4th email from Verona, Italy

Wednesday; July 10, 2013

Salve tutti!

Well we had another great week! It was my first time being out of the country for the 4th of July...that was an interesting experience. No fireworks! But in my apartment, we have an elder from England...we had a blast singing him patriotic songs all day haha...I don't know if he enjoyed the 4th of July as much as we did.

Last week on P Day I got to eat some delicious pizza! One of the slices was similar to a pepperoni pizza but it was super delicious but my second piece was covered in Nutella! Haha it was awesome! Way too much chocolate but it was an interesting experience. We also went and saw a Catholic Sanctuary on top of one of the hills here in Verona. It was very old and pretty cool...but definately different. The view over the city was way cool from the hill.

One of the unique things that I've done this week is I've had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the gopel with some African Pentacostals. One of them is a minister! They know their Bible very well, but their beliefs are very similar to ours. They have a hard time with believing the Book of Mormon is also the word of God, but we've had some good discussions. We never argue with them..probably because they talk too much about everything they know...but all we can really do is bear testimony. I learn a lot from them.

My miracle this week is that we met an African man named Felix (yeah...we talk to a lot of Africans. The joke is "Mission: Baptize Africa"). Felix ran into LDS missionaries in Africa and he never joined the church but he reads The Book of Mormon and the Bible side by side and compares them. He loves the Tree of Life and he knows of the prophets Lehi and Nephi. It was soo cool to see that the gospel can be reached just about anywhere you go! But we met with him a second time and taught him the whole Restoration. We're excited for this guy. We hope to see and talk to this guy some more.

We're always looking for service opportunities! Especially when there's food involved. We went and helped a recent convert paint a wall in his house and then he made is lunch...holy cow! It was soooo good! I love the food here. We had a pasta dish that had zucchini in it and then he served tomatoes with mozzarella on some really good bread...mmmm!

Well that's probably enough for the week! Hope you all are doing well! Hope 4th of July was fun! Until next week! Ciao!

-Anziano Cody Petterborg