries there.  Then after we had English course and after that we are one of those famous multi-course Italian meals at a restaurant with an investigator.  I won't go into the details of every dish but it was amazing.  On Wednesday we did some service in the morning at the apartment complex of a member.  We cleaned the sidewalks and lawns of all the trash that had blown in or had been left since New Years.  As we were cleaning I occasionally looked up at the apartments around and noticed a lot of curious people wondering who we were and why we were cleaning.  One lady walked by and said, "you guys found some work, eh?"  I said that no, we weren't working but that we were doing service for an elderly lady in our church.  She was confused at the idea of free labor but impressed at the same time.  It wasn't really free labor in the end though, because we got fed a ton of food afterwards (and the lady is a great cook).  The next few days were interspersed with lessons and meal appointments.  Then on Saturday after a meal appointment in the morning with a really funny member who always responds abbastanza (he pauses for emphasis) male (rather bad) when we ask him how he is, we traveled to Sarcena with our district president to visit some members.  It was nice to get to know him better and know the district situation better as well.  On the way back we also saw two Ferraris fly by us at ludicrous speeds.  It was like we were in Need for Speed or something.  Sunday went by pretty tranquilly and today we will likely have another tranquil day.  This morning we have been helping out with the LDS Charities project by putting stickers on bags to be later filled with stuff of which a refugee would have need.  Buona Settimana!!

Anziano Blazzard