FA CALDO...

Ciao Tutti!

Things are getting pretty stinking hot here. The humidity is crazy and I have just gotten use to feeling sweaty and gross all day. Our apartment unfortunately only has fans and no air conditioning, so it is warm and uncomfortable at night. This week has been fun though, Anziano Jones and I are doing well and we are getting along pretty well. It is fun training him and showing him the ins and outs of missionary work, but it is also pretty hard. The language has been kind of kicking me this week and it has been pretty hard being the one who understands the most. It is fun though and it is a learning experience. I am still the District Leader here but now our District includes the two companionships in Napoli, so that means we have to go into Napoli every Monday. This just means that we get to eat more pizza at Sorbillo's. Here is a picture of Anziano Jones and I:

So this week has been harder. Everything is shutting down in Italy for the month of August. Everyone picks up and goes on vacation, so it is really really hard on the work. At 6:00 PM we walk out onto the main street of Caserta, look both ways and only see like 13 people for the entire length of the street. It is only suppose to get worse in the next two weeks... We just barely shut down our English Course for the month because nobody comes anymore. It is so strange because you compare it to when I first got here in Caserta we had like 40 people coming every Tuesday and Thursday. We had a lesson with a guy from English course named P* and we asked him if we could meet with him again, and he said sure... In September. It is strange being here and all the stores are closing for the month. Everything just kind of seems dead. Truthfully it is really pretty annoying. We walk around a ghost town trying to pass our our little pass-along-cards. Fortunately for us we are still teaching people like R* and G* and they are doing quite well. R* just barely went down to zero cigarettes and G* is working slowly down from 16 a day. Our investigator S* is doing great and is still pushing on for being baptized on the 17th of August. We just need to get a baptismal interview out of the way and we are set to go with that. We also have a new investigator named U* and he is really nice. We met him from English Course and he is really really smart. Fortunately we will continue to teach him every Tuesday and Thursday and we will be able to talk more about the Gospel with him. He loves to talk about Theology with us and get into the deep questions. It will be a little difficult but luckily he speaks nearly fluent English so we can explain things better to him. We are excited for that.

Today for PDay we walked around Napoli and went inside a lot of the big Catholic churches. It was incredible to see them all! They are massive structures of art and beauty! It has been so cool walking into it and just staring up at the paintings all over the ceilings. They are incredible! 

Well, it has been a hard week, a hot week, but also a good week. I am having a good time working with Anziano Jones and I am looking forward to this transfer even though it is the roughest month of missionary work in Italy. It will be fun! Cant wait to baptize some more people!

Sincerely,

Anziano Burton