August 31, 2011

Proctors-

   August is over!  This week is starting off with a lot more people in town, so that's good.  Like I explained, everyone in Italy just disappears from late July to early September.  I think a good amount of them have returned, although not everyone.  Our District Leader in Reggio Emilia told me they haven't had there bishop in church for about 6 weeks! 

   The backyard concert sounds like it was fun.  It's hard to believe that I've missed the last 2 (and will miss the next one as well).  I have never seen the Joseph play, but Alexa told me she was trying out for it back in March.  I'm sure it was fantastic.  That's too bad about Park City losing to Stansbury.  I hope Jono is okay!  Did him and Brian get that letter I sent them in the MTC?

   We met a guy this week in the park who used to live in Greenville, NC.  He was an Italian (southern italian by the sound of his accent), who lived in Africa when he was little and then moved to the States when he was younger.  He lived in Greenville and evenutally went to some sort of Navy Academy (although not the Navy Academy in Anapolis).  When I told him that my sister and brother-in-law had just moved to Greenville, he got all excited and said they were lucky.  Do Lindsay and Patrick love it there as much as this guy does?

  This week we got to play basketball with some of our members and one of their friends they wanted to refer to us.  It was a lot of fun, but we soon discovered that Italian basketball is kind of like... American pizza?  Pretty terrible but you eat it (or play it) anyways.  We also saw that our own athletic ability had kind of escaped  from us in our first couple months here.  Anyway, it was a ton of fun and we got to bond with some of our younger members.  It's fun to see the Church in it's younger stage here in Italy.  It really is an opportunity to build the Lord's Kingdom on the earth.  You see all of the members and how they were brought into the Church, all of them either being converts, or children of converts.  You get to see this tiny little "branch family" build itself up one by one.  It makes life a lot more worth it when you put your own love, sweat and hard work into the building something great.  I read a chapter in the Book of Mormon this morning that explains how I feel about it all: Alma 12 (especially verses 5-7, 12-14).  Look it up!

Comunque, tutto è a posto adesso.  L'unica cosa che posso fare è di andare avanti e fare fatica ogni giorno di servire il Signore.  So che ognuno di noi possiamo fare quello e ricevere benedizioni bellissime.  Grazie di tutto!

-Anziano Proctor

P.S.  Mom, can you tell Cash he needs to write me back?  He told me that I have to remind him every once in a while.  Also, can you find out if Cole got the letter I sent to him, Max and Kimber?