I was born Catholic! I will die Catholic!

Dear Family and Friends,  

                                                           

Well, let me start off by saying … Happy Birthday Mom! 

I am staying in Napoli for my second transfer which is nice. In our zone we have 16 missionaries … or 14. I think only one is leaving the zone.  One in our zone is switching areas and we are getting another greenie.

How I broke my retainer story:  Last Thursday we went to a small park in Posillipo after getting free ice cream.  (he says that older men are always inviting them to their shops for ice cream) We saw all the normal old guys in the park.  Like always we got on the subject of food.  This one guy was about to have a heart attack over us making our own food, so he went to the store, got some food, and took us to his house.  His wife had already make lunch and was waiting to see who he was bringing with him.  We she was shocked to see Mormons.  She turned to us and said, “I am Catholic! I was born Catholic!  I will die Catholic! My daughter teaches in Catholic School!”  Before she could finish I asked her about her daughter and what she taught.  I really shocked her for some reason.  Well after that she was the nicest and sweetest old (not old, old but old) lady.  She was really funny to talk to over lunch.  She said not drinking wine was a sin. Haha. She made an awesome lunch with a potato, onion, and tomatoes.  It is simple but very good.  I will make it for you.  Then we moved on to fish which was so good.  I ate about 3 or so.  They were only about the size of my hand. I was using the bread to soak up the juice and eat the tomatoes from the fish.  Well, it was on that bread that I chipped a piece of the cement off.  It’s not that bad and it was so worth it!!  The bread crust here is very tough, but so good.  After the larger fish we moved to a smaller fish.  These ones were about the size of a finger.  The guy wanted us to eat like a napton where you eat the whole fish except for the head.  So we did and we chewed the spines very well.  Surprised I ate fish???  (of course we are!) I guess it would be safe to say that no one in America can cook fish like that.  I need to ask her to teach me how to make it.  It didn’t taste or smell like fish. Plus I seriously doubt you could find fish that fresh.  After the fish we had antipasta. 

Lunch today was bread, cheese (maybe provolone?) and prosciutto (cured meat). Its incredible! I imagined it to be something different,  more like the pork chops we eat for dinner, ground up, and cured.  It would be a crime not to eat it!!  We need two things in America:  Buf Motts (it’s the best cheese) and prosciutto.  Well that’s how I broke my retainer. 

FYI:  IT APPEARS MITCHELL DOES NOT TRACT … THEY DO STREET CONTACTING ONLY.

So we have been slowly finding more investigators.  It’s very hard to do.  Now in August everyone is on vacation, but we still do a good job at teaching.  We gave this one guy a tour of the church on Sunday. We can really only wait for people to come back from vacation.  Referrals are really the best way to teach people.  Everyone who is giving to us as a referral turns out to be a good investigator. Unfortunately, we don’t receive that many.  Pino (who we gave a church tour) was a referral.  He is pretty cool.  He said we could teach him the 5 lessons.  I think that sounds good. A lot of our other investigators are out of town, but somehow we kept our lesson count up.  Which isn’t hard. We only taught 4 lessons last week.

Sorry for not writing for so long.  We get really busy out here.  I don’t really think I have enough time to write everyone who writes to me.  So if you would explain that to Sister McCall and Aunt Marsha.

Okay.  So the language is coming along.  I am trying to use direct and indirect object pronouns which is hard. That and understanding people.  Understanding people is probably my biggest problem.  I also want to take Dad to this suit store. Even though it’s run by the mafia.  The people are very nice.  The trash problem isn’t over, but it got a lot better. They are becoming better at picking it up.  I got up this morning to see they took out the trash and I was surprised. 

Well, I hope everyone is doing well at home.  Sorry I don’t have a lot of time to answer Amy’s email on this letter.  I hope everyone is doing well at home. I hope baby is doing well.  I love thinking about the days when she would knock on my door and say, “Mitcho, Mitcho”.  She is quite the baby.   I’m out of time to write more.  Love everyone at home.  Hope to hear from everyone soon. 

Love, Anziano Hosford