Saving cats and changing doormats

Sorry this one’s late, our Pday got changed for the move yesterday. We are finally moved out of Mistretta into Sant’ Agata. We’ve been waiting to move for some time now, and it has finally happened. The new apartment is great and we are getting a new Kitchen with new appliances so that will be great. Besides that we had zone Conference last week. I got to meet all the Anziani and Sorelle that aren’t in our district which was cool. I also played my violin for a musical number.

This week was spent saying goodbye to a lot of The members in Mistretta. We will still see them in Church every Sunday, but we will not be able to see them as much during the week.

One crazy thing that happened was that we saved a little abandoned kitten and fed it some tuna. Our back door to our house in Mistretta has slatted blinds that we leave open at night to let in the cool air, and that night the same kitten crawled through our door. We eventually found a member who would put it out on his farm land, but before we sent it off we got some good pics of it.

Now that we have moved my companion and I have the chance to open a city that has never had missionaries in it. This is such a cool experience that not a lot missionaries get. It’s amazing how many people have never heard of this here whereas in Mistretta where almost half the people we talk to have some idea of who we are.

Sono molto grato di avere quest’ opportunità di iniziare il lavoro ad una nuova città. Sarà Interessante di vedere come le persone ricevere questo vangelo. Io direi che le persone che non hanno sentito niente della nostra chiesa siano più aperte di ascoltarci. Fra due giorni ci sarà un BLITZ della città con tutti i Anziani nel nostro distretto. Speriamo che possiamo iniziare il lavoro come una bomba. Pregateci per questo.

(Translation)

Con un sacco di amore,
Anziano Findlay

1. The inside of heaven…I mean an Arancina
2. I Italiani amano le loro uve (The Italians love their grapes)
3. Brioscià, possibly the best thing to ever happen to Ice cream
4. The kitten we saved
5. The new vista from our house in Sant’ Agata
6. The sea in our my new city

The inside of heaven…I mean an Arancina

I Italiani amano le loro uve (The Italians love their grapes)

Brioscià, possibly the best thing to ever happen to Ice cream

The kitten we saved

The new vista from our house in Sant’ Agata

The sea in our my new city

Palermo Zone Conference

Anziano Findlay performed a violin solo at the Palermo Sicily zone conference this week! You can see a video snippet of the performance, and several other photos of him at this post by the Garretts, a missionary couple also serving in the same zone in Sicily:

https://garrett44.blogspot.it/2017/08/palermo-zone-conference-august-2017.html

(The video of him playing is at the very end of the post.)

Amazing Mini Oranges

Ciao tutti,

This week was rather slow. Ferragosto, a huge week of partying was this week, so Tuesday we were told to stay in doors and clean our houses instead of proselyting. This meant that because our house was already clean for our impending move, we went to Bagheria and Palermo to help them “clean” which when we finished that early turned into playing ping pong at the Palermo church building. Then that Wednesday we had our district meeting which was followed by our district Pranzo which was a pretty standard pranzo of Pizza and gelato just how I like it.

Thursday we spent the day in Sant’Agata, the new city we’re moving to. I tried my first Siciliano Arancine. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is essentially a fried rice ball that is stuffed with a ragù. They are literally incredible. They are not quite as good as a good Panzerotto  but they are real close.

After that we spent the night in our new house. We had brought mattress toppers down to sleep on. Our new house is super dope, but for right now it doesn’t have gas and it is super dusty, so we can’t live in it until we clean it up a bit. And finally this Sunday I had the chance to give my second talk in the mission. I was the only speaker so it had to be long and without realizing it went almost 20 minutes, so mission accomplished there.

A volte il lavoro misionario è molto deficile. Ma quando sento che lo spirito sta parlando attraverso le mie parole melo ricordo il motivo per questo lavoro. Mi ricordo che il mio scopo come un missionario è di portare i altri più vicino a Gesù Cristo. E un modo in cui io posso sapere che sto facendo il mio lavoro correttamente è quando io posso sentire che lo spirito sta qui con me è con loro che insegno io.

(Translation)

Vi voglio una arancia di bene,
Anziano Findlay

1. The beach in our new city Sant’Agata
2. The best spaghetti I’ve ever had
3. Two girls in a family we teach English to. We drew a picture together and taught them the words
4. Ferragosto lights in Mistretta

The beach in our new city Sant’Agata

The best spaghetti I’ve ever had

Two girls in a family we teach English to. We drew a picture together and taught them the words

Ferragosto lights in Mistretta

Facing Ferragosto

Guten tag jeder,

I thought I would change it up a bit this week. With the greeting. I got sick of writing ciao every week. This past week was an interesting one. We are supposed to move houses soon which we are really excited about because our new house is in a way better city for work. We spent a lot of our time packing and getting our house ready to move, but when we got all ready to go the mission office decided not to move us for another week or two. For the last week we have been living out of suitcases and packed boxes. We assumed we'd be moving, so we didn't buy food this week either so we've been living off of scraps and fruit from fruit stands because it is so cheap.

