Jan 13 "a roller coaster ride"

(FYI: everything in italics is Anz Nielsen talking, otherwise its me, sorry if that's hard to follow when I jump back and forth between the two!)

Well this week has been really boring, sad, and depressing....NOT!!! ha ha!! It is has been FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOO!!!!!!!! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!! Did I getcha? Probably not because you probably saw out of your perif. all the exclamation points and bold letters! But hey it was funny anyway yeah? lol! :)

With peter we figured out what the deal is! It's not his family back at home. it's the Italian family that he lives with and works for that say if he wants the job he has to be a part of their church! We actually haven't heard from him for about...well since the day of the baptism! But yesterday in Lecce we got a call from him!!!! Our prayers were answered and hopefully we can meet with him soon!!! I don’t know what happened with the family's father. Hopefully we can help them out!

We were thinking a few weeks ago about a good way to get the members pumped for missionary work! And to get them ready to help us teach so we decided to do a Brindisi member MTC!! We have some classes all ready to go and will start soon! We are really excited about it! It should be really good! And it should get the members all excited! The Lord will help them and us get ready to help spread "the Good News!"

In their English course they played Pictionary and taboo. He said he loves teaching and maybe that is what he will end up doing for a career “Vediamo” (we’ll see).

He loves to ride the trains and says it’s a great time to just sit and ponder and watch the countryside go by, its fun!

They did splits in Lecce and he said “The highlight of the split was not only hanging out with Anz. Hansen who came into the MTC after me, (and that we may be related to) but we went and taught this sweet less active member! It was great! We taught about prayer! In the closing prayer she thanks the Lord for sending "me" to teach her about prayer! It was really cool!”

He finally got a recipe from Sister Palma but now he needs to translate it, I didn’t think about that!

They had an investigator come to Church then told them not to come back for awhile, that was hard for them but he said: “There is a purpose in everything so we will see what the Lord has in store! It will be ok! Life is great!”

He shared an experience he had while on splits with Anz Peterson (from Eagle Idaho and one of Anz Nielsen’s favorites) “this girl came up to us and asked us if we spoke English. It turns out she is from California, played soccer for the University of Hawaii and is now living here in Italy for six months and needed to find the church! It was pretty cool that the Lord had Anz. Peterson and I walk right where she happened to be that day! it was great!”

He coined the phrase “weekly run down” then it evolved into “weekly fun down”. This week he closed his email this way: “Well that is the weekly fun down!! It has been another roller coaster ride! I love it! Being a missionary is so great! It is fantastic!! The best thing ever!!”