The missionaries are eating at the poor house

Boungiorno!

Wow I have an amazing story. It's sooo funny. OK it started out when we were walking in the street on a Friday night. We ran into this guy who was an inactive member, so we started to talk to him. He told us he really wanted to quit smoking, so we fixed an appointment with him the next morning. Well, after a long goose chase we finally found him sitting his car in a random parking lot. We taught him the program to stop smoking, but it was really weird cause he would just zone out for minutes at a time(we found out he's had a history of drugs and they fried his brain). When we finished he told my companion hey sometimes I go eat with these poor people. Ya'll want to come. My companion said sure thinking that doing some volunteer work with the poor would be good. I had no idea what was going on cause my Italian is still shaky, so when we started going I asked my companion what we were doing. He told me we are going to eat. I was like alright a resturant. Well, when we got to this place I was thinking this isn't so bad. We sat down and immediately food was placed in front of us and I thought I guess I don't get to choose ok whatever. As we were eating I watched as other people were throwing away their trash and not paying. Then it hit and I thought no what have you done? You just ate the poor peoples food. If that wasn't bad enough it gets better. As we were leaving the cousin of a member saw us coming out of this poor house. So, he told his member cousin hey the missionaries are eating at this poor house cause they have no money. The next day at church was fun. This member(Sarcone) came to church and brought us this huge loaf of bread, and he was telling this other member(Domenico) that we needed help. Well, Domenico thought it would be smart to ask us. Once we explained the situation they all started to make fun of us. I walked into a room and Domenico asked me if I had been digging through the trash for food. Also Sarcone left church early before everyone found out so he thinks we are still poor. I hope ya'll enjoy that story. I'm still laughing about it. Well, all is well here, except I almost got hit by a car last night. Crazies.

Vi voglio bene.
Arrivederci.

Anziano Paul

It doesn't snow in Crotone

Hi ya'll

This week I have some cool things to talk about. First of all I love Crotone, I think it's the ocean cause it's always bello. I can't take enough pictures of it. It was really crazy last week cause when we woke up it was snowing hard. The wind was also blowing so hard the snow was falling horizantal. The scary thing is that it doesn't snow in Crotone. Well my companion and I were bundling up to go out side and we spent about 30 mins trying to put on as much clothing as we could. I felt like that kid on the movie "A Christmas Story". Well just as we were about to go outside it stopped snowing. I felt really stupid walking around with all those jackets on. Another good story is one night we went over to a member's house to teach her husband English(everyone in Italy wants to learn English and go to America, and Americans want to learn Italian and go to Italy. Funny how that works out.). Well he wasn't there when we got there so his wife asked us to make a fire in the fire place. It was really weird cause there are no houses inside the cities. Everyone lives in apartments. So we made this fire and then she asked us to cook some sausage over this pathetic fire we made. We tried and the husband came home so my companion began to teach English while leaving me to cook this sausage. I think ya'll should know that I can't even cook easy mac. After the sausage was sizzling for a while I thought it was done. So we had dinner and every Italian meal starts with pasta then the meat with a salad and then desert. Well when the meat came around it was cold and not done, but we had to eat it. It was soooo distgusting. I had to take a drink after every bite. The work has been going awesome here and some of the members call me Anziano Frodo cause they think I look like him. Valentine's Day was terrible cause we couldn't teach cause everyone was making out on the street. I wanted to interrupt some of them and try to teach them, but my companion wouldn't let me. I hope all is well. Arrivederci.

Anziano Joel Paul

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