another crazy week.. anyone speak Urdu?

Another crazy week here in Reggio Emilia. We continue to have many different investigators that speak many different languages.. luckily this means we get to speak English at a lot of lessons. 

One person we meet with is named Farooq and he speaks Urdu and two other languages but only a little bit of English. Its hard for us to communicate but its fun to teach him and he likes the Book of Mormon. We gave him a copy in Urdu. 

This last week was my first week I was in Church with all the members it was really great. There are tons of Ghanan members, as well as Italians and Hispanic members its a very big and diverse ward. 

I taught Gospel principles class along with a Sister missionary (I forgot to mention that in our city we have our companionship as well as another companionship of Sister missionaries that teach, Sister Sloan and Lofley, (they are bravi missionaries) I struggled a lot with the language but I think people understood what I was trying to say. That definitely was an experience.

Also, I forgot to mention about our apartment, we have two Anziani from Modena   that are coming to live with us for a month because their apartment is getting a much needed remodeling. They moved in the first day and found cockroaches and other nasty things. One of the Anziano is Anziano Klemm! He was in my MTC group at home and he is hilarious and it is great. The other Anziano is Anziano Wilkey, he was the first missionary I did missionary work with in Milano, we contacted people in front of the Duomo. He is British and very kind loving and hilarious. They both commute to Modena every day by train.  ( Modena is a 15 minute train ride away and the official balsamic vinegar source.)

 

Reggio Emilia's Casa Piccola Natarath

We got to teach a lot of interesting people this week, one of these people was named Carlo, we were doing Casa (knocking on doors) when he invited us in. He is a heavy chain smoker and is Catholic and wants to learn more about Jesus Christ and likes us. Its great. Most of the time people mistake us on the streets either for Jehovahs Witnesses or for Train station workers. I guess a guy in a suit can't get around too well these days. But there is also those times that people recognize us and that is great, doesnt happen too often though.

I absolutely love talking to people on the street about religion and family and different things.. our name tags pretty much give us permission to talk to everyone haha. Anyways there is tons of stuff going on these days and I forgot to bring my notebook today where I write some of the interesting tidbits that happens in the weeks, but next week I will definitely load pictures and things.. we just finished the last deep cleaning of our apartment this week so I will have a bit more free time next preparation day. Mamma mia time just flies.

 I am still doing great here in Reggio Emilia the language is hard and I don't exactly understand what everyone says all the time, but its still great. Italy is an amazing place, and there are so many types of people that live together here. We actually contact a lot of muslims all the time especially in the Park. 

I am so glad everyone is doing well and I hope you all continue to keep busy. Its a wonderful life and the gospel is true. I see miracles every day (we have a whole miracle wall in our apartment in fact!) Peace and blessings 

Anziano Ryan Day    

Ciao tutti!

PS Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and is also widely spoken in India and, if combined with Hindi (they are very similar and mutually intelligible) they are the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world after Mandarin, English, and Spanish.