September 11, 2013

12/9/2013

 


Ciao!

     This week has been kind of a blur! So, I have my trainer, and his name is Anziano W. He is from a place close to Manchester, England. He is awesome and he is going home in 11 more weeks. I am killing him, ha-ha! We are getting along great and are both new to the area, La Spezia. It is a nice place right by the sea. Cinque Terre is really close by! Going there will be an awesome P-Day activity.

     We had some miracles this week here in Italy. But first I will start with the Duomo in Milan. It is huge,  and we got there with our copies of the Book of Mormon and they told us to go and find someone. I was with one of the Assistants to the President and another Elder fresh from the MTC. We tried talking to some people and they were not interested,  but then we talked to this couple that came from South America 10 years ago. They were pretty interested and so we exchanged  phone numbers and they will be passed off to the Milan Elders. It was awesome. My understanding of Italian is not that great, but I can speak it okay. It has been improving daily.

     There are 4 Elders in La Spezia. Anziani M, Ma, W, and I. Anziano M was the only one that has been here for before, but he has only been in La Spezia for 6 weeks. Anziano W and I found some potential investigators through "strada", street contacting. We got their numbers and set up an appointment with one but she never showed up. It was disappointing, but oh well, keep moving forward ha-ha. We do "casa" which ringing apartment buildings, for about an hour and have almost had a few investigators from it, but unfortunately something always comes up. We were talking to this one lady and she was getting upset and told us that she has been very blessed in her life but just cannot find happiness.  So Anziano W told her that this is what she has been looking for. We tried to set up a return appointment with her but she said, “No”. We told her we will be back on Saturday. We had both had the feeling that we should not give up on her.

    Tuesday was a disaster for Missionary work. It started with us accidentaly getting on the wrong bus! It took us out of our city but still in our area. We were 20 miles out of La Spezia and then after about 20 more minutes it took us back to La Spezia. We were on that bus for like 1 hour 30 minutes it was awful.  Then we had a lunch appointment with a member family. They are awesome. It was the father’s birthday, so that took a long time. Then we missed our bus so we had to walk back to our side of town, ha-ha - so yesterday was not the best. We did strada and there was literally nobody on the street. We did casa for the last hour and nobody listened to us. Ha-ha, but I have been loving it here. This mission is awesome. Even when the days are not the best, I am happy to be here. I miss Canada, but I have been too tired to really think about it,     ha-ha. Jet lag was brutal ha-ha - talk about delayed, but when it hit me, it hit hard!

     Oh Mom, so I have to let you know some things. I had to take out 100 Euro for the bike fund because they did not want to take my American money because it made everything more complicated for them, so I took money out and gave it to them. I now changed the American “bike fund” money into Euros and am using it to buy the following: satchel, a pair of jeans, sneakers, and bed sheets. I have to get a side bag (satchel) because new missionary standards do not allow backpacks. Second thing, my backpack got left behind with the Assistants and they will be sending it to me. Third thing, I have to pay for customs on packages, so it might be easier if you are sending packages with food and things like that, to buy them on amazon.com - but make sure it is the Italian one so shipping is less and such.

I do not have enough time to write individually to all of you but I love you all and am happy to be able to read your emails each week.

Love Anziano Luening


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