The Plague

This week could very well be named "The Plague!" due to the fact that almost everyone (including me) got super sick this week. It was so bad that we had to cancel district meeting! Sister S has been out for the count since last Thursday and the Elders have been gone since the Friday before last! Hopefully we can pull out of this is the next few coming days to get right back on track.As far as good things go. We got two platinum contacts on Thursday who accepted the invite for baptism and everything! So we are really looking forward to working with them and helping them join the Church. They would actually be a huge booster to us all here. Other investigators just keep on going fine and we see them every so often. This past week just wasn't very good.
Went up to Milano yesterday for a district leader training. We got to take a FrecciaRossa (fastest trains in Italy) to get up there. Instead of the usual 6 hour train ride it was 1.5 hours.Got some really awesome things to share with the district, learned a lot, and am really looking forward to this next transfer now. Only thing is.... I didn't get any letters from anyone! I thought you sent some out a while ago. All I got was one letter back that I sent about 2 months ago! Oh well, we have leadership training in two weeks if you want to send anything.
Glad  to hear that the funeral went all right. I also am super thankful for the Plan of Salvation. It really just makes a lot of sense.
Have fun in all your various things to do. I'll look forward to reading it all next week.
Thanks for the pics as well!
Love,
Anziano Rockwood
PS, I'm resending that letter out mom and it is for Jason. So I'm sending it to our house and then it will for sure make it there.

District Leader

Well, Transfer calls are in. We actually got ours on Monday because President is changing things around. The district is more or less staying the same. Mina and Smith will be in Siena. Winward stays as district leader in Pistoia with a new guy, Reusch. And Cleveland is staying here with me in Prato. However the reason we got our call on Monday is because I am being bumped on up to district leader as well. The district bounderies are changing and I will have to be the DL of the zone leaders and the Firenze sisters. Not sure if I am quite ready for that. The ZLs and the sisters stay the same from last transfer though so we will see how that goes (3 transfers all of them have been together). The other Firenze copia will be taking our place in the Pistoia/Siena district.
So yeah. Those are the transfers. Any tips on what I can do to strengthen these people in the district? We have to go to Milan next week for a training so that will help. Overall though I'm a bit nervous.
Other than that. There really hasn't been a lot that happened this week. We have just been seening the same people, found two newer investigators, and have been visiting a lot with members. Cleveland and I have actually pretty much been called as the Ward Mission Leader here because there is no one to take the spot. We'll see what happens.
Have fun in California. I'll send you a talk I found in another email about why I'm not too worried about what happens at death or in the Spirit World anymore. Grandma Johnson is in a way better place than ever now.
We do some district activies on P-Day but not a whole lot. Zone activities are rare since some cities are two or three hours away. Congrats to Tori for graduating. Next step is college!
The earthquakes haven't been too bad (or at least we haven't felt them). I think about 7 or 8 people have died. We don't really get that much news here.

Well, here we go to another week. Talk to you all next week!
Anziano Rockwood

The baptism that didn't really work out

Well sounds like it hasn't been a very good week all around for anyone.
Sad to hear that Grandma Johnson died. but she should be doing fine right now. I found a really cool talk about the Spirit World and it honestly sounds like a beautiful place. No worries there then.
Sad to hear you were sick all week mom. I've always been pretty sick lately. Had to stay in the past few days due to huge upset stomachs and lots of bathroom.
As for the baptism...... yeah. Didn't really work out. Long story short, some members called us an hour before the baptism to say that A had smoked (and we knew they were telling the truth because there were 3 witnesses and she smoked inside one of their homes). So we called the members cancelling the baptism. We were going to see A in 20 minutes anyway, so we thought to talk to her face to face. She came with some of her friends. Us and the Branch President took her aside really quick and asked if she smoked. She said no at first and that God wanted her to get baptized. But then we said some members said she smoked inside their home. She fought back a little, admitted to smoking about 5 cigerettes a day, drinking wine everyday, and doing 2 canes (we still don't want to know what those are). So we talked to her about how she needed to be following all the commandments and how it was inappropriate of her to lie to us. She kept claiming revelation that God was telling her to get baptized anyway. We explained worthiness and what God has told us through His authorized servants about baptism. She got mad at that and started to say that prophets were dumb and not needed anymore, that they were good back then when people didn't listen to God but that they are unnecessary now. We told her sorry but she couldn't be baptized. She then told us she would get baptized herself whether or not we were there. We didn't know what to do. So Cleveland, I, and President Ioanna just left the room, explained things to her friends (who were against the baptism anyway since they say her doing these things), and eventually A came around to it. However, the next day she didn't come to Church, called and said she was mad with us and didn't want to see us anymore. Then yesterday she called and said we were right and how she wanted to try again.
Needless to say, I am exhausted and never thought I would have such scary experiences like this on the mission. But I've grown a lot from it and hope that I can take the things I have learned and apply them in my life from now on.
Other than that, I am studying the scriptures a lot more. Loving that. The more and more I think about it, the more and more theology sounds pretty sweet (especially ancient scripture). But again, I'll just wait till I get home to see what I want to do.
Hope everything else is going well. Just send me Tori's essay over email and I'll print it out. I have another package to send out to you all with some things that I can't take with me during transfers. I have money to send that with so don't worry about it. Transfers are next week so we will see if I spend another 6 weeks here or move on to greater things. In many ways I want to try a big city with a big ward since I have only gotten to do small cities (on the bright side of that though, I have seen exactly how the leadership side of the church works. I hope that doesn't mean I get too big of a calling when I go home).
Well, onward to another week. Should be good. Are you all ready for summer?

