Howdy! Thank you for your wonderful email! I'm oh so grateful for them. I will repeat...I never liked ash wednesday. It was not a fun time of the year for me. A little weird actually. As for little old italian ladies walking the streets with little ash marks on their foreheads...I actually never saw any. Weird huh? Well I was also in Siena and not really paying attention so that could be why as well.
So here are some more pictures! I hope you like them! I would like to say that so far I have 2 favorites cities in Italy. Bolzano and Siena. Why? They are both small, BEAUTIFUL, and really clean. The clean part is the one that does it for me. When I got to Bolzano I thought all cities were super clean but now I realize that it was just Bolzano and now Siena. Bummer but what are you gonna do?
I hope you get the one of Anthony's name on the door in the apartment in Siena. I thought that was pretty cool. You should tell him that I love that apartment. Its super clean a spacious. I was impressed. The other couple pictures of of me and my companion in centro, and then me and other missionaries on top of a tower overlooking piazza del campo and the rest of Siena. It was definitely a magical P day. The final picture is of our investigator Deng Xin who got baptized 2 weeks ago. He's awesome. He knows a ton about the NBA and keeps me pretty up to date. He's also super solid. After his baptism he went up to bear his testimony and just talked about how happy he was to follow christ. Last week he just got the priesthood. His favorite part about it is how he can only use it to serve others. He's 24 so we're going to start talk about his plans for serving a mission. He would tear china up. They wouldn't even recognize what hit him. I love that kid.
Other than that this week has been pretty hetic. I've been in siena, prato (Haha I decided to do a Consentino family mission tour), Milano for a conference, and tomorrow we're going to Pistoia. Last week I spent about 3 days in Firenze. It was definitely a crazy week of traveling. Super fun though. Super fun. I've gotten to work with some amazing missionaries. The work in Italy is on the verge to explode. Literally, we have some amazing missionaries in this mission doing some amazing things. I feel super grateful to be apart of it.
Our work is going good. We found somebody who his really cool. His name is Giulio. He's super funny. He wants to be baptized so we're helping him out. He asks really funny questions. The other day he was like, ' So like with funerals...Do we have our own cemeteries or like do just bury everybody with everybody else?' Haha he also asked if he had to stop being a volunteer ambulance driver because its a catholic service, and we told him no. He's really cool. Somebody that just wants to follow christ. When we told him about our church and our message he stopped us, took out his cellphone and showed us his wallpaper. It was a picture of christ. He was like, 'I love christ.' It was a really strong testimony to me. I know that this is the only way to follow him. He is the shepard and his sheep do hear his voice. I'm so thankful to be apart of this work.
I think I'll leave on that note. I love you so much and thanks again for the email. I hope you have a great week!
Love,
Joey
