Buon Giorno everyone!

I hope everyone's doing alright back in the States. Things are coming along here in Italy. My language skills continue to develop. The best way to learn how to swim is to be pushed into the water right? My companion gave me this analogy:

Your first transfer (six weeks) in the mission is like this: Imagine you're on a diving board. You're lying down, blindfolded, and your hands and feet are tied together. Now imagine that someone picks you up, throws you in, and tells you to untie yourself and swim. There's someone standing on the side with scissors, but you have to work for it.

Yah, that analogy didn't make me feel any better. BUT, I continue to learn how to swim. Like I said, being thrown into a country of Italian speakers has helped me learn faster than anything else. At the moment, I listen as much as I understand and put in my two cents (in Euro of course) whenever I understand enough to speak up. It's challenging, but it's very rewarding. Every day I feel myself getting better.

I think I said in my last letter how we are in a tri-companionship with Anz. Garcia and we're covering both Ancona and Pesaro areas. To give you an example of how far away these two cities are, that would be like three missionaries covering everything from Columbus to Zanesville. Yah. Our travel expenses have been nuts, but thankfully that's all reimbursible (wow... try to spell that word...). Right now though, Anz. Garcia is back in Ancona with the Ravenna elders for nine days so Anz. Miller and I have Pesaro all to ourselves. It's been nice to stay in one place for this long! I've been moving around almost every day we've been here. I love public transportation as much as the next guy, but come on...

Pasqua (Easter) was also spent mostly on the trains... We slept in Ancona, but we had to get on the train to Pesaro for church, then back, then back to Pesaro again to stay the night. It was nice though. We had dinner with la Famiglia Frulla in Ancona. So. Much. Food. I was stuffed. She made this awesome lasagna. It had some sort of cream inside. She said what it was, but I haven't learned food names in Italian yet so I couldn't tell you. Then we had breaded lamb, salad, and bread.

Since I'm talking about food: The fruit here in Italy is amazing. All of it is fresh and most of it is grown in or around Pesaro. It just tastes so much better. I'm not sure completely how to describe it. My favorite are le arancione. They're blood oranges, but they're a thousand times better than any you would find in the States. They're grown in the volcanic ash of Sicily. Yah that's right. They're fantastic. As to the pizza, it continues to stay fantastic. Tonight, I'm having gelato for the first time. I'll try to get a picture in next week's letter.

Ok, now people. We have four investigators here in Pesaro, and several more in Ancona. In Pesaro we have Gyldena, Claudio, Iryna, and Maura. We had our second lesson with Gyldena yesterday. She is coming along well. She has a lot of questions and talks a lot. We brought Sorella Tariffa along (a member of our branch) and she really helped to answer her questions. I'm not sure of everything she said to her, but it must've been good because Gyldena set a baptismal date for April 27th! Claudio is one of my favorite people that I've met. He has a very strong faith in God. He's in his mid 40s and he has cancer. He has two sons I believe, and they live with their mother. He's interested in learning more about how to grow closer to his family and to God. We are, of course, more than happy to help him with that. Iryna is a difficult one. She's very stubborn, but she wants to keep meeting with us. She wants to learn more, but she's not willing to take steps to further her knowledge. Maura, on the other hand, just straight up scares me. We were going door to door a couple nights ago, and she actually let us in! Anz. Miller has been here for almost four months now and that was the first time he's been let into a house. I could understand maybe 10% of what she said. From what Anz. Miller explained to me afterwards, she let us in because she loves learning about religions. She herself though has somewhat of a belief in God, but doesn't believe that we are His children and that He loves us. She is a very nice woman, but she creeps me out, partly because I can't understand what she says and the other part because her conversations are all over the place.

Here's the miracle story though. In Ancona, we are teaching a man named Khan. He is a Muslim from Pakistan. He speaks some Italian, but he speaks very good English, so we teach him in English. Here's how we met him. We were walking down the street on our way to another appointment. A man was walking past us, so Anz. Miller stopped him and we tried to talk to him. It turns out though that he couldn't speak much Italian or English, so we just gave him our card and went on our way. We got to where we were supposed to have our appointment and found out we'd been given a fake address. About ten minutes later we got a call from a man named Khan. He said that we had run into his friend on the street. He said his friend couldn't speak Italian or English, but that he'd be willing to translate for us. We all agreed to meet at the train station. We waited for a while, but his friend never showed up. Khan said he was still interested in learning, so he came along with us to another appointment we had scheduled with a man named Lorenz. Lorenz wasn't very accepting, but Khan really enjoyed it. He said he wants to study as many religions as possible and find "What is new? What is good? I read, then I ask questions." He's awesome to talk to, but our time with him may be short. He found work in Switzerland, so he might be leaving next week. Either way, he'll be hooked up with the missionaries up there.

Whew. So there's my update for this week. Missionary work is hard. Being with a companion 24/7 is hard. It's so rewarding though when you can see the difference you're making in someone's life... or not see it. The reward is that I'm leaving someone's life in better shape than when I found it, whether or not they welcome us into their house, or accept baptism, or read the Book of Mormon. My first goal is to improve the life of everyone I come into contact with.

Until next time,

-Anziano Simcox

The picture is a picture of the view outside of our apartment window. It looks a lot cooler in real life, but hey. Also, I'm going to Firenze (Florence) next week for a zone conference. I'll try to get some pictures.