Anziano Rockwood

"We came all the way from America because we know this message would benefit you."

Hey everybody!

So yeah. Zone Conference was yesterday. It was actually really good. We learned how to overcome problems with baptismal invites for a specific date. We are also learning how to budget our time more efficiently. I guess the hardest thing me and Cleveland have doing is finding work. We are going to try new things out to hopefully see new results. Things like saying to people "We came all the way from America because we know this message would benefit you." "Why do you think we are here doing this work voluntarily?" Things like that to try and get the Italian people moving.

Didn't get the letters yesterday. Not sure when I will get them now since we might not even have Conference or Training next transfer. Might be a while before I get them in that sense. Oh well. Still get emails and stuff.

As far as our investigators are doing. Well...... maybe I'll start by explaining what happened yesterday.

After Conference, President Wolfgramm came to Prato to interview A to see if she was finally ready for baptism. He passed her since she has kept all the invites for this past week. So then we went to consiglio (branch council) to tell them about it. Our Branch President was super concerned still because there have been a lot of members baptized who before had a huge dependency on things then afterward got back into their problems again. He is worried that she will just end up like that and it will all be for not. He is also just super upset with the branch because they do nothing in terms of missionary work or callings (sounds like the same problem you are having in our ward). He made a good point on how we as missionaries should not have to do finding work. When we do finding work, we only find those with problems because they are the only ones walking around on the street, at home during the day, etc. Then we baptize one of these problem people, and their social status is with those of other problem people. So these new converts only bring in more problem people and so on and so forth until the branch has more problems than it can handle. (Yes, this is a bit brutal but it is true) He wants the members to do missionary work because they are able to reach families and those that us as missionaries can't reach. Unfortunately he can't explain it the way he did to us last night (I have given the nice, short, clean version) because some of the members might take it wrong. I imagine it to be very hard as Branch President. All in all, BP wants more members to do work and accept callings, and to just understand why President Wolfgramm passed A. We still need to hear from him on what President Wolfgramm says to know if we go forward with the baptism or not. Really big problems I guess you could say. If there was a baptism, I'll tell you on Sunday.

Other than that, we have a few new investigators that are doing ok but no one really progressing as much as we would like.

D is making good progress I suppose. She accepted the Word of Wisdom and likes everything we say but won't set a date for baptism with us. We're going to try out the new techniques we learned on Wednesday to fissare qualcosa.

G just had another surgery so she is out of the count for a while unfortunately. She just has all these bad things happen to her but she pushes onward anyways. Great example of faith.

S and X have actually disappeared. Wondering where they are now.

Our member missionary work has made some progress though. A lot of members are taking the challenge to give out a Book of Mormon to a friend. Our second counselor in the branch presidency and his wife are preparing for a mission. So we are trying to do a lot of work with them. They have given us tons of legit referrals.

Other than that, we are sitting in Florence again today. Going on another adventure to find some church we always see from Piazza Michelangelo but never have gone to.

For the callings, I'll see if we can go earlier or not. Because Cleveland's dad has to talk in church. That really messes with the time. We'll just have to see when we get on. I tried emailing Jason but got no reply from him, so if you could call and invite him over too.

Onward to another week and in a way another year here in Italy.

Talk to you all on Sunday!

Anziano Rockwood

Festa della Liberazione

Well, it isn't cinco de mayo yet. And we don't even celebrate it here.... However last Wednesday was Festa della Liberazione which was fun.

