July 18 Email and pix!

Anziano Nielsen (R) with his comp. Anziano Lewis (L)

That picture of me on the wood thing by the beach is just on the allungo mare I don’t think it has a specific name other than Crotone. The sand is really that dark! It's gorgeous! The tie is actually what we call a heredity tie, my "dad" Anz. Lewis got it from his trainer and so on! it goes back to 2000! Cool huh! And if I ever train my "son" will get it!

1 of 2 emails this week, 1st one came in at 4:32 AM our time…

Yeah the castle was a BLAST!!!!

The pier rocks! We actually taught a lesson out on it in the evening with the coastal lights reflecting on the water! It was awesome!!

I LOVE ANZ. LEWIS!!!

Housing is a blast too!!

4th of July was soooooo fun! Especially since I got to be the grill masta lol! I felt like daddy as I cooked the food for everyone!! :)

I think we got a snapshot of me playing the guitar but no video yet! On pdays we are allowed to go play it since it is always at the church! I love it!! Its really fun lol! hee hee Italian fans!!

Ha ha I have my green card lol! Or here they call it Permesso! Sort of lol! It is partly done! I am legal but still will have to (when they call) go get finger printed and then I can get this neat little card that makes it official! I have a receipt for now! I will have to go through again next year...yay..not lol!! With Anz. Lewis he moved before it could get taken care of and they lost his paper work so we had to just start over!

CAN YOU BELIEVE [Elder Ryler] WILL BE HOME NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!????!!!!??? HOLY COW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Give him a big hug for me ok! THANK YOU!!! HOLY WOW HE WILL BE HOME!!!!!! I STILL CANT BELIEVE IT!!!
Its been a little rough but all good!! I am where I need to be and I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!

Sadly we didn’t make it to the ceramics city. :( oh well maybe next time lol! :)

Yeah Sunday is a busy busy day!

Rafael will be back next month!

GELATO IS AMAZING!! And you can tell those people we got if from [in Syracuse] they did a great job!!

Croc biz iz (lol) sort of like cocoa puffs! :)

Nutella is an Italian product!!

OH poop! The guy is closing up! I will TOTALLY WITH NO DOUBT finish after lunch!!

LOVE LOVE LOV ELOVE LOVE YOU!!!!!!

Talk to you after lunch!! :)

2 of 2 this one came in at 9:33 AM our time…

OK I am going to continue where I left off last time.

I love that the temple can be such an answer to what we need exactly when we need it!!

I don’t know if I told you but when I went to the temple for the last time at the MTC I was having a struggle and in the prayer they mentioned word for word my struggle and blessed me to be helped! Totally proves that the Lord is watching out for us!!

I LOVE THE TEMPLE TOO!!!!

I LOVE THE STICKERS ON THE CAR!!! HOLY COW THEY ARE SO COOL!!!!!!!!! I LOVE THEM!!!

(pix of the stickers on our car that he's referring to)

Elder Ryler sent this sticker from Oki for his MM's bday

a MM's gotta show she loves her missionaries!

No I haven’t gotten the [greenie survival] package yet, but Pres. and Sister Toronto are coming to do interviews tomorrow with us and they hopefully will have it for me! Man I have been looking SO forward to getting it! I hope I'm still green by the time it gets here! lol!!

Ok for this week, it has been really fun lol!!

Monday we had the ZL's come and do splits with the DL Anz. Shaw (our district is a district of four, and we all live together, hence the reason I got to hang out with the ZL's) they also did a little teaching lesson with us on how to do good member lessons! It was a blast!! One of them, Anz. Connell is from Australia and has the THICKEST accent ever lol!! It was fun talking with him!!

After that Anz. Lewis and I had an appointment with Monica, she is our new investigator!!! She is from Argentina, but speaks Italian very well! We ended up teaching her the first lesson and after we were done she was like, "wow we really need a prophet!" so we challenged her to pray and read 3 Nephi 11 and she said she would!! HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!!!!!! So we are excited to see how that turns out!

After that we had a lesson with Ruperto! He is about 68 and really cool!! To me he looks total mafia [and] he is really really nice!! (side note the mafia actually LOVES the missionaries!!) we were talking about how we need to have faith and we used Alma 32:21 and he asked us what book we got that from, so we told him the BOM and he was like...I want to read that book!! WOOO HOOO!!!!!! SO of course we gave him one and challenged him to read the title page and Alma 32 and pray about it and he said he would!!!! We are finding so many people to teach I LOVE IT!!! HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!!!!!!!

