Email conversations ...
i am def. bringing you back here. place is incredible. we get free
icecream about once a week from this guy that owns probably the best restaurant
in napoli. lots of perks. we have a dinner appointment with this random guy we
met. people have respect for us because of what we do and who we are. dont worry
aobut me being safe here. nothing to really worry aobut. we are in before
dangerous stuff happens.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii
Here are some excerpts from Mitchell’s last letter to me, I hope you enjoy them!
Right now I’m in a place called Flegreo which means field in a place called Napoli, or Naples. Well this place is the most dangerous place in all of Italia pretty much. It has a Mexico look. Everything looks trashy on the outside but it’s nice on the inside. Really everything is beautiful here. It’s just a little trashy (I’ll explain more later) and just interesting.
Well the trash rarely gets disposed of here. There are two mafias: one collects the trash and the other has land to bury it on. They are currently disagreeing so trash gets burned…eventually. There is graffiti all over everything. That’s really the only thing I don’t like, other than that everything is incredible. I live in an apartment with three other missionari. It’s pretty cool. We have a pretty nice apartment. It’s hard to describe, but I will take pictures. Our branch is very cool. The building is incredible. It’s a small, three-story building. Top has offices and classrooms, middle has classrooms. The bottom is the chapel. From the building you can see the Napoli bay and some islands. It’s very incredible. Well the people here are awesome. They are a lot nice than the people in the United States. They are very lazy though. Work here is scarce, but ya. Can’t really explain it that well.
The food here is incredible! Everything and I mean everything, is better. Some examples…the Fanta is made with real orange juice. The pizza and ice cream is very good as well.
Well some more about the branch. The branch is ½ Italiano and ½ English. There is a NATO base here so that’s why we get the English people.
So I have a much easier time sleeping out here. No one snores and we are all pretty tired when we return home from walking all day. So on my first p-day here we went to the castle on Monte Sonto. The name of the castle is Elmo. We really couldn’t see much of it out of the top. The top was quite amazing though. You could see all of Napoli (both sides of the bay), you could see Pompeii and most importantly, Mount Vesuvius…Then we walked around downtown Napoli for a bit. There is good shopping there. I’m scared to take you there for the fear that we won’t have any money after. Just kidding :)
Well I did buy three ties for three euros which was really cheap. Napoli is a very beautiful place. However, I have to drink bottled water here and you really can’t go swimming in the bay because of pollution.
I would tell you about our progressing investigators but we really don’t have any at the moment. We do a lot of finding work which isn’t bad because everyone knows who we are. In a way, we’re the most popular people in Napoli.
We are often confused for TJ’s or Jehovah’s witnesses which sucks cause people here hate them. Also gives us the chance to explain who we are and what we’re doing. A lot of people have respect for us and the fact that we have given up so much to be out here. Like we ran into two old guys who loved us for that. One of them invited us to his restaurant which might be the nicest in Napoli for free gelato. So we are doing that on Saturday after old guys cook for us in the park.
The language is coming along alright. i just have a difficult time understanding what they are saying. They speak with a thick accent and ya. The language is coming along. Words that connect sentences and nouns I have a hard time with. Verbs not so much.
So onto some people we’ve met…okay the most interesting person I have met is probably Enzo. He is about 70 years old, beat me in arm wrestling. Well he is very cool…people in Italia are honest and I love it. We don’t teach him yet, but we are going over to his house tomorrow for lunch and we’ll see where that goes. Well, he is short and has short arms, but he moved 200kg oil barrels for 42 years so I am not embarrassed to have lost to him. We just ran into him one day and I’m excited to see him again. He was an awesome guy to talk to.
I can’t believe I’ve been here for a week now. Well, I will tell my parents all about my first day here in the letter after this one. I will also tell them about the kids here. I just need to tell them stories.
So here is our new schedule here…I wake up at 6:30 to exercise and eat. From that time until about 8 AM I have to get ready. At 8 AM I have personal study where I mostly just read the book of Mormon. At 9 I have companionship study. We are out the door by ten. Then we go around talking to people till 1 or 2 PM. After which we have an hour for lunch and another hour for language study. It doesn’t matter if we were out during that time because people take lunch between 12-4 PM anyways. Well so we go back out after lunch and teach people or find more people. We do that until about 9 PM and then we came back and had the most incredible cheese pizza for dinner. They are incredible.
