Shenanigins and transfers!

Hello Everyone! All is doing well here in Milano. This past week was truly eventful with more sickness! My companion Anziano Russo just cant get over this sickness! But that is ok. We did get some missionary work done so that is good. Something that we are very excited about is a new convert named Jose. He was born in peru and then moved to the states and lived there for most of his life. After having problems he decided to leave and live with his dad in Peru. He did not have a great experience there. He joined the church there and then moved to Italy and is now waiting to get documents to go back to the States. He does not really trust peruvians because of the problems he had in peru. Our ward is mostly peruvian so that has been interesting. We have been trying to help him get friends and become more comfortable with the ward. The hard part is that he speaks english, little italian and no spanish. It has been hard but our efforts are finally paying off! He seems so much more happy and his hanging out with people from the ward and doesnt rely on us as much. So we are very excited for him. Eva and her boyfriend have finalized everything and they will be married may 12th and will have her baptism the following saturday may 19th. We ARE VERY excited about this. There is only one sad thing. The transfer is ending and I am getting a new companion!! Anziano Russo is going to Collegno, a little city outside of Torino, and he will be companions with Anziano Walsh. Anziano Walsh is from my group, so Im pretty excited for them. My new companion is Anziano Mesorosh(I dont know how to spell it). This will be his last transfer which means I will be killing him(term for a missionary who's companion is finishing his mission.) Which most likely means I wil be here in Milano 2 for another 12 weeks, which I am very excited about. I really like the ward here and its a wonderful city. I will get my new companion tomorrow. Im sad to see ANziano Russo go. It feels like I just keep a companion for more than one transfer haha. I will have had a new companion every transfer for my first 4 because my new companion will be done after this next transfer. This past week we went and ate with the Africans in our ward and it was really good! THe only bad part is that my companion and I almost barfed because they fed us WAY too much. I didnt want to offend them so I kept eating. *****IMPORTANT****************** This past week we had a conference and one thing they told us about is packages. The mission leaders discourage that people send us packages for the following reason. Italys custom charges are getting ridiculous. Its almost like they pick whatever price they want to charge. Anyways if I get sent a package I HAVE to pay the custom charge, and if I cant the package will be destroyed. So keep that in mind. Its very expensive and almost not worth it to send anything. Until next time! Sinceramente, Anziano Collins

Keep em' coming!

Buongiorno Tutti! Spero che abbiate avuto una buona pasqua! This past week we have had lots of ups and downs! To start with I hope all of you have had a wonderful easter! We got invited to Lussy's house, a new convert with her son daughter, grandma, aunt and uncle. IT was a wonderful time. We may have stayed way too long but we didnt know how to get out because the food kept coming! This may or may not surprise everyone but I put down about 3 1/2 plates of food. Their uncle was really awesome! He was from puglia(I think thats how you spell it) HE was missing some teeth and had a crazy accent and was really funny. IT was really cool because he actually was interested in hearing about the gospel so we were pretty excited about that.
Anziano Russo and I are so suprised because we are being so blessed with such wonderful people and a lot of the times we dont feel like we dont deserve them. Two weeks ago a man named Udilon, from congo, came to church and wanted to learn more. He was an old investigator of the church about 2 years ago. He is so awesome! He speaks english, italian and french, We had our second meeting with him yesterday and he is soo Amazing. HE really wants to do what is right and be a good person. We asked to pray at the end of the lesson and it was so surprising because he was thanking god for allowing him to meet with us and how thankful he was and it was really powerful.
This wouldnt be an Anziano Collins email if I did not mention more about food eh? SO the day after easter there was a picnic for our ward and we decided to go to get to know the members better and try to get investigators to come. SO....A little about our really fast...our ward is made of Italians, peruvians, and phillipinos. And if any knows about these three cultures, they love to eat a lot and if guests to eat a lot its offensive. So to gain more trust with the members I put down a total of 6 1/2 plates of food. I also ate rabbit. That was interesting. The things I am willing to do to gain trust and make friendships. Fyi I have not gained weight to my knowledge.
SO I will finish my email with a story of our investigator Eva. We see them about 3 times a week. They are going to be married and she will have her baptism the week after. Their story is a miracle. We found out the other day the way they were before the missionaries started meeting withm. I will be very brief, Daniel(boyfriend/ less active) and Eva werent having a great relationship and almost broke up until Daniel decided to go to church and went. The missionaries talked with him and now they are going to church every week and are reallly happy. Anziano Russo and I have done nothing, They(Daniel and Eva) have progressed through the help of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so awesome to see how they have changed and how they contiunue to change. Being a missionary is hard, but it is so wonderful to be one. I am grateful for this opportunity I have!
I hope all of you had a wonderful easter! Until next time..
Sinceramente,
Anziano Collin

Bidoni Sharks....​I love em!