I'm trying to think of what we did this past week. Everything is just becoming a blur now that I've passed my year mark. Days go faster and now weeks too. I don't get it. I feel like just yesterday I was sitting here emailing you all.

I guess the coolest things this week are that our branch president completely chastised the branch here. A city up north (Bergamo) is opening up another ward. He talked about how they only had 100,000+ people and three wards, while Prato has 200,000+ and only one branch! So he promised the branch that if they would get us 5 referrals, then one of them would be baptized. This totally set us up to show them our new stuff on what we wanted to do for the branch this transfer. We bought a new map and pinned it up with where all the members live (active and less active). We showed that to the branch presidency and they were super impressed. We then signed ourselves up to go search for all the less actives so the branch could spend more time bringing them back instead of looking for them. We also got to show them our flag. For this transfer, our zone is making a "Title of Liberty" with our vision on it (4 baptisms, 2 dates [for our city]) then showing it to members so that they know our goal. Then the members sign it and commit to giving away a Book of Mormon. Really been super cool. The branch presidency loved it and are looking to keep the ball rolling.

We also got to go bowling yesterday with the Tavenari family. They are American and he plays basketball for the team in Pistoia. They love the missionaries and they asked President Wolfgramm if they could take us and Pistoia bowling. It was fun to do something normal for once.

Other than that, we are doing are super fast this weekend (and yes mom, every ward/branch in the world do fast sunday the first sunday, it came from the First Presidency afterall). We are going to be fasting for 3 reasons this time.

1. G's husband will have a softened heart and allow her to get baptized.

2. X's parents will have a softened heart and allow her to get baptized.

3. A will stop smoking and get baptized.

Those are our goals and we are hoping to see major blessings come through.

Today we are back in Florence and we are going to go see Micaelangelo's house. Should be fun.

Still haven't heard from Tori on how her paper is going. Also congrats on the Personal Progress.

Next week is Zone Conference (the 9th), so any letters needed to be sent a few days ago. I won't be emailing until Thursday too. Also will be learning what to do Mother's Day.

Say hi to John for me when he gets home.

I'll add Grandma to our prayer list as well.

Thanks for everything and talk to you next week!

Anziano Rockwood

new companion and lots of investigators

Hey everybody!
So this week has probably been one of the craziest weeks ever. Huge miracles and awesomeness all around.
I actually have only been with Cleveland for 3 days. We did a 2 day scambio with Pistoia this week and I was with Winward here in Prato. So the newest Prato missionary has served just as long in another city than his own! But it was good. We did the scambio because we needed to do a baptismal interview for A. She's been making huge progress and has stopped smoking, moved out from her fiance, and stopped drinking. However she didn't pass question 4 on the baptismal interview questions..... So we called President Wolfgramm and he will be doing the interview in about 2 weeks. Bartholomew and I never thought that she would be baptized to be honest. From 4 packs of cigerettes everyday, breaking the law of chastity with everyone, and drinking 8 liters of wine everyday to absolute obedience has been huge! In fact, we were so unsure of her baptism (call us unbelieving) that Bartholomew and I swore to shave our legs if she did make it! So expect some funny pictures in a few weeks.
Our other investigators are going strong as well. S has expressed a desire to be baptized and he talks about how he just feels more peaceful when we talk with him. His mother-in-law died a few days ago but he really liked the Plan of Salvation and how he will see her again.
D is also progressing very well. Her son is named Nephi because she used to be married to a member of the church. Divorced now unfortunately. But she wants to be baptized and be a member of the church!
G is still doing all right. Her husband is now getting super mad when she comes to church and tells her it is a waste of time. I don't understand why we even need his permission to baptize her. However, her son is getting better. The other day she had a miracle while giving him his bath. He asked her to leave for a moment. So she did. When she came back in 2 minutes she asked what he was doing and he said "Sto pregando Gesu." (I was praying to Jesus). So that was a huge miracle. We are actually going to do a branch fast for her. If you want to join you can. It won't be this Sunday but the Sunday after that.
X also had a miracle moment. Her parents are finally opening up about the whole baptism thing and might come to the branch activity this Sunday. She has actually made huge progress and actually gained her testimony through attendance at church. She told us that every time she comes, she recieves an answer to a question, or a solution to a problem from that week, or simply a feeling that everything will be all right. (By the way mom, they are "lessons" now, not discussions)
We end up teaching the new member lessons for about 6 months after baptism to a year after. We actually had a super powerful lesson yesterday with a couple that was baptized 9 months ago. We talked about the Temple and the ordinances we performed there. I don't think I can recall a moment that I felt the Spirit more. It was very powerful and they had a huge desire to go to the Temple. We actually set up something with them to go and talk to the branch president to see if they would be able to go to Switzerland for the Temple there.
Being Senior Comp is different but not really. I feel like I am simply moving my secretary skills from telling the district leader to make phone calls to me making phone calls. Although it has been interesting taking charge in lessons and having to make the bigger decisions. But Cleveland is actually only one transfer beneath me so we are both about the same level. And no dad, I am not quite a master at the language now. But I do talk more so I am learning quicker. Most missionaries don't have a master of the language before they even train! For example, there was a missionary in his 3rd transfer who barely spoke the language who was asked to be a trainer. Language mastery =/= role in missionary work. But I am sure it helps.
Only send my birthday package at this point. The costs for packages have skyrocketed. It now costs about half the value of a package just on custom fees. So don't send anything but letters. However, I already have some things I need for the birthday package (deoderant, some teeth whitening stuff [most missionaries use the Crescent white strips], achne stuff, and anything that can get me looking fine for when I come back home).
Yes, the Temple in Rome would have English for all the Africans and tourists. Plus I would like to see southern Italy and take you all through northern Italy. Would be awesome to do it all.
Rain has settled in and actually keeps us from going out a few times due to the intesity. However it only shows up when we don't have appointments. Then when we do, it clears up, comes right back after we head inside. Super weird.
Say hi to everyone for me and keep up the awesome work at home. I'm praying for you all and getting ready for this next transfer which should be awesome!
Anziano Rockwood

