Somewhere Over the Rainbow!

Family,
Sadly I didn't see any rainbows this week, but it was a good week.

Well I will get the big news out of the way first. I will be staying in Castellammare for another 6 weeks at least and my new companion is the MTC companion of my current companion, if you followed that. His name is Anziano Christensen. I am pretty sure he is from Utah, if I remember correctly. That will be good. I hear he is mighty good with language because he lived here for a year before he got his mission call. So we won't have to worry about any language difficulties and we can just go and do the Lord's work.

So this last Thursday we had two rebaptisms. President Acerson called me two hours before and told me to tell the branch president that the confirmations and ordinations to the priesthood should be done after the baptisms were performed. So I had the opportunity to give the Melchizedek Priesthood to one of the new members. That was a great experience. As I gave the belssing, afterwards I could really feel and I really understood how much the Melchizedek Priesthood is the authority to give service more than anything - to bless the lives of others. He is really excited to get going. He has a small list of inactives he wants to start working with that fell in their activity to church after he fell. He is really earnest and focused on repairing the aftermath of his choices. The other person received the Aaronic Priesthood and was ordained a Priest. Then on Sunday, according to my companion, was the first time in at least seven months that the branch distributed the sacrament without the help of the missionaries. It was a beautiful thing. I love helping the Church grow and see how blessed the members are.

This last week has kind of been a rough one in the fixing appointments with investigators realm of things. We had only eight lessons this week and none of them were fixed appointments. All our appointments fell through and we were really guided this week to pass by investigators at certain times to be able to see them and continue to help them on their journey. I saw this written on the walls in the subway graffiti: "Tutti i brutti momenti iniziano per finire." Or in other words, "All bad moments or difficult times start so they can finish." That touched me.

To answer some questions, the money is to just buy some souvenir type stuff. I just didn't want to make an overwithdrawal again. About Pompeii, we just wandered around cause it was the third time my companion had been there and so he was kind of a tour guide. I thought that the city was amazingly preserved and that they weren't followers of Christ, because they lived extravagant lives for that time period.

Those are some pretty crazy news stories, dad. Crazy. Ya, the Italians are feeling the debt load. The city here provides jobs mostly from a dry dock where they build ships. But not many companies are building ships right now, and they just finished a ship. So a lot of people don't have work right now. I didn't know that so many European countires are in bad debt. It makes sense though, cause they definitely live lives worthy of debt.

This Sunday the branch is expecting 30 Americans that will be coming from the Disney cruise ship landing in Sorrento. So we have no idea how we are going to handle that cause our building doesn't have a microphone system so we don't have overflows. And our chapel is small. But we'll do it somehow.

And now for news about phone calls. President said that we shouldn't make phone calls this Sunday. I don't know why. That is just what he said. I am just kidding! We will probably be calling around 7:30pm here. Give or take a half an hour. So you do the math. But the call will come.

Well I love you all!

Love,
Anziano Hatch