Exploding Lights and a Burning Romance!

Hey Famiglia!

So. . .  here it is, the transfer news. . .  I’ll be staying here in Crotone!  I actually am really glad I’ll be staying.  Crotone is a great place to be doing missionary work!!  I just realized I’ll probably be doing another Skype from here though. That will be weird!  Mother’s Day is the Sunday before transfer week.  Sister Merenda headed up to Rome this morning to head home to the U.S!  How strange.  We’ll be getting a new sister named Sister Kimball. At least now that I know that I’m staying I can go in on buying a big new jar of Nutella. 🙂

[After seeing some pictures on Facebook that looked like two of Craig’s investigators had gotten married, I sent him one of the photos and asked him about it.]  The pictures you saw are of Debora and Michele when they did the promise of marriage!  Basically, now their engagement is official!  It was really cool.  As they exited the city hall they got showered with rice and happy cheering!  Their wedding is scheduled for the 12th of June, the day I went into the MTC!  How cool is that?!?!  I’m super excited for them.  Afterwards we stopped by their house because there was a big party there.  That’s them cutting their cake.  We gave Michele that shirt and tie so that he’d look good coming to church. He ended up using it for his wedding stuff as well!  I snagged some good pics.

I did get the package with the Easter card and the gift.  Tell Sister Kelley thanks for the note!

This week we also met with Pietro and his wife Regina [the names of investigators have been changed], and they accepted our invite to baptism!!!  They are super cool.  Pietro still loves his cigars and liquor though, so we want to work hard with him to make sure he’ll be ready!

I had lots of cool things to write about, but right now I’m pulling a blank…  Yikes.  Anyways.

We’ve seen a lot of miracles this week, one for example as I was up changing a light fixture in the bathroom because the light bulb died, and the light fixture exploded in my face as I tried to remove it. I was up on a chair, and was face-level with the fixture. There was glass absolutely EVERYWHERE, even all the way down the hallway and in the kitchen behind me. Somehow (I don’t know how it was possible) I only got nicked by a small piece of glass on my upper lip (looks just like I cut myself shaving).  Somebody was watching out for me!

This morning I had a mini heart attack as I threw a load of darks in, then went to go do some personal study.  Nearing the end of personal study, I realized that the phone wasn’t on my desk.  I went into the bedroom where it normally is hooked up to the wall.  It wasn’t there either.  Anziano McArthur didn’t have it either.  Immediately I realized that I threw my pair of basketball shorts in the wash, and sometimes I have the phone in my pocket.  I was thinking…. Oh no.  I tried opening the washing machine but it obviously was full of water and locked at this point, so I couldn’t open it.  I said a little prayer and desperately went back into the bedroom, and thought to pick up the Liahona magazine on the couch. The phone was underneath it.  Ugh.  The Liahona will guide you!!

Julietta’s baptism is still looking good for the 19th.  We’re really excited for her as well! It should be super cool.

Saturday evening we went with Salvatore to one of his relative’s house and ended up in a battle with the TJ’s (Jehovah’s Witnesses, AKA Testimone di Geova in Italian).  They’ve got some absolutely absurd claims.  Luckily, seeing as Salvatore has been a priest in the Catholic church and has written books on religion, and he’s studied the Jehovah’s Witness’ doctrines before, he took them apart fairly easily.  Salvatore knows A LOT about religion.  He’s so great to have in lessons, and he can explain doctrines really well because he comes from his Catholic background.

I can’t wait for General Conference.  We want to get all of our investigators here in church to watch it!

Well, I’d better get busy uploading some photos.  I can’t think of too many more exciting things going on.

Ciao for now!
Anziano Jones

 These first several pictures are from Debora and Michele’s wedding promise.

These next few pictures were taken in the city of Catanzaro when the missionaries went there for their district meeting.

 Craig said, “We got some kebab!”

Some pizza that the missionaries made for themselves.  Wow, look how professional that dough looks!  I’m impressed.

After Craig suggested that I try making some Pasta Carbonara, I experimented with a recipe, then added a lot more bacon, cheese, eggs, and some cream.  I took this photograph of it in order to put it on my cooking blog, Winner Dinners, and I also sent it to Craig this week.  In turn, he gave me some more recipe advice this morning:

By the way, we’ve made some pretty good pastas with cauliflower.  All you do is boil the cauliflower (make sure you add a good bit of salt to the water! You should also add salt to the water when you boil noodles to add flavor, but you probably already knew that), sauteè the cauliflower (all mashed and broken up) in a bunch of butter, and then add pepper, milk, and cheese (on top), with a dash of oil and mix it into your pasta.

The sauteè’d zucchini with bacon and cream is also really good, but I might have already told you about that stuff.

I can’t think of too many other recipes…..  Pesto is always yummy though!

Ciao!