Bon Giorno Tutti! [Letter written 7-30-09]

Bon Giorno Tutti!

Come state?! Ho ricevuto il vostro email e ero molto contento! I ho una bella famiglia! Grazie mille. Quindi, questa settimana era molto bene. Abbiamo insegnato un saco di lezione. Specialmente africani. Ci sono tonti Africani qui in Piacenza. Piacenza dovrebbe essere Sud Africa! I'm just kidding haha. I wanted to see you if you thought i accidently wrote the whole email in italian. Got ya!! How is everyone!!!! Thanks so much for the emails and mom the pictures of lugano were amazing! Wow that place is beautiful! How exciting! Okay so this week was way good. First off we don't use bikes anymore in piacenza. I was quite sad to let my bike go. Even with all the repair problems theres just something fun about cruising around town with a helmet the size of africa on my head and all the people laughing at us. Anziano catalano doesn't know how to bike so naturally we had to switch to buses. Ew so far i'm not a big fan of the busses. The problem is there not very reliable. So pretty much we lost the bikes and now we walk everywhere! It is much more tireing and i feel like i'm wasting time when it takes 20 minutes to walk to an appointment when it used to take like 3 minutes biking. So now we have to space our appointemnts out more especiually if there far away to alow walk and bus time to get there. I'm not a big fan. But it is also fun making friends with all the old ladies that cruise the buss's around all day. I just walk up to them and say, sorry mam i know i'm short and they start bustin up laughing. No your not your tall!! Then by the end of the bus ride there like... bye!! Say hi to your mother for me okay!! By maxi! Haha there very sweet old ladies. All of them are veryyy catholic but still fun to talk to. So the heat here in piacenza is still blazing down on us. Yesterday it was 104 degreees!!!! And get this it is humid here! It was like 80-100 percent humidity as well. So as you can imagine i was sweating like a horse these past couple days. You walk out of the house and it like knocks your breath out. So i just want to tell you guys how hardddddd it is to keep this whole lugano thing a secret!! Haha it is amazingly hard! LUGANOOOOO AGHHH... okay i feel a bit better. The other day we were with other missionaries because they had to come down to piacenza to get there permesso di sogiorno (living permit) and i was talking to this awesome kid that was under me in the mtc and i was like... when you came in where did you want to serve. And he was like... ohhh i wanted to go to luganooo so bad haha. And i was like... um uh hmm ughh umm yeah.... that would be nice. But anyways let's talk about something else now haha. And then i was joking around with Elder Shill, (elder in the district who is awesome, the one in the pic of us sitting down the day we biked up into the mountains to go to the cheese factory) and anyways... i was jokingh that i was going to go south the next transfer, and he was like... haha now that you say that your going to go to lugano next transfer (because lugano is the most north in the mission) and i was like... nooo way that would be unreal haha. The whole time i'm just smerking in my head woo hoo lugano. So i feel like i'm clark kent sometimes. I just want to grab some random pedestrian and say HEY I'M SUPERMAN!!! and run away smiling, haha i told someone! So cultural thing. Here in Italy it is sometimes very popular for people to have english written on there shirts because america is cooool. But sometimes i see shirts that just make me laugh here is an example. "I love boy" or "I love party". They just make me laugh because i can just picture some italian shirt designer being like... oh i knowwww i love party! That's it so brilliant, when little does he know he is be grammaticly falssse. And then this one is too funny. I saw a big billboard that was in italian and said basically come to english class, learn english and all that. Then in big bold letters it said in english, "Learn and Practise English!" If i'm not mistaken i'm pretty sure practice is spelled wrong. I'm not sure i can't really spell anymore haha. Okay so the update on Francesca. She is M.I.A. For about 3 weeks we havent seen or talked with her. Her daughter says she is in southern italy, but i'm not sure if that is true. So i hope she actually is and is planning on returning sometime soon. It is sad to see people progress and then just change all of a sudden. I think that is why a mission is hard. Not because of the walking and hotness but because the people you love, don't accept the gospel. Anyways Koffi and Doddi are doing great. We have reset there baptismal date to August 22nd and are seeing them 2 times a week to help them prepare. We just finished teaching them the lessons, and commandemtns and they have accepted them all and are living them. The only