After that at around 8:45 Anz. Lewis and I began our journey to Gela! We took the night train because it is WAY cheaper! So we rode the train to the port for hours with to train switches, then we got on the ferry on the train, they are big big ferries! On the ferry it was about 3 am to give you an idea of how long the train ride was! Ok so the trains have compartments or boxes just like you see in movies, they have to sets of seats facing each other, there are three seats on each side, these seats pull together to form a bed so you can sleep. But the thing is you have to have only three in a box to make that work! Sadly for the 10 hr train ride there was a couple in our box already asleep! Anz Lewis and I were across from each other so we couldn’t lay down. It was all good though! I was just really tired when we got to Gela. After the train got off the ferry we went from Messina to Catania, then Catania to Gela. We left Crotone at 8:40 pm and got to Gela the next morning at 9:30 after traveling through the night. It was a really fun adventure!!

So when we got to Gela we went to the street market to look for ties (there is a vendor there that sells hand made ties for 1 euro) but sadly we could not find him lol! It’s all good though we got some delicious cheese and grapes and peaches oh man were they good! And it only cost 2 euro for the lot!! It was a sweet deal! Totally worth it!

So after that went to an old friend’s house of Anz. Lewis' (since he served in Gela before here) and got the key to the missionaries’ house in Gela (since they were in Catania for a maxi conference for a couple days) He is a member of the church and his name is Salvatore, he is 46 he lives with his mom who is really nice! So we got the key from them and went to the missionary house and took a quick power nap, because Salvatore's mom offered to feed us!!

OH MAN IT WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!!! We had this delicious pasta, followed by some of the tastiest pork I have ever had!! I got the marinara recipe from her so I will send that next week! IT WAS SO GOOD LOL!! My first real home cooked Italian meal!!

After that we went back to the house and did some study and cleaned a little for the other missionaries and waited till they came home.

The cool thing is that Anz. Sponseller from the MTC is in Gela so I got to see him again!! That was really fun!! [Elder Sponseller was in Elder Nielsen's district in the MTC]

The next morning we jumped on a train to Caltanissetta where the quest'ura is. But here is the kicker, the other Anziano that gave us the info gave it wrong! We didn’t have to go to the questura we had to go somewhere else where Anz. Lewis had an appointment and that’s the only way to get in! SO we didn’t get anything done at all lol! Oh well we talked with a lot of cool people!

Also while we were there it was Salvatore’s birthday party, so we went to that! We got him a soccer ball radio for his car, he liked it a lot! He was walking around holding it on his head laughing lol! We had some great cake too!

After that we met a missionary that used to serve here that is visiting and he treated us to some awesome pizza!

The next morning we jumped on a bus, since the train was canceled, to Catania, and I got to see most of Sicily which was awesome! In Catania I got some gelato and we went to the market there and found a couple ties!

After that we jumped on another train for 10 hours to Messina, crossed on the ferry, and then went to a little town called Paolo. It was neat little place!!

From there we went to Crotone! But we didn’t get there until around 11:30 that night! So we were really tired! lol!! But man it was a fun trip! Disappointing because we didn’t accomplish what we needed to but it's all good!! We actually will have to do this again soon lol!!

This coming Monday and Tuesday we are having our Maxi conference in Taranto so we will get to do some more traveling by train! I am very excited because it means I get mail!!

Also President is coming on Sunday for interview with us! I am excited to see him again!!

Well that has been my week so far! We are going to go make lunch (its my turn) after this and then do our lunch stuff, i.e. work on our presentation for maxi and then later tonight we have a few teaching appointments! So that will be great!!!

It has been an AWESOME week here in Italy!!!! I LOVE IT!! I love this work and I love this gospel! Its totally true!! I LOVE IT!!!

Have a great Clearfield week! And have fun picking up Ry from the airport!!!

Love,

Anziano Nielsen! (a.k.a. Parker! lol!!)

July 1st Email

HI!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm IN ITALY!!!! And it's so hot ha ha!! I am sweating bullets right now and I’m sitting in an air conditioned place lol!! But it's all good I love it!!

Typing on an Italian keyboard is so weird! ha ha! The keys are all different because they have all the accents in their language [and] there are a ton of keys with accents i.e. àòèçé°ù§ [and]that's only a couple lol!!

Ok so I will start from when I last e-mailed.