10 minutes

Another week, a lot of stuff and I have no idea where to begin.
How about with investigators and how the work is doing there.
Start off with D since she is doing super awesome. In fact, she is doing so well that she will be baptized next Thursday! She wants to be baptized for the reason of knowing that this Church is true and so she is pushing her baptism from June 25th to April 5th to get baptized here. That will be really cool. Kinda weird though because this will mean all of the baptisms I have seen here have been of strainieri. No Italians..... Portuguese, Houndurian, Hungarian, Phillipian, Romanian..... Guess I was sent here to help non-Italians instead of Italians.
A.... Has been dropped because she won't quit smoking or drinking. Yes she has made progress in lessening her intake of these things but won't go any farther. For this we have decided to go from teaching her 4 times a week to only once until she is able to make enough progress to only drink 1L of wine a day or 1 pack of cigerettes. We hope she is able to do it.
I continues to do well. He knows these things are true but he has a few irrational fears about being baptized. He thinks he will baptized and then choose to be baptized in another church later. Any advice on what we can tell him about this? That it isn't really that big of a problem but he just thinks it is.
G..... I don't know what to do with her so I need some help. Mom, dad, I'm sending another email to you about her and what help I could use.
Other than that, the work goes on well. We had a super awesome miracle one hour before an appointment. Right in the morning too when everything is weird to do. Do we do area book? Do make phone calls? No. We decide to walk the 15 minutes to the park, do 10 minutes there and then walk back for our ride to the appointment. What does God do with this 10 minutes you may ask? He blesses us with a young couple who are looking for direction and peace in their life. When we get in the way, God puts people right in front of us.
Pretty sweet miracle and there are many more just like it everyday!
Besides that, we did a scambio this week and I got to do some work with Anziano Stanley again. We are doing a scambio with the ZLs tomorrow and that should be good.
The branch here is super awesome and we love them to death. They do way too much for us. In fact we haven't had a WML for a while now but the branch still helps us and they are seeing the work we are doing ourselves. Because of this, they are doing more missionary work and trying to do the most they can. Just all around miracles.
Today we are in Florence and we are just going to walk around. I sent the package last Thursday and they said it would arrive by this Thursday. So expect that in the mail. Next zone conference is coming up this next month, so I'll get the package you sent finally. Just missed it by a few hours. Besides that there isn't anything new going on. Just living life and doing work.
Buona settimana a tutti e ci sentiamo mercoledì,Anziano Rockwood

Legal for 1 more Year

Uh oh! Where do I start? There has a lot been going on and you are probably wondering where I am!
We had another conference yesterday in Florence so we didn't get the chance to write emails. Therefore I am writing today. It was probably the best zone conference ever and I'll write about it later. But the surprise was ruined since you already saw the pic with me and Elder Allen. That was super cool.

