Tutti a Cosenza

So as usual, I've had a fantastic week. The news is that I did not get transferred, but Anziano Sadler did get a companion so now I'm in a normal companionship with Anziano Wood. It's pretty nice. We have great investigators that are making great progress.

A cool thing that happened was with Mario. He's the one from Argentina who's been painting our house. Well, remember how we taught him to pray? Well we also gave him a pamphlet in Spanish. At the end of last week the conversation went something like this:

So you're going to be finished tomorrow morning?

    -Yeah.

Well, then I guess we won't see each other again because we're going to Castrovillari.

    -But I'll be here in the morning.

We're leaving tonight, so I guess this is the last time we'll see each other.

    -We'll see each other sometime in church.

You're coming to curch?!

    -Sometime.. piano piano.

haha. That was so awesome. He really is a cool guy. That night we actually didn't end up going to Castrovillari because:

We got on the bus to Castrovillari and right after two drunks got onto the bus. They kept on talking to us about Joseph Smith and they we had open beer bottles and one spoke English. I think he was French though. Anyway, they kept on talking to us and we kept saying that they should probably sit down, and then we moved to the front of the bus. And while we were in the front one of them fell flat on the floor! It was crazy. Anyway, we decided that we should just go in the morning because they were a little out of control, and Anziano Wood gets motion sickness and the smoke wasn't really helping him.

Other than that. .. This week was pretty chill here. I also gave a talk in church on charity that went really well. I think I've finally started to get this charity thing figured out. It's like, before I liked doing service, but when I pray for charity then I love to do service. Not only service as in helping people come unto Christ, but also little things like doing the dishes and things like that. Just little things that make other people happier. And of course we are blessed when we do things like this. I've found that when I go ahead and serve others, like by doing the dishes, I have more than enough time to do all the other things that I want to do, like study the language.

Speaking of which, language study is the secret to having an easy foreign mission. Because on the days that I do all my language study the language comes a lot easier while I'm teaching and proselyting than on the days when I don't.

I almost forgot to tell you! Something really cool lately:

Me and Anziano Wood go running every morning. I'll admit, I'm a little jealous of Jake Henrichsen because he got to run through the Botanical Gardens and to the Sydney Opera house for his run, but I think we've got a pretty good one here now too. We run to Old City Cosenza, then up to a botanical garden-type area and run on the cobblestone trails there that are slightly overgrown. It's a beautiful run and we get a nice view of the river that runs through Cosenza, and of all the old trees lining the trail. It's awesome.

Have a great week.

I love you.

Anziano Banks

Have a great week!

Con Affetto,

Anziano Banks.

p.s. I realized that I've been eating meditteranean food! haha. It's...growing on me. We eat a little more egg plant and such that I'm not used to. I also ate a bunch of fish at someones house the other day, but it was a lot different than Taiwan because it was more or less processed. I can handle that alright.

This is an older picture, but I thought it looked sweet!