After we finished we stayed in the [missionary] couple’s house for a little bit and had some brownies that she baked for us. Anziano Harris said he must really love missionaries if he was letting us have his brownies lol!! They are really nice! They are in our zone (albeit they are really far away) so we will see them and Anz. McDaniel at the next zone conference which should be coming up soon. That is also when I will get any mail or packages that have been sent since they are sent to the mission home they give you the mail any time they see you, so that would be at conferences or other times. We actually might have to go down to Palermo to take care of some permesso stuff for Anz. Lewis so we should be able to get any mail then, if not then at ZC for sure!! So that's how that works, I could give you the address of our apartment but that's risky in the sense that I could get transferred and the missionaries could loose it. So that's how that works! :)

Ok for the area, it's beautiful!!!

So my first area is SO awesome!!! It's a pretty small city but it's right on the coast. We can only go down there in the evening because well it's Europe and it's a beach so yeah, but after 5 EVERYONE leaves the beach and people just walk up and down what’s called the allungo mare (or sea street) so we set up what's called mostra and talk with EVERYONE!! In fact tonight we are going to go and do more!! Its really fun talking with all the Italian people, few want to listen to us but they are all so nice!!

Also some interesting facts, the man who invented the Pythagorean Theorem (sp?) lived in Crotone. Also Narcissus, the Roman story of the guy that was so in love with himself he was turned into a flower! ha ha! This city has a lot of history!! In the center of the town is what's called centro (pronounced ch-en-tro) that is ANCIENT!! It’s where the d'uomo is (the city's main Catholic church) which is actually really cool!! For our service we work at a homeless shelter place with this nun, she is so awesome lol!! She is really nice! I LOVE IT HERE!!!

Right now we have four set in stone investigators. Walter, who is actually a pretty famous musician, he had a record go gold in France! :) Also this Muslim guy we found that just eats the gospel up!! His name is Rafael he is so great!! We found an Arabic Book of Mormon in our apartment and gave that to him! He was so excited to read it!! We [had] a great lesson about the plan of salvation!! It was awesome! He’s our really good friend!! Then a family that we are teaching! And one other guy named Francesco, but he bedoned us (which means he dumped us, or didn't show up for a lesson) so we went and got gelato! lol! Hopefully we can [still] meet with him. Also these two young men who are REALLY REALLY interested in the gospel!! So I’m excited to see how all that works out!!

No baptismal dates as of yet, but we'll change that!! I can't remember if I told you or not but we got a baptism in the MTC from the TRC (a legit one!) He is an Italian man that our teacher knew here in Italy that we taught and he got baptized and we had the opportunity to go to it before we left for Italy!!

Our branch here is really small, about 15 people attend but there are about 30 [less active] that we need to work with, our ward mission leader is one of them so he is our first goal right now!:)

The climate is exactly like Oki it's really warm and humid! In fact right now it is so HOT!!! lol!! Speaking of that Happy first of July!! The terrain is really really hilly!! lol!! It's fun to walk around all these hills and talk with the Italian people!! There is also this street that is closed off to cars (which drive so CRAZY!!!) called again centro where we do mostra too! It's a really cool cobble stone street; in fact most all streets here are cobble stone!!

Ok here are some fun things about where I live!

Our apartment is SOOO nice!! We have TWO bathrooms!!! SWEET!!! There are four elders here in Crotone and they are all awesome!! Anz. Shaw [is the DL (there are only four in our district)], Anz. Benson, me, and Anz. Lewis. OH man it's so nice!! It's on top of this huge hill that overlooks the whole city and you can see out to sea, oh man it's great!!

The cooking works just like we thought in that one elder takes lunch one day and for brekky and din din you’re on your own! Also for lunch we are not allowed to be out working, because it's against the culture to interrupt lunch. So from 1:30 to 4:00 we are in our apartment eating then studying the language, also President encourages us to take naps so we are able to work as hard as we can after lunch! So we work from 10:30 to 1:30 and then from 4:00 until 10:00 (these are just summer hours, it changes all the time I’ve heard!)

Today after this we are going to the Crotone castle to check it out....oh there go the d'uomo bells it's time for service lol!! IT'S SOOOOOO COOL HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe I’m in Italy!!!!

Oh man they are about to close up shop since it's close to lunch time so I have to go now! SORRY!! We will try and finish later today, if not I will talk to you next week!!!

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!!

Know I am happy, and healthy and loving life and my mission!!!

Love,

Anziano Nielsen!!