The show goes on....

1.OK FOR TRANSFERS......I will be staying in Cuneo with my companion Anziano boscia!! I will finally have a companion for more than one transfer! 2.Ok so in other news, I got sick yesterday because I wore myself out too much so I was told to sleep and slept for 12 hours!!!! It was beautiful! This past week we had a crazy week like always. Our investigator Gladys is awesome. She came to church this past sunday and really wants to learn more. Its funny to think that I wanted to serve in Africa but I get enough of it here in Italia! 3.We had a cool miracle this past week. No one was listening to us at all this past week and we werent finding anyone. We did a little scambio with some other missionaries and me and another missionarty went out and found another person who was interested, taught him and then got a return appointment with him. It was cool to finally find someone who was interested. we then found 2 other people who were interested and got appointments with them. It boosted us a ton! Not that we were down, but its nice to know that there are people that care. 4.This past week was a long week for me because we were very stressed about the work and it led to my sickness I think but I am doing a lot better now. Im not sure what else to say because I am a little out of my head right now. I hope everyone is doing great!!!! 5.If anyone gets the sublimale message going on wins a prize! hahah Until Next time! Anziano Collins!

500 Days of Summer.....Day...76

Hello EVERYONE! We are doing really well here in Cuneo. Heat.....I dont know what that is beccause it has been nice and cool here! I have enjoyed that very much. the hottest it has gotten was 30 degrees celcius. Which is not hot at all. I love it when I see people complaing about the heat here because they dont know what heat is. Anyways, we had a crazy week like always. We finally found someone who would listen to us!!! Her name is Gladys. She is from Nigeria. We went through all of the contacts, the people who we or other missionaries have talked to in this area, and started to call tons of people. We called Gladys and she agreed to meet us the next day. She then told us about her story. Aparently she met the sister missionaries about 9 months ago and was really excited about our church. however, she was about to go Nigeria so she couldnt come. So the sister missionatries got the address for the church in Nigeria. When Gladys was there she was robbed and lost everything and was stuck in Nigeria for awhile. And had no way to contact the church. She finally was able to return to italy and not been here for too long..about a month, when we called her and she was ready to meet with us. When we meet with her she asked us about baptism and how she was willing to be baptized and wanted to join our church. At that point we were pretty excited! So we have lots of work to do with her and we are pumped. other than that, we still have to find people. Something fun we have been doing is going around with a white board with a question written on it, which helps the people open up more. Its really fun and its a great way for us to talk to more people. Its also really funny to watch the people stare at us as we walk by. I dont have tons of time because we are using the computer in church right now and we can only go one at a time. the internet place we usually go to is closed to ferie. ferie is a time when EVERYONE goes on vacation and EVERYTHING closes. Its amazing how fast it happened. one day everything was normal and the next day everything was closed! I am doing great. We have transfers next week and there is a gopod chance that my companion could go which means I could get another companion. .....Again......Anyways...Love you all! Have a great week! P.S USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA Winning medals!!!!!

500 Days of summer.....Day 69

I got a little theme going on for the subject :) Hello everyone! This week was a cray(as laura would say...or should a say...as the cool kids would say) week. My companion is diabetic and has some type of painful fungus on his feet due to using the same insert for his shoe for too long. So we had to go out and buy new socks, find a store that makes custom inserts and custom shoes for diabetics, and we had to buy medicine. That took up a lot of time! We also had one of the senior couples come down and fix stuff in our apartment so we had to help out. The lesson I learned is that you dont know how to speak italian until you can explain how to build a bookshelf to an italian who has never built anything in his life. That was a lot of fun. I keep finding myself in the craziest positions where I have to explain how to do some crazy thing all in the italian langauge. I feel like it has helped me so much in the langauge. For example the other day I had to explain to my companion how to take care of his feet which was interesting. Other than that we are struggling to find new investigators. We are currently teaching no one. So this next week we will be working pretty hard! The cool thing about the work this week is that we have been given the opportunity to train the new leader of missonary work in our branch. This person is very important because he connects all that we do with the members in the branch. So we are pretty excited about that. Other than that, everything else is good. My companion and have found a good rythym and we are getting along a lot better. I am becoming a much better missionary which is good. We went to the alps last week! It was so beautiful! The MOUNTAINS ARE SO HUGE! I thought the mountains in utah were big....I was wrong. We were right next to france it was cool. If we climb over the mountain we were next to we would have been in france. Weird huh? Ill send pictures when I can, this computer wont let me so I will have to do it on another computer in the future! I hope all of you are doing great! Enjoy the week!

500 days of summer.....Day 62.....

Buongiorno tutti!! This past week has flown by sooooooooooo ffasssttt! I cant believe it is already AUGUST! It blows my mind So this past week we didnt have tons of success. The people were a little rough but thats okay. I had fun. Our miracle this week was crazy. So as missionaries we have a goal to teach 20 lessons each week. Its hard but possible. Anyways an apostle made a promise that if we teach 20 lessons each weekly our bapisms will double and we will become better teachers. So in the mission there has been a huge push the past few months for this. Sunday morning before church we had only taught 13 lessons and we needed 7 more which was a little daunting. We had no investigators in church which made it even harder. We had only 3 solid appointments set up for the day. So we called an audible and pulled a hail marry. We started calling tons of people and would get one lesson set up then do that lesson and call people immediately after that lesson to set up more. So we were just going as we did it. Which usually doesnt work. Anyways we did this all day and we were going all over town and by 8:30 we had taught 7 lessons. It was amazing because we had wanted it so bad and we finally got it. So that was awesome. My companion and I are getting along a lot better now but there is still a little friction because we think it two different ways. I hope you all enjoyed the beach! I miss the water. Its amazing how you dont want something when you have it and when you get it taken away you want it. My companion makes me laugh because he reminds me so much of laura The other day we were rushing home and I tossed him the keys to open the door and the keys hit his hand made a little scratch and he started freaking out how it could cut a vein. I laughed a little bit because it reminded me of laura, so now catch is banned from the companionship. Until next time!

