Hiya

Hiya!

 

Well, Anziano Hoover is helping me get some pictures to you guys, so hopefully it'll go through! The first one is of Anziano Esplin in a cemetery near our home in L'Aquila. We were on the other side of the hill, and we decided to try to cut through to get home quicker. We sort of got lost, but we got there! These are the oldest ones we saw, all the newer graves are in building-sorta things.

The next is of my first district on our P-day at Taormina a while back. If I remember right (I don't have the picture in front of me), the one on the left is Anziano Bennett, then his trainer Anziano Davis, and then Anziano Stewart and me. It was really fun, and a beautiful day!

 

The next one is of my first meeting Anziano Hoover at the train station in Rome (called Termini). He's 6'5", so L'Aquila has some tall Americans in suits running around! He's great, he's a year into his mission, and we both understand pretty well now. Although, there HAVE been some interesting situations already, haha!

 

The last is of me and Anziano Esplin standing in front of the Colosseo (I don't remember how it's spelled in English) from last week. My one day in Rome so far, and it rained. Hahaha! And yes, Mom, that "no biggie" part was, in fact, just to inspire a hint of jealousy. Not very Christlike, I realize, but hey, no one is perfect, right? ;)

 

Not a heck of a lot to report this week. What's really challenging about L'Aquila, I've come to realize, is that yes, there are those awesome experiences I've told you about, but then the other people have a hard time realizing that WE WANT TO MEET AGAIN. A little irritating, but I still love the place. Mostly when I wrote in big letters just then, it was with a sort of chuckle. Oh well. However, there is ONE person that we have high hopes for at this point: yesterday, we were walking to an appointment (ended up being a bidone), but on the way there, a car honks at us and pulls over. Ends up, it was Paola, who we had never met before. She then went on to explain that she was the Mom of Mattia, one of the members in the branch who is on a mission in Portugal or somewhere.

 

That's when I recognized the name. Me and Anziano Esplin have been trying to set up a visit with her for WEEKS with a member, but it just didn't get done. We wanted to go with a member because we weren't sure if she would want us there, but we really felt like we needed to go. But she was SUPER happy to have seen us, and said basically we could set up a time whenever it would work out. THAT was a HUGE blessing, to have that whole thing play out like that.

 

Yeah, that's about it here. Anziano Hoover and I are getting along, and life is going well. Oh, by the way, Nicole emailed me, Mom, and SHE got a mission call to! To Roseville California! Holy dang, that age change is such a blessing, I realized, because I'll be able to come back to the friendships that I had recently worked so hard to set up. I love it! But let's go, 1 1/2 years to go!

 

By the way, this past week, I've been tearing through Liahone (that's how you pluralize stuff that ends in "a" in Italian. It sounds a lot nicer now.) like none other. I was especially hit by one of the Conference issues in 2009, November, I think. It has a lot to do with love, and I've made it a goal to work at that. We'll see how it goes!

 

Anywho, ciao ciao!

Anziano Walker