Anyways, this week has been fun. I had to renew my permesso. Went a lot smoother this time than last time since they spelled my name right. It costs €140 to renew my permesso. Crazy expensive to just be LEGAL here! In a few weeks we are going to go to the questura (police station) to get my fingerprints done. So at this point I think the Italian government has more information about me than the American government. Should I be concerned?
Friday and Wednesday we went to the comune to help Italians learn english. That is a blast. We show them pictures, ask questions about their family, answer questions, etc. A great way to serve and the people are super awesome. The people taking these classes don't have work so they take these free courses from the city to gain skills to find work. Good program overall. The guy who runs it, Fabio, basically treats us as kings. I've never seen so many cookies, cakes, or baked goods in my life!
We are continuing our 20 lesson streak. Have to work our butts off to get it this week since we are only at 10 lessons so far. Worst day was Monday because I caught a bit of cold and we had to cancel most of our lessons in the morning. But we rescheduled them for later this week so it shouldn't be a problem. Still have a bit of a sore throat though. The investigators are all going pretty well.
"A" still needs to stop smoking and drinking. She has huge problems with this and has flatlined to "I'll be ok with only having faith in Christ and making small minor changes in life." So today we are just going to break boxes and get her back on board with everything. Otherwise we have to drop her. In terms of her reading the BoM, praying, and coming to church she is doing fine. Just commandments. Why does everyone have such big problems with commandments?
"G" continues to have problems with her husband and we are still not sure what to do. We had a breakthrough though with the fact that the 1st Counselor in the branch presidency has been playing some calcio with G's husband. Hopefully that starts to turn him around and let her get baptized. Praying fervently for this one.
"I" is on the quit smoking program and is doing well at it since he doesn't smoke too much to begin with. In fact I'm surprised he didn't stop before. He should be on track to be baptized if he starts coming to church! "Just come to church!"
"D" is also doing well. Only she wants to get baptized in the Phillippines. We just need her to realize that she should get  baptized here and then perhaps her and her boyfriend could go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead or something. But we are just not sure how to change her mind!
 That's the progress of our simps (simpatizante [investigators]). So the work is going fine. The only problem is finding finding time to get new ones since we have all these progressing!
Funny story time. We had 3 hours of open finding time that got destroyed because we did what Jesus would do. About 10 minutes into the finding, we get a text from the only Chinese member in our branch, "L", saying "Help! My body is sick! Accompany me! Can we come to hospidal? If you free!" So we find him near the hospital and we ask him what is wrong. He first said "Allergia!" And then made sneezing motions.
We said, "Ok, anything else?"
"Blood!"
"Blood.... where?" we asked.
"Blood! SH**!" he replied.
At this point I walked away to get the bikes and just started laughing while Bartholomew just went along with it being the Saint he is. So we take him to the hospital right to the emergency room and get him signed up. Now the thing about emergency rooms in Italy is that people go for anything. Stomach-aches, head-aches, stubbed toes, missing arms, allergies, being offended, etc, etc. Then no matter what reason you go in for, after waiting for 2 hours in the waiting room, they will tell you to go to a specialist. So for L they set him up for a proctologist and got him some prescription allergy medicine. We take him out to get the stuff for his appointment and the medicine. The allergy medicine is a spray that is very similar to asthma medicine but L had a hard time believing you put it in your mouth. He just wanted to put it in his nose! Then the medicine for the proctologist appointment had interesting......... illustrations on how to properly use it. So we got him all that and then on Tuesday we took him back for the appointment. I don't know what the doctors did in the room but L did not sound like he was having fun. And in the end we learned he just needed to drink more water so that his poop doesn't scratch him upon departure. But the good news is, thanks to socialized health care, he didn't have to pay anything! Miracles of waiting forever to be told something dumb.

