Sta Piovendo

Buon Giorno Tutti!!!

Well, we have been getting some nice rain the last two days in Cagliari. Things are going pretty well here, I am really enjoying being here! It has been a pretty rough week for seeing success but at the same time we have felt a lot of little successes each day. Anziano Davids and I are working to get our current investigators to progress but it has been a little bit hard. They have been telling us that they will come to church and then they don't come. We feel like we are at a stand still almost. It is really hard because it feels like everything should just be taking off and going great here. Like I feel so strongly that the people are ready to hear this message but we are just hitting walls that is making the work hard. We have been putting a good effort into the work that we are doing and we just aren't seeing the successes yet.

Here are some of the Sardo guys that we ate with this week. B* is in the middle.

We had a great meeting with our investigator Gg* this week and we taught the Restoration and he honestly is searching the truth. The problem is that he didn't come to Church the next day and so that was a bumber. The P* family has been gone for quite a while and it is worrying us. They aren't answering the phone anymore and it is really hard to talk with them. We don't know what happened. G* didn't come to church this week but he called us after and told us that he was sick, hopefully we will get him coming back to church again.

On Saturday we went out to lunch with our investigator B*. It was cool, we went out into the country side near Cagliari and ate a traditional Sardo meal. It was all food from Sardegna. It was really good and enjoyed it a lot, but it was kind of strange. All of the guys we were eating with, abot 10 or so, were all Sardi and they were really quiet. Bruno tried to get us to drink wine, beer, coffee and some other strange looking alcoholic drink. We had to politely tell him no and explain about the Word of Wisdom. That was fun to do. After we explained, all of the Sardi men just kind of stared at us like we didn't know what we were missing. It was really a very strange lunch.

Cagliari's main street at sunset. A nice but chilly day.

We had our English course graduation ceremony and that went really well this week. I was one of the "Hosts" and so I got to present the awards to the students. They were very awesome. We had M* P* actually get up and basically bear a testimony of our work. That makes it all the harder that now 6 days later we can't get a hold of them at all. Anziano Davids and I are going to try really harvesting our English course this week and this transfer. There are still a lot of people in it who have not been invited to hear the Gospel message. We really hope to see success and we know that it is just around the corner.

Anziano Durham has accustomed to Cagliari really well and he is awesome! He will do a lot of good here and I know that he will be a hard worker and will help out a lot. We got a new Ward Mission Leader this week also. With the new bishopric and Fratello L* becoming the Elder's Quorum President our new Ward Mission Leader is Fratello S* I*. He returned from the Italy Milan mission just 4 days ago, and we are excited! It will be great working with him in the missionary work! He was a zone leader up in Milan and he will have some geat insites for the work. It is going to be a great week I am sure!

As a zone, the island of Sardegna has decided to only ever speak Italian outside of the house for the month of December. I really feel like this will be a huge boost to the work here on the island. I am also excited because I am hoping it will help my language skills. It has been hard this week because again I put a lot of good study time into Italian and when I get out and about I have a hard time hearing and speaking it. I am just not quite where I want to be. I am really hoping that with this new goal by our zone I start picking it up better.

Well, that's about it for today, the week hasn't felt to bad, we have had a lot of good little successes, but just not the best key indicators have shown up. Hope all is well at home! You are the best!

Sincerely,

Anziano Burton

Here is our previous district before transfers, now we are missing Anziani Rasumussen and Loerstcher... top right elder and bottom left elder.