New Italian Companion- Anziano Marino

Dear everyone-

Buona Giornata!

This week has been great the work has been going great! Last Wednesday we went to San Marino and had a great time checking out the castle! The highlight of this week however is that I am getting a new companion! Anziano Betzsold was awesome and I am so thankful that he was able to train me we got along great! I am excited for my new companion though tomorrow I'm going to Milano because that's where everyone meets to do exchanges. My new companion is ITALIAN!!! His name is Anziano Marino and from what I've heard he is a super hard worker. I'm looking forward to having an Italian companion because it will help my Italian be soo much better! Today we went to Ravenna's market and I bought 2 ties for 6 euro, ties here are nice and really cheap! Yesterday we went to Fratello e Sorella Pogellini home, a little outside Ravenna. They made pollo and patate. I love it because with thier vegetables they drench them in oil! Makes them soo good! After Fratello Pogellini showed us his garden and they live in the country side so all we could see was just acres and acres of farmland really beautiful! Peter and Mark have been doing great they come everyweek and both of them have strong testimonies! Spring is great right now although in the summer it is supposed to get really humid! Thanks for all that you do!

Vi voglio bene! -Anziano Thomas

Baptisms of Peter and Mark

Easter & Baptisms

La famiglia e i amici-
This week it was my companions birthday so we went to our Branch
president to celebrate! We had cake and lots of pasta and sang Buon
Compleanno. It was great! This week was awesome because we had 2
baptisms with Peter and Mark. Our church doesn't have a baptism font
so we have to go early in the day to fill it up. I got to give a talk
on Baptism and thought that it went pretty well. After the talk we
went into the other room and our 2nd councilor did the baptism!
Everything went great and we even had one of our investigators show up
and he really liked it! The next day was Easter was great also we had
church in the morning and Peter and Mark were confirmed by our Branch
President. It was really cool because right after the members of the
word sustained them I looked over to Peter and he was crying. We
asked him after and he said he has never felt anything like that
before it was weird. Easter was good though most our members were out
of town so we didn't get the chance to eat with them but that's alright
it was still great! This week we had another zone conference in
Modenna and learned a lot how to be better missionaries. Today we went
to San Marino which is a country within Italy it was really cool. We
went to the castle and it was just like Lord of the Rings. This week
has been great! Especially with the work before the baptism we fasted
that our investigators would come to church. Only one came and I was
pretty bummed but before the baptism we set 3 baptism dates 2 of them
are legit! So the Lord doesn't always answer our prayers how we want
it! Thanks for everything you do!
Vi voglio bene! -Anziano Thomas

Happy Easter!

Buona Pasqua!

(Happy Easter)

Sounds like everything is going well at home! Things here in Italy are great and have been very busy! Peter and Mark were interviewed for baptism and everything is ready! Our Second Councilor who is also from Nigeria will be doing the baptism so we are way excited for them! This Saturday we are looking forward to it! I will be giving a talk in Italian haha so hopefully all goes well! So for these past two days I've been in Ferrara on an exchange! And today we are having p-day here so we checked out the castle and it was really cool. This last week I had African food and Pakistanian.. The African food was buono. In Africa they use alot of spices and rice so we had rice with this stew on top and it was pretty good it reminded me a little of Mexican. Then we had Pakistanian food with Abi who call us his <<Sunshines>> whenever we see him. But I did not like the food at all haha it was so hard to finish everything but I did it! This week was also great because we saw conference in Rimini and in English! The talks were great I especially liked President Updorfs on forgiveness and Elder Baxter who talked about single parents which I thought was really interesting! Conference was great and I loved listening to President Monson and his apostles talk! This next week we will be in Modana for another conference. Oh and this last week we started teaching English Class! I teach the advanced class and it is pretty easy all we do is talk in English conversations. During english class I was telling them how to study and I pulled out this book where I write words I don't know. And I was telling them if you ever here a word you don't know writed it down and I looked in my book with all the words in it and was like for example.. Calzini! And they all looked at me strange and confused. And I was like you know like Calzini it means socks and pointed down to my socks and they busted out laughing. They said I added an extra letter somewhere and accidently mad it a bestemmia (swearword) but I was glad I was able to clear it up though it was funny. But the work here in Italy is great and we are looking forward to the battesimi of Peter and Mark! Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers

Vi voglio bene Anziano Thomas