Fresco, meglio, sucesso

Hell[o] everyone! This past week was a lot better! Anziano Boscia and I are learning better how to work together and everything. I also got to do a scambio in torino! It was nice to be in a big city again, even though it was only for a day. I did see where they had stuff for the olympics. I saw a baseball field! It was sooo weird!!! Even though I was in torino for a day, it did a lot of good for me. I even got to be in a car! Our zone leaders have a car so I got to be in it!! The past two days we have had great success. People were way more open with us and talked more. This past sunday we had an ex investigator come to church. It was really awesome because the missionaries before me tried to get a hold of him but couldnt so they stopped trying to contact him. Turns out his phone was broken and lost our number. This past sunday, he wasnt working and remembered about church and came. We now are meeting with him! It was so awesome because we had nothing. Now we have 2 investigators with baptismal dates. Other than that everything else is going much better. I cook all the time because my companion cant cook but thats ok. This email will be short because im running out of time. I hope everything is ok, I didnt hear about that shooting till today. Thats crazy! I will try to send pictures eventually, I cant now because this computer is terrible. But let me tell you, CUNEO is gorgeous! Yesterday, it was actually cold. I was sooooo suprised! I hope the weather isnt too hott :P Until next time! Anziano Collins

Fresh air in the mountains

Hello Everyone! I am here in Cuneo! It is very beautiful here! There is no humidity and there is an almost costant breeze. Its amazing! The mountains remind me of the appalachain mountains...just A LOT bigger. I will take lots of pictures so you can see the area. This area is a very hard area. There is a small branch of about 30 members. And the city is a lot smaller than milano. A lot smaller. There are hardly any forgeiners here, and if they are..they are most likely to be french. There are mostly Italians here. I think I went into a little shock because how my area shrunk. but thats ok. In the past few days we had done TONS of finding work and no one wanted to talk to us. We worked all day and finally it was about 4 minutes before we had to go in and we saw a family and decided to talk to them and if they werent interested we would just go inside. We talked to them and it turned out really well. They liked everything we talked about, which was about how families can be together forever. It was really nice just to have someone stop for us. They werent interested in meeting up with us but thats ok. We tried our best. The other day we had to go to another city because we needed to get another bike. Funny thing was the only way to get there was one of us would ride a bike and the other would get on the motorcycle with a member here and the biker would follow the motorcycle. So my companion and I both got to ride a motorcycle! IT was a lot of fun. Our mission president said it was ok! We went up near the mountains and it was beautiful. The only thing that slightly stunk was that on the way back we both had bikes and the hills were steeepppppp!!!!!! It was awful!!! But thats ok! I hope everyone is doing well! Enjoy the hot weather for me!!! sinceramente, Anziano Collins

Me ne vado....or in other words....PEACE OUT MILANO!

Well I received a call on monday from president telling me that I was leaving milano! I was soo sad! I am going to a city called Cuneo! It is a little city in the farthest west part of the mission. I will be near france! My new companion will be Anziano Boscia(I think thats how you spell it). He is from Siciil which means he is Italian. He does not speak any English. So I am going to learn Italian more than ever next transfer! I am so sad to leave! But unforunately e Cosi. It was funny because on monday we cleaned our whole apartment(it is a rule to do that during transfers week) and we were waiting to see if president would call us. It was so stressful because we thought he would call us but we didnt know for sure, We didnt get called until 4:30! We were freaking out all day, it was awful! My companion Anziano Scheurn will be training someone new here in milano! That new anziano is so lucky! Anziano Scheurn is a little stressed but that is ok. We had a great week. We found so many new people that are really cool! Eva's husband daniel has a cousin who has been coming to church and wants to meet with us! We are sooo excited to work with him! We also have been working with a less active named Alberto Mendoza. He is from peru! He is so cool. He is very hunble guy and loves to make jokes. I had taught him my first day in Italy and then he disappeared for awhile. I finally found him and we started to meet with him and he is so much happier. He wanted to start coming back to church but never had the little push he needed and the we came along and now he has been in church and is helping us teach our investigator Rolando. I am alittle scared to have an italian companion but I know it will help me so much with my Italian! It will be weird to leave Milano because I have been here since I came to ITaly so it will be a little shock to actually leave. I feel like I have been in bubble for 4 1/2 months, but thats okay because it has been amazing here! Here are some pictures that I took the other day. THe first picture is with carmen, miguel, christian and corianca. Anziano Meszaros and I baptized carmen and Christian. They are soo amazing! We went to lunch with them and then we said bye, it was said. The second picture is with some of the members that are in our ward and the third picture is with Alberto Mendoza who previously mentioned. Well im pretty sure this is the most I have ever written before so maybe I should stop! :) Anyways I hope everyone is ok! STay cool! I heard that it is sooo hot there! Drink lots of water!!! I will let you know how im doing next week! I think Cuneo is a bike city which SUCKS! I have evaded bikes till now!! AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! We will see how it goes! until next time Anziano Collins