…there are street vendors all over the place. This place is awesome. So we mostly walk or ride buses/trains everywhere here. We get a monthly bus pass that is very nice. Things are very difficult and different here. We really couldn’t understand the culture here...as of tomorrow, 1/10th of my mission will be complete. Not that I’m counting down the days, more counting up!
Right now I’m in a place called Flegreo which means field in a place called Napoli, or Naples. Well this place is the most dangerous place in all of Italia pretty much. It has a Mexico look. Everything looks trashy on the outside but it’s nice on the inside. Really everything is beautiful here. It’s just a little trashy (I’ll explain more later) and just interesting.
Well the trash rarely gets disposed of here. There are two mafias: one collects the trash and the other has land to bury it on. They are currently disagreeing so trash gets burned…eventually. There is graffiti all over everything. That’s really the only thing I don’t like, other than that everything is incredible. I live in an apartment with three other missionari. It’s pretty cool. We have a pretty nice apartment. It’s hard to describe, but I will take pictures. Our branch is very cool. The building is incredible. It’s a small, three-story building. Top has offices and classrooms, middle has classrooms. The bottom is the chapel. From the building you can see the Napoli bay and some islands. It’s very incredible. Well the people here are awesome. They are a lot nice than the people in the United States. They are very lazy though. Work here is scarce, but ya. Can’t really explain it that well.
The food here is incredible! Everything and I mean everything, is better. Some examples…the Fanta is made with real orange juice. The pizza and ice cream is very good as well.
Well some more about the branch. The branch is ½ Italiano and ½ English. There is a NATO base here so that’s why we get the English people.
So I have a much easier time sleeping out here. No one snores and we are all pretty tired when we return home from walking all day. So on my first p-day here we went to the castle on Monte Sonto. The name of the castle is Elmo. We really couldn’t see much of it out of the top. The top was quite amazing though. You could see all of Napoli (both sides of the bay), you could see Pompeii and most importantly, Mount Vesuvius…Then we walked around downtown Napoli for a bit. There is good shopping there. I’m scared to take you there for the fear that we won’t have any money after. Just kidding :)
Well I did buy three ties for three euros which was really cheap. Napoli is a very beautiful place. However, I have to drink bottled water here and you really can’t go swimming in the bay because of pollution.
I would tell you about our progressing investigators but we really don’t have any at the moment. We do a lot of finding work which isn’t bad because everyone knows who we are. In a way, we’re the most popular people in Napoli.
We are often confused for TJ’s or Jehovah’s witnesses which sucks cause people here hate them. Also gives us the chance to explain who we are and what we’re doing. A lot of people have respect for us and the fact that we have given up so much to be out here. Like we ran into two old guys who loved us for that. One of them invited us to his restaurant which might be the nicest in Napoli for free gelato. So we are doing that on Saturday after old guys cook for us in the park.
The language is coming along alright. i just have a difficult time understanding what they are saying. They speak with a thick accent and ya. The language is coming along. Words that connect sentences and nouns I have a hard time with. Verbs not so much.
So onto some people we’ve met…okay the most interesting person I have met is probably Enzo. He is about 70 years old, beat me in arm wrestling. Well he is very cool…people in Italia are honest and I love it. We don’t teach him yet, but we are going over to his house tomorrow for lunch and we’ll see where that goes. Well, he is short and has short arms, but he moved 200kg oil barrels for 42 years so I am not embarrassed to have lost to him. We just ran into him one day and I’m excited to see him again. He was an awesome guy to talk to.
I can’t believe I’ve been here for a week now. Well, I will tell my parents all about my first day here in the letter after this one. I will also tell them about the kids here. I just need to tell them stories.
So here is our new schedule here…I wake up at 6:30 to exercise and eat. From that time until about 8 AM I have to get ready. At 8 AM I have personal study where I mostly just read the book of Mormon. At 9 I have companionship study. We are out the door by ten. Then we go around talking to people till 1 or 2 PM. After which we have an hour for lunch and another hour for language study. It doesn’t matter if we were out during that time because people take lunch between 12-4 PM anyways. Well so we go back out after lunch and teach people or find more people. We do that until about 9 PM and then we came back and had the most incredible cheese pizza for dinner. They are incredible.
