I love BARI!

Woohoo!!

This place it TOTALLY AWESOME! It's my first city that actually has the sea.

We also have a pretty good sized ward - and four new converts!! They're amazing.

First is Fabrizia. She's 39. She used to study a lot of languages including...CHINESE!! She took four years of Chinese (15 years ago). She doesn't remember that much, but I say a few phrases to her every time I see her. She also speaks English really well. She drives a FIAT punto that's way sweet.Next there's...Cecilia! She's 32. I think she's a babysitter. She's way funny and she loves to study the scriptures! We've already taught her a couple of lessons and she always asks us to leave her something to read from D&C, and from the Bible. She's way amazing.Then there's...Loredana! I still haven't met with her for a lesson, but she was just barely baptized a couple months ago, but she's really busy. She also speaks some English.Oh, and then there's Rita. We meet her at lungo mare (the walkway along the sea) to teach her. It's pretty sweet. She's not that good at remembering church doctrine, but we're working with her.

As far as investigators we pretty much just have one...but she has a baptismal date! Besides that we're going to have to find some more people. We'd have more good investigators, but all the good ones got baptized! hahaha.

The story on how Fabrizia, Cecilia, and Loredana joined the church is really cool. They're all friends with each other, and first Fabrizia got baptized. Then Cecilia noticed that she was way happier, and asked her what made her become so happy. The she joined the church too! Then Loredana did too.

The only problem is that now they all need to find husbands in the church!! They have a single adults activity in Rome in a couple months that I hope they will all go to. Cecilia doesn't want to go, Fabrizia might not be able to because of her dog, and Loredana can't because of work!By the way, all three have pet dogs. Actually, Rita has a dog too. Rita's like...45 years old. She's also not married!!So, I've taken it upon myself to help them find husbands by stopping every male I see that could be in the right age range.

I'm really just loving Bari. The people here are great, I get a lot of time to do proselyting, and we have a sea here. It's great to walk around the streets stopping random people. I really just like anything that we do that gives me the chance to meet lots of people, and so I really like it. I also like giving out pass-a-long cards. You should try it sometime.

I've been able to use my Chinese here just about every day. There are tons of Chinese in Bari and I run into them on the street all the time.I also have been running into lots of crazy people. I think crazy people are attracted to me, because I seem to meet quite a few in every city. I like that though too, because it keeps things really interesting.

The apartment here is incredible!! We have a dishwasher! We also have quite a bit of space, and we have a BENCH and we have some decent weights. It's also very naturally well-lighted.

I think that if I had to move to any of the cities that I've served in, I would move to Bari because it's the best. I love the people, I love the city, and everything here is just really awesome. We even have Saint Nicholas here (santa claus), I'm going to go visit his church sometime. haha.

Love,

Anziano Banks.

p.s. Life is way good.