Besides that story, our district is cursed. Anziano Winward's eye started to swell from allergies, Anziano Mina started to get tongue cancer from a lead filling, and I had a cold. Just not a good week I guess.
Zone Conference was good. We met Elder Allen, Bishop Allen's dad, who is the director of everything missionary. He was the one who put Preach My Gospel together. He told us some very profound things and we were sorely chastised as a mission. But it was all for our good. We also met Brother Lusvarde (he is the dad of my zone leader from last transfer), who is the director of Church historic sites, vistor centers, and pageants. So he owns the Sacred Grove, Nauvoo, Temple Square, Hill Cumoroh, and all those other nifty things. He was in Italy to get the Rome visitor center ready with Elder Allen. You know the Christus? That huge statue in the Salt Lake visitor center? They are making one of those for the Rome one and they are doing something even more special. The sculptor who made the original Christus also made statues of the 12 Apostles. So they are putting copies of those in the Rome visitor center as well. We learned that the Peter statue has a large key in his hand representing the Priesthood. It should be really cool! Other than that we learned how to manage our time better and reach 20 lessons a week. Very uplifting and one of the best conferences yet!
However, I did not get the package! Just going to have to wait. But speaking of packages. The mission is advising us to warn you about not sending too many out or to put multiple packages into one (for example, my Christmas package should have been one from you and Nana and Opa, not two seperate) because Italy is going to pay off their debt using customs. It costs about 50% of the total worth of the package for customs (eg. you send a package worth $50, it will cost $25 in customs). So I guess just one more for birthday and one for Christmas. Letters though are fine! I'm also sending my package today to you guys so it should be there in a few days. Not many gifts inside but more things I just need to send home.
Well, I'll look for some pics to attach and then start writing individual letters. Have an awesome week! Picture is of the tomb of Galileo Gallilei, we went to the church where he was buried last week. Also saw Dante Aligheri's tomb.


Anziano Rockwood

Leap Day

Hey Fam!

Here are two newer pictures. One is from District Conference.

The other is from good old Florence!



Hopefully I can show you all these places someday. Everything here is just super pretty.

In the musuem we saw two very famous paintings.

Birth of Venus.

Spring.

Both of those were super cool.

The transfer calls are in and I......

Am staying here in Prato with Bartholomew. So we get to do another 7 weeks together since this transfer is longer than the last one. But Prato should be doing good. We have a baptism this Saturday.... Then another baptism next Saturday! The first one is this Hungarian lady we are working with. The language barrier has been hard but she has a good testimony. The only problem is that she has an abusive husband. So our WML is kinda hiding her right now and right after the baptism she is going back to Hungary to get a divorce. The husband has approached us about all this and the police are aware of everything but it is still pretty sketchy! We are safe though and no need to worry. Everything will go smoothly.

Speaking of sketch-really quick.... We might get to teach Lord Voldemort. No joke. But I can't talk about this contact for Italian legal reasons. Needless to say we have someone who wants to learn the gospel but we have to meet with him in secret and the Italian government won't let us give more details than this.

Other than that, in no-sketchy baptism news, the next week baptism is this super awesome woman named "G". She is 23, married, has a 4 year old son. Her testimony is super strong as well. She just hasn't been able to get baptized because her husband doesn't want her paying tithing. But we learned that if she has a desire to pay, but can't because of something that would cause more problems with the family, then she can get baptized. Area Presidency approved. So that will be super awesome as well.

Another thing that has come to mind. I met someone the other day here named.... "Rocky"? He says that he knows the Elders because of someone who served here a long time ago. A certain Doug Fisher who lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. So I was wondering, if Brother Fisher served here in Prato during his mission, is there anyone he would like me to look up while I am here? Kinda weird to have that pop up, but was cool at the same time.

Other than that. I am probably going to go out to Pisa this transfer as well as Cinque Terre. Those should be some fun P-Day adventures. I also have some things I need to send home so I'll try and wrap up a quick package, not too much, to send on home.

To answer questions. Don't get the international permit unless I go AP because there are no cars I can drive here. Bikes stay in cities not with missionaries.

I learned how to play

"If you Could Hie to Kolob"

and "Praise to the Man"

but we don't have time for practice and the branches I have been in have a pianist. You can send letters to me. (Speaking of Ryan, ask him if there is a Sister Black in his mission, because that is the fiance of my trainer) Weather is getting warm and fun. Jackets are really lame now because of it though.

Other things. Tori be good with dating. Go to Seminary for the right reasons. What is going on with your research paper? Why don't you write anymore?

Mark. My companion is a cross country runner and he runs the 800. He is excited to hear that you are running. He says be persistent and practice every day. Also, any cool movies I have missed? Or games? Or music?

Dad. Good luck with more responsibility and stuff. Our super legit WML just became the 1st counselor in the District Presidency. But I know that all callings are by inspiration. Sounds awesome that you get to work with Matt again. Has he ever grown his beard back?

Mom. Keep up the good work. Really a lot of the main letter is a response to you. So I don't have anything in particular to say except you are awesome.

Nana and Opa. Why is Mark not doing all the stuff I used to do? Say hi to Rob's family for me. Have them write me or something.

Love you all. Italian quote of the week: "Cu'è?!!!!!" (Key Eh[Canadian Eh]) Who is it?!!!!! Most common phrase we hear.

Anziano Rockwood