Tuesday, October 29, 2013

...all squished up, trying to take a shower

Hey there:), Mom quick question before I start. Did you send that USB drive yet? If not, I'll give you my address at the end of the letter. If you would send it, that would be great! Well, because I was short on time last week, I will make this letter a bit more detailed! Ok, I will start with the house. I don't like the location very much. It is on the busiest street in all of Taranto and it is ALWAYS so busy!...and LOUD!!! It is really hard for me to sleep sometimes because of all the traffic that comes through! The house is a lot smaller than the apt in Reggio and it always smells HORRIBLE! Every time I walk in............................... It is just bad! haha When I first got to the house, it was DIRTY as heck and so I went all OCD on it and swept and scrubbed the entire place, sprayed it, bleached it, and..................... it didn't help all that much! Trying to take a shower reminds me of Elf when he is too big for it and he is all squished up in it trying to shower! The toilet is missing it's seat, and the kitchen is fairly small! I can't say that I enjoy the house as much as the one in Reggio, but I can say that I am EXTREMELY grateful to have somewhere to sleep because we see people every day that don't!!! The city is quite a bit larger than Reggio, but we live way outside of Centro (20 minutes or so by bus) so we don't go there very often! pur troppo! We do a lot of street contacting, but as with all of Italy, people don't want to talk about religion a lot of the time. We did have a lesson a couple days ago (my first member lesson while being in the mission) and that didn't go too well because the guy was only trying to find work:/. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have that we are working towards a much greater prize than just the dollar bill! The ward is HUGE!!!! It has about 140 people in it and I was absolutely amazed when I saw the church! It was HUGE in comparison to ANY other church that I had EVER seen in Iatly! I need to learn A LOT of names! I really hope that I can make a few friends like I did in Reggio! I have started making a small mark with some of them which has been really cool:). The Capi Conference (Translation, Leader Conference) was fun! I will forever been known by Sorella Waddoups (the mission President's wife) as the missionary that could eat the most! We had some burritos while we were there and they were so good! I had 3 full burritos! She was shocked! I just kept going back for more and she couldn't believe it! HAHA Mom, it is becoming really bad! I am not sure that you will ever be able to fill me up anymore! I am not gaining any more weight from what I did in the first 6 months though! Well anyway, back to Capi Conference... It was ok. I feel like we could have done it in a much more cost effective way, but it was really fun seeing a lot of people up in Rome:). I traveled to Rome by myself most of the way by train, but I am the only Zone Leader in Taranto so I needed to. A cool story before I go. On my way up to the conference, I sat next to a Bulgarian and an Italian that both spoke English ok so I used that skill that I had to start talking with them (because it isn't every day that you see an American in Foggia!). We started just talking about the basics: names, where we were from, where we were going, how we liked it in Italy, etc......... Then they asked that famous question that every missionary loves to here. "Why are you here?" Well, with that question, I explained who I was and why I was here and that just led into a bunch of other questions that they asked. The Italian told me that she was not very praticante anymore because of things that happened to her in the Catholic church when she was smaller. With that, I brought out the Book of Mormon and gave it to her and told her that it would change her life if she wanted to really find an answer to her questions about religion. She was hesitant at first, but I promissed her again and she took it and put it straight into her purse! With the Bulgarian girl, I gave her a Restaurazione pamphlet in English because she didn't know how to speak or understand Italian at all;). It was just kind of a cool experience for me because I realized that there are so many ways that we can bring up the gospel, we just need to find a way to bring it up! I feel like one of the first things that I am going to do when I get home is tell the missionaries that if they need help EVER that I am here for them because I do enjoy doing missionary work, but it will be EVEN BETTER when I can do it in normal clothes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, guys, I hope that this letter was better! I love you all so much! You make me so happy and bring so much joy to my face! Less than 2 months until we get to talk and less than one until my B-DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Big 20 year old here;). I am getting old! Love, Anziano Dallin Layton Via Cesare Battisti 269 74100 Taranto Italia

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