problem is getting them to church. Weere trying to get the members to take turns picking them up but there kind of dragging there feet a bit. But they are doing great. We asked them to wear shirt and ties to church and they told us they didn't have any so i'm giving two of my shirts to them (as Catalano's would be a bit big on them haha) and two of my ties. They are verry funny. Alice is doing great. The branch is preparing to give her a calling now. I know she will do great in whatever she does! So anyone who has served a mission will know this but as a missionary we see very strange things sometimes usually on a daily basis. Yesterday we were waitin for this bus and this very strange man came up to me with no teeth and said in broken english. Let me borrow your pen. So i gave him my pen and a pieace of paper. He wrote on it THE EARTH HAS A ROTATION. Then he looked at me and said why? And i wanted to assure him that i was a missionary and not some first place science fair boy on the way home from a hard day in the lab. He then told me about Isacc Newton gave me the pen back and continued walking down the street to stop some other poor person to lecture them about Isaac Newton. So there are very many strange things that happen to us on a daily basis like this. Maybe i'll start a book someday. So this friday we have zone conference yay! So mom i think you said you sent a package. I should get it on friday. I was talking with the zone leader and he told me that my companion in Lugano is named Anziano Mickelson (spelling check) and he says he is a stud. I guess there from the same group in the mtc but he says he is wayyy cool. And he works really hard. I guess there also teaching 20 lessons a week and seeing a lot of blessings up in the alps there. So that was very exciting news. I am very excited. The weird thing is i will see him on friday. I asked the assistant about it and he told me i would have to talk with him and give him the "look" meening hey buddy see you in a month look haha. So i'll have to go say hi to him on friday. Anziano Catalano is doing good. He continues to amaze me with his uniqueness haha. He is a very special person. I am very grateful for him. My italian is really improving. I can pretty much understyand people it is aweosme. He hates making calls so i make all the calls and i love it. Because i actually am talking in italian!! For pdays we don't really do much which is a bummer. The first day i tried to get him to want to go to this castle and he was like... no thanks i'm staying inside, you can go if you really want to. So as you can guess i ended up choosing not to go haha. But it is also nice to be able to relax and kind of rest up for the rest of the week. So i was reading the scriptures this morning and found a fun spiritual thought for ya'll. I know crazy right. As much as you guys probably don't think i do study the scriptures haha. I think this is my first spiritual thought sending home haha. I just don't want to bore you but this one was pretty cool. So in mosiah 8:3, it talks about Ammon telling the people of Limhi about what king benjamin said. And it struck me that this was home teaching! Ammon was a 100% home teacher. I could just picture him there with the ensign in his pouch, pulling it out and being like... okay king the message of the month is from king benjamin. So if you havent done you home teaching do it! Okay so new idea that i quite like. I am going to buy a usb flash drive for pictures. They make like 4 gig and 8 gig usb drives that are pretty cheap. So i was thinking it would be soooo much easier to just put my pictures on that to send home so i'll let you know. I have to check them out at the store next week. But wow i'm running out of time. Okay so josh i loved your email your story about James was so cute. Thats so cool i'm very proud of him. Thanks for the sweet little picture of Claire! She looks like a little princess! I can't wait to meet her. Dad i was laughing so hard about your facebook exspereince. It sounds like you are quite the big man on campus with all the people asking to be friends. Oh and by the way we can't be friends. It would break all the violations of the son father codes in the use of facebook. Sorry. Although you do have my pass word so i guess you could log on and friend yourself. Dang! I also laughed very hard about your Gomer Pyle HEY!! I could just picture you saying hey to the judge haha how funny. Mom thanks sso much for the emails it sounds like you had a very busy week. My advice would be to sell the truck and use the busses haha no i'm just kidding. I'm sorry to hear about the computer dying that is no fun. Please don't send me that email haha. But anywho i really better be running. Nate sorry to hear that your sick my friend hoep you get better! Piacenza is great and i love you all times a billion!!

CIAO!!

Love Anziano Perkes!