I Am Out of Titles

Good morning, goodnight, good afternoon, or maybe even happy midnight to one and to all.

I learned over the past few weeks that my reader list of my letters has gotten a lot bigger than I thought. I hope one and all enjoy anyway.

Let me start off with something that I think I forgot last week. The church building here, even though it is a remodeled apartment building, has a lawn! A pretty big one. And guess who gets to mow it every Thursday morning? That is right. Me! So that is a blessing that I get to enjoy here. I get to do a little yard work. Even on the mission. This week has been a pretty good one. We have been teaching a lot of lessons and so we have decided for this week to pull back on the lessons (we have been exceeding 22 both weeks so far) and spend more time doing finding work. When was the last time you heard a missionary say that? Probably never. So we are shooting for twenty lessons this week but with the blessing of doing more finding work. We want to enlarge our teaching pool. Friday we played basketball with some people that come to our English class. As usual, the Americans won, although they weren't bad. One of them (a girl - although very short) was pretty good. But the height factor affects her. She said that she wasn't on the local team cause she was too short.

Skipping to Sunday. It was a pretty sad day at church. For some reason members and investigators alike decided to take vacation that weekend. The numbers went like this: eight members in the Battipaglia branch boundaries, two members from other branches, one investigator, and four missionaries. It was pretty lonely. We had an average Monday and Tuesday. Then today we went to Paestum...

We saw some ancient Greek temples. Greek temples - so before Roman time. They are pretty old.

We also saw some members and an investigator. The meeting with the investigator was the best. This woman is an American who married an Italian. I don't know how she met the missionaries but she has known the senior couple (the Marlors) for some time. She is searching for a testimony - really searching - and has been for a long time. So today we talked about testimonies. My companion and I didn't really have lots of time to prepare, but we decided that we wanted to use two scriptures from Alma. While in the lesson, I felt that I should share the beginning of the story. So we went to Mosiah 14 first, and we read about how Alma the younger was. Then we went to Alma 36 and read a little bit about what happened during the three days and nights that he was in the stupor. Then we finished with 45-46 of chapter 5 of Alma. Last week we had talked about Laman and Lemuel so we compared them to Alma. They had both seen angels, but their stories were totally different. We broke it down like this. Alma did basically three things. He tasted of the goodness of the Atonement, he fasted, and he prayed. I think that she has been getting kind of discouraged , but I feel like this revitalized her. We invited her to pray and fast this Sunday with a promise from an Apostle, that if she would come to church with a question in mind, she would find the answer to that question. Well we all know what question she is going to bring. So let's put our faith in a promise from the Lord, shall we? I know she will receive an answer.

Well this is the letter. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN! Also you will all have to wish America a happy birthday for me. Oh and Dad, if you are going to try to mow a flag into the lawn, good luck. That took three years to perfect. haha.

Love you all!

Anziano Hatch