…there are street vendors all over the place. This place is awesome. So we mostly walk or ride buses/trains everywhere here. We get a monthly bus pass that is very nice. Things are very difficult and different here. We really couldn’t understand the culture here...as of tomorrow, 1/10th of my mission will be complete. Not that I’m counting down the days, more counting up!
Days and weeks go by here so fast
Snippets from Mitchell’s latest letter!
Well I no longer have a lot of time to write any more. Missions are very very busy after you leave the MTC. The mission field is definitely a lot more fun, more work and just more satisfying.
I am no longer able to do picture of the day, but I still write in my journal every day. That is really hard.
Today is my 84th day in the field or week 12 out of 102 weeks pretty much since I’ll be leaving a couple of weeks early to catch the semester out at school. I found out that I can transfer early (6 weeks), but I will just leave on April 14th or so. I want my last day here to be a p-day so I can go see everywhere then leave the next day. We will see how it goes…
Yesterday we were teaching this guy named Ettore and his friend. His family was there, but not really part of our gospel conversation. Either ways, he is just an awesome guy. And his friend, I forgot his name, was cool too!....I actually understood what they were saying for once. It was really nice.
Honestly, the mission is starting to feel like a dream. Well, maybe not the mission, but the MTC feels like a long dream. Days and weeks go by here so fast. It’s incredible. I’m already half way through my first transfer. Sometimes it feels like there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. Writing in journals and letters is hard, but I do try.
Talking about going back to Idaho and running service programs…
Well, I don’t know what program I would want to run. I really want to coordinate like 3, but if I can’t be a coordinator, I will run any program they need me to.
So I definitely miss going to the temple. Nothing really to compare it to out here. I do like the landscape out here. It’s very beautiful. Really the closest thing we have to the temple is just reading my scriptures. I will finish the book of Mormon today or tomorrow then I will start the old testament in English and the book of Mormon in Italian. The book of Mormon is so much more interesting out here. I get a lot more out of it. It’s pretty cool.
Well I thought I’d tell you a little of what I did today. I got up and exercised this morning. Then, I started reading more of Ether. Well then we went out to downtown Napoli to order supplies. That took most of the morning. Came home, made food, had an appointment fall through, took a nap, went back out. Well we have an appointment at this house which is pretty far away and we spent 3 ½ hours trying to find it. We did. Well, after that we took a train back and we were outside our apartment pretty much and this guy wants us to come get ice cream again which was cool. Then we went and got pizzas and came home.
The language is going well. I am trying to open my mouth and talk with as many people as possible. It is hard to understand people here. Most speak with a thick accent, but I have gotten a lot better. I have noticed a great improvement in the month that I’ve been here. Today we talked with a lot…a lot of people. It was just a great day. Like the first guy I talked to said he believed in the Book of Mormon. Sounds simple? Probably not. I just met this guy today, hopefully we can see him again soon. We encounter a lot of strange stuff. For example this kid lucky belives in Joseph Smith, but he doesn’t know what that means. Golden investigators are still hard to work with, but I love it, haha. I love difficult people.
This guy we were talking to for a while today said ciao bello to my comp and ciao bellissmo to me. Which is meant like by handsome. It’s not gay either, it’s normal. He said it in front of his wife and kid. People here love my blonde hair and blue eyes.
Oh I wish you could see the kids here. They are so funny but so screwed for life living here. I wish you understood Italians. They are so great. I just had a great day.
Well I no longer have a lot of time to write any more. Missions are very very busy after you leave the MTC. The mission field is definitely a lot more fun, more work and just more satisfying.
I am no longer able to do picture of the day, but I still write in my journal every day. That is really hard.
Today is my 84th day in the field or week 12 out of 102 weeks pretty much since I’ll be leaving a couple of weeks early to catch the semester out at school. I found out that I can transfer early (6 weeks), but I will just leave on April 14th or so. I want my last day here to be a p-day so I can go see everywhere then leave the next day. We will see how it goes…
Yesterday we were teaching this guy named Ettore and his friend. His family was there, but not really part of our gospel conversation. Either ways, he is just an awesome guy. And his friend, I forgot his name, was cool too!....I actually understood what they were saying for once. It was really nice.
