Phone report from mom

We were able to Scype for about an hour with Ryan.  He was at a member's home with kids - one 3 year old who wanted attention kept climbing all over Ryan while he was trying to scype.  The family's house he scyped from is from Ghana.  Ryan is going to stay in Reggio Emilia in the next transfer (this Friday) and gets a new companion.  His trainer is going to Bologna.

Ryan Scyping with his friend making lots of distractions! 

Ryan with his mission companion (for 2 more days) 

Ryan showed us a skinny tie (European Style) that one of the members gave him for Christmas! 

 Ryan said he had seen his second baptism in Reggio, but the first one that he taught, John who he talked about earlier in the blog. He said that John (from Nigeria) is befriended by a new member from  Croatian and they are fast friends. The Croatian/Nigerian brotherhood he called them and said as immigrants they have a lot in common.  John was found by Ryan and his companion all because of fasting, he said.  He is still working with Fabio who is trying to quit smoking.

Ryan said he teaches about 20 lessons a week and had 10 investigators in church this last Sunday.   "I love teaching"  he said.   He fasts twice a week to help find people to teach and bore testimony to the power of fasting.  He did not think fasting (skipping eating and drinking for 24 hours while praying)  twice a week was too crazy (four times a week would be crazy, he said.)  He said he really loves being a missionary and following the spirit and seeing lots of miracles.   He said he really knows the power of fasting.

In this mission they used to contact people door to door, but  now they pick different parts of the city and contact people on the street on Monday and Tuesday and ask them questions. There are several people from Sri Lanka that he is working with that speak different languages- Sinhala and Tamil.   The Muslims like to talk to him (he has met soooo many people named Mohammed) and he just has to be bold and in Italian says, Do you want to convert to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  (In Italian) and they usually say no. He said that people know just looking at them that they are American and sometimes call out to them- Americans!! Ryan said you are just bold talking to people all the time.  Then on Wednesday is their P-Day or preparation day.  Sometimes they just make a huge 3 hour meal and have a cooking fest on their p-day.  Thats when they do their grocery shopping.  Then they use the rest of the week for teaching appointments.

Food report- the food Ryan said he loves is seafood!  There is a man that is in their congregation that works at an Argentinean Restaurant and he makes the most delicious seafood.

Ryan seemed very happy and was so excited to scype with us!