Ciao Tutti! Come state? Tutto bene? Spero di si :D. So this past week was not crazy eventful. My companion got a little more sick and we were stuck inside for a day and a half. Im doing well despite the house arrest. He is much better now so we are ready for a very productive week. General Conference was really awesome this past weekend! I didnt learn a lot the first two sessions because we watched it in Italian, but we watched two in english and I LEARNED A ton. I really liked the talk by Elder Holland where he talked a little about how we shouldnt be jealous if good fortune happens to others. That definately applies to us missionaries when we see others having tons of success and we are having bidonis(people who set up appointments with us and flake) I think that applies tio my companion especially right now because we have not had tons of time to really work and we havent really had tons of succes. This past saturday, we got rejected by everyone. It was fun because people are very funny when they say no, but it was really frustrating to have that happen. Especially since, when I got here we would have atleast a few people stop and talk to us. We did have a miracle yesterday. We stopped a bunch of people and they all happened to be Jehovahs witnesses or Evangelists, and none of them tried to bach with us. It was crazy!
We have a good week set up so we are excited to work hard. We did have a guy come to church this past sunday and we are excited about him because we got an appointment set up and is very interested. We are pretty excited about that. We had a great lesson with this man named France. He is really humble and really earnestly trying to find more in his life. He is really awesome! He gave us some chocolate for Pasqua(easter)! He is such a great guy and he is realllllyyy honest. So we are pretty excited about him.
I would like to say that I have finally chosen my official soccer team here. I have chosen AC Milan as my team! They did however lose to Barcelonna yesterday. I dont really pay tons of time to that but it does help to use to break ice with people.
We only have 2 more weeks left of this transfer. I cant believe I have been in Italy for over a month! Its crazy how fast time past!
In the same talk that Elder Holland gave, I really liked when he talked about that we need not think about the bad things that have happened in our lives. If something bad happens, we should move on and try to continue doing good! I know that is very important, whenever we get rejected by people we just smile and shrugg it off and it really does make us better! I hope all of you have a great Easter! Enjoy Some good ole ham, deviled eggs a for me!
Sinceramente,
Anziano Collins

House arrest......not fun

Ciao tutti! I am doing well here in the wonderful city of Milano. Not a lot has changed since I last emailed. We have not worked too much this past week. My companion and I were doing half days last week because he was not feeling well and so last friday we went to the doctor and after waiting 2 and half hours to see the doctor we recieved a death sentence. He told my companion that we had to stay inside for 3 days........So we spent 3 long days inside reading....and eating what little food we had. It was a lot of fun. But we are very excited that we are going outside again! We recently had an investigator drop us which was very sad.
We did have a lesson with our investigator Eva who is raelly awesome. Like I have said before, she is getting married, and then we are having her baptism which is really exciting! So our miracle this week other than being that we could go outside was that my wallet was not lost. Let me explain. So I had my wallet when we got home and I was really tired and without thinking I took it of my pocket and put it on the table. MY companion, thinking it was his, put it in his backpack.....That was the scariest experience ever. We thought I had lost it at the bank. Then 20 minutes later my companion found it in his backpack but had no rocolection of putting it there.
MY Italian is really improving, I feel like my langauge confidence had alllowed me to really talk more with people which really helps
I have attached some pictures of more food I have eaten. The bread in the picture is called Focacia and its just really good bread with oil and salt. Its so addicting! Then there is some bread smothered in Nocciola or in other words Nuttella! The family in the picture are some new converts that we did some stuff with last pday. they are really awesome and they help us with a lot. Micheal, the 14 ragazzo in the picture even went street contcting with us! I hope to have more to say next week!
Ciao!
Sinceramente,
Anziano Collins

P.S. I made my companion philly cheese steak...and he was pretty excited about that!