Honestly, the mission is starting to feel like a dream. Well, maybe not the mission, but the MTC feels like a long dream. Days and weeks go by here so fast. It’s incredible. I’m already half way through my first transfer. Sometimes it feels like there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. Writing in journals and letters is hard, but I do try.
Talking about going back to Idaho and running service programs…
Well, I don’t know what program I would want to run. I really want to coordinate like 3, but if I can’t be a coordinator, I will run any program they need me to.
So I definitely miss going to the temple. Nothing really to compare it to out here. I do like the landscape out here. It’s very beautiful. Really the closest thing we have to the temple is just reading my scriptures. I will finish the book of Mormon today or tomorrow then I will start the old testament in English and the book of Mormon in Italian. The book of Mormon is so much more interesting out here. I get a lot more out of it. It’s pretty cool.
Well I thought I’d tell you a little of what I did today. I got up and exercised this morning. Then, I started reading more of Ether. Well then we went out to downtown Napoli to order supplies. That took most of the morning. Came home, made food, had an appointment fall through, took a nap, went back out. Well we have an appointment at this house which is pretty far away and we spent 3 ½ hours trying to find it. We did. Well, after that we took a train back and we were outside our apartment pretty much and this guy wants us to come get ice cream again which was cool. Then we went and got pizzas and came home.
The language is going well. I am trying to open my mouth and talk with as many people as possible. It is hard to understand people here. Most speak with a thick accent, but I have gotten a lot better. I have noticed a great improvement in the month that I’ve been here. Today we talked with a lot…a lot of people. It was just a great day. Like the first guy I talked to said he believed in the Book of Mormon. Sounds simple? Probably not. I just met this guy today, hopefully we can see him again soon. We encounter a lot of strange stuff. For example this kid lucky belives in Joseph Smith, but he doesn’t know what that means. Golden investigators are still hard to work with, but I love it, haha. I love difficult people.
This guy we were talking to for a while today said ciao bello to my comp and ciao bellissmo to me. Which is meant like by handsome. It’s not gay either, it’s normal. He said it in front of his wife and kid. People here love my blonde hair and blue eyes.
Oh I wish you could see the kids here. They are so funny but so screwed for life living here. I wish you understood Italians. They are so great. I just had a great day.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
No place compares to Napoli!
Dear Family and Friends,
Sorry it has taken me a while to write home. I don’t have as
much time here as I did in the MTC. Well, Napoli is awesome! No place in America really compares to
Napoli. On Monday we were in Possillip,
in this park. The park was the point that divided our area from the other
elder’s area. This park is the highest point and the very end of this mountain.
You can see everything from it. The park
is very beautiful but not well maintained, but then again Napoli isn’t for that
matter. I would love to take you to the park but it probably one of the most
dangerous places in Italy.
Well with the mafia, don’t worry about me. I’m fatter and bigger (muscle) than pretty
much every Italian here. I get told it
every day plus people here love us. We were walking along the highway on
Saturday and everyone was honking and waving at us. We met this guy who owns a
super nice restaurant who gave us free ice cream (the best ice cream I’ve ever
had. Sunkist which has real orange juice
and a pastry like a croissant with powder sugar on top and the middle had
frosting and a cherry. We got that for
free just because of what we are doing and for just being motivated/proactive
kids. We were walking on the sidewalk
and we ran into this guy who just wanted to shake our hands for dressing up,
looking nice, and not being like other Naptan kids. So people here love the
missionaries, especially older people.
So let me tell you more about the people. The people here are the nicest and most
friendly people for the most part. They are very creative when it comes to
saving themselves some work. They are
very lazy. Napoli doesn’t have any industry or service that brings money
here. I feel very bad for the kids
here. They have nothing to do but
school, friends, and bad things. Because of this they fall into drinking,
smoking, and immorality at the age of 12 starting. Its’ Interesting to see kids
here smoking that young. They have very
little to motivate them in life and its sad. Every girl here dresses immodestly. Distracting yes, but there isn’t anything we
can do about it really. Regardless the
people here are awesome.
Last Saturday we had a lunch appointment with some old guys
we met in Possilipo. They cooked rabbit
for us. I ate some of its insides. The rabbit was very good but the insides
weren’t as good. They are cooking fish for us, not this Saturday but next.
