Don't Worry Bout Me

Alright you all seemed pretty stressed that I didn't email yesterday. Ya, the church email service was down ,but I am sure you will be happy to see that you received this letter as you were at the cabin. That will be fun. You can all read it together!

Ya, so I wasn't going to be able to email until tonight, but we got to Rome early today. (It is zone conference) and so we found an internet point and checked if the email was working. It was, so here we are writing our families and such.

Well a few details about living arrangements. Our apartment is old and dirty. We do our best to clean it but it still looks dirty afterwords, so that is sad. But we are only there like 3 hours during the day and to sleep so that is good.

My companion is great. He is from Long Beach Cali and a surfer dude. He is a basketball player too. He is good. We did some finding work playing basketball, beat a few Italians a couple of times and then got their numbers. So that was real fun.

We have three investigators that will probably be baptized this transfer. One for sure at the end of August, and then the two others we are just waiting to set a baptismal date. What a great blessing it will be to be able to baptize in my first transfer. That will be great. I guess we are in a great area. My companion said last transfer, he and his companion baptized four people, so that is awesome.

The ward here is thriving and there are some good members. There is one that has been inactive for 5 years and then he came back to church like 2 months ago and set his life straight. He has a really strong testimony now and he has been the cause of 6 baptisms through referrals and introducing his friends to the missionaries. We are currently working with one of his referrals right now.

It sounds like you all will be having a great time up at the cabin. Oh ya, sorry again for no pictures. We weren't expecting to be able to email right now, so I forgot my card again. I remembered it yesterday, but the server was down, so that is just life.

One of the great things here, foodwise, are the tomatoes. I love fresh tomatoes and they are in abundance here. Every meal with members we have tomatoes and it is so good.

A secret for cooking pasta. Adding salt to the boiling water makes the pasta taste so much better. And a simple sauce is to just take tomatoes and cook them in a frying pan with a little olive oil, basil, and a little bit of tomato sauce. Then when the tomatoes get a little soft from cooking them, then smash them. Then when you pasta is ready, just dump the tomatoes and sauce right on. This is something I never saw in America. And it is delicious. You should all try it. Then I will help you perfect it in two years.

So give Alex my condolences with his broken leg. That stinks. Sounds like there was a good time to be had at the reunion.

I love Italy, but there is no grass here. Green grass is a rarity. Their parks look like they once had green grass, but then decided they didn't want to take care of it. So it is all dried up and weedy. I hear that is normal for Italy though. Very few things they keep watered. Which brings me to my next point of amazement. They don't have green grass, but every tree and bush is green and thriving. Rarely do you see a dead tree. So things are still pretty green here.

So last Sunday, we got a ride home from church from a less active, and boy was that an amazing ride. First off let me tell you that it takes an hour and a half to get to our church building which is in Rome. We have to take the metro system to get there and then walk about 10-15 minutes. But by car it only takes twenty minutes cause you drive stright there. By metro you have to take three different lines to put us close to where we need to go. And no, we couldn't just walk there. It is pretty far. But the way Italians drive it only takes 20 minutes. But the way Simone (less active member) drives we got back home in 10 minutes. It was the craziest, fastest drive of my life. We were weaving through cars and around cars going 160-185 kmh. My companion said we touched a hundred mph a couple of times. So that was an adventurous ride.

Well, that about sums up the highlights of this last week, and I need to get going. I promise pictures next time. I love you all and you are in my prayers. I hope you all keep doing as well as you are doing. Pray for the people here in Italy. They need it.

Love,
Anziano Hatch