Crotone! Transfer 4, Week 3!

Hey everyone! How is everyone doing?!?!

We have had a pretty good week here as usual! Tuesday we had DDM in the morning and afterwards we went to this panini shop here in Crotone and it was SOOOO good! I got a panino with sausage and peppers and onions and some crotonese sauce, it was great. Calabria which is the region of Italy where we are, it includes the toes of the boot of Italy is known for spicy food, "Calabrian Spice!" So the panino was a little spicy but still real good. We finished off District lunch with a quick stop at the French fry shop called "Chips and Beer" because there are so many tourists almost everything has English names... Also good and a really good night at English Course!

Wednesday we went to Cutro to meet with our New Convert that wants to go on a mission! We had pranzo with him and his Grandma and we're going to start teaching him English! Then we went and saw this really cool less-Active family and shared the #LightTheWorld video with them, they loved it and hopefully they'll come back to church!

Sorella Angela... her last name is too hard to pronounce (Siniscalchi) so everyone calls her Sister Angela and she is the sweetest little old Italian lady you've ever seen. She is 82 years old and is in amazing health, she wakes up at 4 AM everyday and works out and walks to the cemetery to see her husband, she lives in an old castle which is so cool! She walks all over the city and we came over on Thursday and she was out sweeping the leaves off the neighbors steps, she is so active and really she just loves to have some company so we try to go over and talk to her once a week. While we were there someone came by selling costagne which are chestnuts and she bought a 5 Kilo bag of them, we carried them inside for her and she pulled out her nut cracker and said "Alright, I've got work to do so I'll see you guys on Sunday" she is honestly the coolest Grandma ever.

Thursday two really cool things happened... the first was that I had made homemadchicken noodle soup because the Sister missionaries were sick. Anziano Redaelli had never had chicken noodle soup before! What a shame... turns out he likes it! Probably just because it's American and he loves everything American!

The second and even cooler thing happened at English Course. Our English course is huge, we've had about 30 people each week which is pretty big! We always ask at the end if any of them would like to offer the prayer and no one ever says yes but Sister Condé asked again and this lady who is probably 30 years old just started to pray and it was the most humble prayer I've heard in a long time. Afterwards the Sisters went and talked to her and she just started to cry, she felt the spirit so strongly and now the sisters are teaching her! As we were getting ready to leave another student came up to us and was asking questions and he started to explain how he felt during the course. He began to explain to us that the Sisters were just teaching English and he could see so much light in them. He said "I don't know how to explain it, it seems so strange, they're not talking about religion, they're just teaching English and they have such a strong spirit, I feel so good when I'm here." That was a testimony of two things to me 1. We have a light, as disciples of Jesus Christ we have a light that can be shared in the way that we act, the things hat we say and smiles that we share. #LightTheWorld is an inspired initiative because we all have the light, and its our responsibility to share it! 2. It hardly matters what we say or what we teach, if we create an environment for the spirit to testify to the hearts of the people we teach then we can be saying anything and the spirit will testify to those who are ready to receive the message. It was really comforting as obviously I am still learning Italian, I make a lot of mistakes but we all speak the language of the spirit, it's universal and can be felt by everyone.

We set up another Christmas Tree with the D'oppido family on Friday! One of the strings of lights broke and Anziano Redaelli tried to fix them, he twisted the wires together and taped it up. He plugged it in and they worked! Then he unplugged it and went to plug it back in to show everyone, it made a huge bang and started a small fire... I don't think he will be an electrician any time soon... but the Christmas tree had lights on half of it and I thought it looked pretty good!

The rest of the weekend was pretty normal! We did some less active lessons and I met some pretty cool members! Yesterday we went to Sister Zarfino's for lunch after church, she made this pasta with sausage and hamburger meat and besciamella and mozzarella cheese! It was soooo cheesy and so good! Then for round two was just a big old plate of meat. Calabrian meat balls, fried chicken, and chicken cordon blu... just straight meat and we ate so much!

This afternoon we are heading to Taranto for Zone Conference, it should be really fun! We will be in Taranto until Wednesday because we are doing an exchange with the Zone Leaders, it should be good! I'm excited to meet the Zone Leaders and the other missionaries here.

I hope you have a good week and let me know what you are all doing for Christmas! I love seeing what you are all up to! Love ya!

Jake