Also, this week is festa week here in Italy. Every August Italians have this festa called ferragosto where everything is closed and Italians just party all day. It's almost impossible to talk to people because nobody wants anything that's not related to their festa fun. The festa day is actually this Tuesday, so we will be spending the day indoors cleaning our home. I'll be sure to send some pics of the festivities next week. During the festa Italians put up lights down all the central streets. None of them are on yet, but they will be starting tomorrow night at midnight.

Non voglio mentire. Il lavoro qua a Mistretta è molto deficile. Non abbiamo simpatizzanti per niente. Abbiamo un potenziale ma lui è vecchio e un po pazzo. Però, io so che se io lavoro con tutto della mia capacità possiamo trovare qualcuno. Anche fra un po' avremo una nuova città e speriamo che possiamo iniziare un buon lavoro la.

(Translation)

Con Amore,
Anziano Findlay

PS sorry no pictures this week

Lots of la ricerca

Ciao di nuovo!

This week has been a huge change from Cosenza. We have almost no work on Mistretta so almost 100% of our time has been spent doing finding or in Italian “la ricerca” hence the title. We met a man this week from Bologna who is crazy. He loves speaking English with us which is cool and he took us to get granite and play ping pong with him which was cool, but sadly he will only be here for a few weeks so it will be hard to teach him much, but maybe he will at least be a good referral for up north.

Today for Pday we played some football as a zone which was fun and then we had a picnic. It was fun and we got to meet some of the investigators of the other Anziani. Also i got to see Sorella Tenney and Anziano Bardsley from my MTC group which was cool. We also got Brioscia gelato which is arguably the best gelato in the mission. It was pretty dang good.

Anyway, I hope I’ll have a lot more to tell next week!

Con amore,
Anziano Findlay

1. Me at Brioscia with some gelato
2. A stray dog in Mistretta that everybody loves named polpetta (meatball)
3. A cool catholic church that had its doors open
4. A granita
5. Some Napoli style pizza, but I’m sure it does not compare to the real stuff
6. A pic of Mistretta

Me at Brioscia with some gelato

A stray dog in Mistretta that everybody loves named polpetta (meatball)

A cool catholic church that had its doors open

A granita

Some Napoli style pizza, but I’m sure it does not compare to the real stuff

A pic of Mistretta

Managgia la Mistretta

Ciao tutti,

Well this week was pretty crazy! So, I actually got transferred to Mistretta. I thought for sure I’d be staying at least another transfer in Cosenza, but Presidente had other plans. In fact, Anziano Hansen stayed and became zone leader there which is crazy. I’m going to miss Cosenza, but Mistretta is a gorgeous town and I’m excited to do work here.

Mistretta is a super old Paesino at the top of some mountains on the northern coast of Sicilia. Most of Mistretta is ancient with houses dating back to the 1700s all the way to the 1300s. The one tough thing is that the town is tiny. I think I’ve already talked to half the people who live here; however, our area covers three other small towns at the base of the mountains by the sea. We will be able to keep busy. We are also moving down the mountain to one of these 3 cities, so luckily we will have some fresh faces to talk to soon. I also got to see Palermo and I will probably be spending most Pdays there except this one. We also have a car which is nice. It’s a good thing because we wouldn’t be able to get anything done without being able to drive between the cities.

Anyways, I didn’t think Gelato could get any better, but then I had some here in Sicilia and it blew my mind. I still haven’t had cannoli or arancini which apparently Sicilia is famous for, but I was fortunate to try some Palermo pizza which is likely the second best pizza in Italy only after Napoletano pizza. For those of you who don’t know what cannoli are they are essential a fried sweet crust filled with cream. They are supposed to be amazing down here. Arancini are little, fried rice balls that have bits of meat or other stuff mixed in them. I’ve hade some in Cosenza, but I didn’t think much of them; however, they are apparently the bomb-diggity down here. I’ll have to try them.

My new companion is Anziano Moscon. He is pretty cool. He’s really quiet, but has a great sense of humor. We will be just walking around the city trying to stop people and he will make a little side comment that will just kill me. He’s also quite the ukulele player, so he teaches me to play a bit each night after we get home.

Il lavoro qua a Mistretta è un po’ più deficile di Cosenza. Non ci sono tante persone qua, e la maggior parte delle queste persone hanno già conosciuto i missionari. Quasi tutti hanno sentito qualcosa della chiesa, e adesso non vogliono ascoltare di più. Però, so che c’è qualcuno pronto per il Vangelo. Devo continuare di lavorare affinché io possa ricevere le benedizioni per il mio lavoro. Io so che questa chiesa è vera e perché è vera devo aprire la mia bocca. Se io apro bocca mia, vedrò le persone che ascoltano.

(Translation)

Con amore,
Anziano Findlay

1. A crazy old guy named Felix with his Harmonica and a brioss
2. My African homies
3. A castle in Mistretta
4. My new companion Anziano Moscon and the view from the castle
5. A cool view of Mistretta

A crazy old guy named Felix with his Harmonica and a brioss

My African homies

A castle in Mistretta

My new companion Anziano Moscon and the view from the castle

A cool view of Mistretta