Whenever I’m about to eat something I am unsure about, I pray that I won’t gag
or throw up. It’s worked so far! I really want a pizza right now.
We have a lady that gives us referrals and we teach her
friends and such outside her food storage shop. So we teach her friends. One night we were walking through this park
and found two college kids which is rare. We’ve been talking to one of them in
half English and half Italiano. He said
he’d come to church if when he does he’ll technically be progressing.
On Tuesdays we teach an English class to anybody who wants
to learn. There is one guy there that we teach a gospel principle of the week.
Next time we will teach him to pray and give him something to read. If he does
the reading then he’ll be progressing along. We have some other contacts but
nothing serious so we end up walking around trying to find more people.
So the drivers here are interesting. Cops do not write tickets. No stop signs, few stop lights and cross
walks. So Italians may appear to be very crazy drivers. True. But they are some of the best. They
drive very aware. I could walk across a street blind-folded and I would be
fine.
So we headed to Pianura to teach. To get there we take the RG which is a bus.
We waited 30 minutes for the bus to come and found out they aren’t
running. So we headed to the Cumana
(train) and took that there. It was very
packed. Then we found out that because
the people of Pianura are sick of not having their trash emptied they spilled
several locations in the street. The bus
drivers didn’t want to drive through it so they just stopped driving. (He told us in the past that the 2 mafias are
at odds … one owns the garbage trucks and the other owns the garbage dump and
they aren’t cooperating with each other so no garbage is being removed.)
I hope everyone is doing well. I hope this letter gets to you soon. I don’t know how long it will take, but we
will experiments (it takes 6 days).
Love, Anziano Hosford
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Napoli is 2800 years old
On Wed, Jul 6,
2011 at 1:06 PM, Mitchell Hosford <mitchell.hosford@myldsmail.net> wrote:
Okay well you
gave me a lot to answer to. I will send a letter home with more details and
stories.
Ask Sister Kelly
for the address here. I don’t remember what it is. If she doesn’t give it to
you tell her you need to send me medications which is true. Napoli is very
interesting. ugh i hate emailing everything. I will just awesome the questions
you sent me and i will do more explaining in the letter.
1.
Who
is your trainer/companion? Where is he from? A little about him,
please! My trainer is Anz. Anderson from Texas and Canada. Not really much to say about him. Still getting to know him. We have a lot of fun.
Eat lots of pizza. Really hard to tell about other people.
2.
So
is he a runner or at least willing to exercise?
We exercise every morning mostly. Not running. We walk about everywhere
during the day so it doesn’t matter to run.
3.
Have
you sampled some good food yet? Any dinner dates? He had a dinner-ish
thing at a members house on Sunday. the food was really good. We have two
lunch appointments on Friday and Saturday which I am really excited for. The
food here is alllloooottttt better. Hard to really explain how. Even the basics
are better.
4.
What
is the ward/branch like? How far from your flat to the Chapel? We
google-earth'd and found the location of the two chapels. When we get an
address we'll see if we can see your flat.
the branch is half Italiano and half English. ee have military personnel
on it. Our flat used to be right across the street from it. Not anymore. We
live about 30 mins from it.
5.
How
is the language coming along? Does your trainer fluent in Italiano? Language is coming along. Not worried about
speaking more worried about understanding. I am have a hard time with that but
it’s not something I am crying over. My trainer is fluent.
6.
Are
you happy?
I pray you are and that you adjust well to
missionary life. I think because you lived away for 2 years you'll do
better than most. It will be a great exploration. Did you know
Napoli is 2800 years old? Well I am happy. I thought I was going to be getting a
letter or something soon but I guess Sister Kelly neglected to give my address
which is upsetting or I would have sent something home and to Sunny a week ago.
hmm. well p-days here are fun. We do lots of exploring during the days. I have taken
quite a few photos since I have been here.
I will send a letter home and to Sunny
today or tomorrow so you can have my address or let me ask my comp.That’s our address. So i will send that to sunny and i might try to wake her up right now. well look for my letter. BTW the shopping here looks fun. hehe I thought everyone would like that. I saw some Prada knock offs that everyone might like. Unless someone emails me back I am off till about this time next week. Love
Mitchell
Viale Augusto 6
Scala A 3 piano int.7
Fuorigrotta (NA) 80125
Italia
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