23 JAN 2008

Buon giorno a tutti!

I realized yesterday as I was writing in my journal for the 5th time, or however long it has been since I've been here, that they have all started off the same way. They all start of with, "I LOVE ROME!" I've waited my whole mission for this chance to serve in Rome and I'm counting my lucky stars and many blessings to be able to finish in Rome!

I'm still trying to adjust to the shock of going from probably the smallest city in the mission, Oristano, to the huge, monsterous Rome! It's enormous! I was used to being able to walk from one side of Oristano to the other in 30 minutes and now it takes at least 30 minutes to get anywhere here! Crazy! I love just being in Rome and walking around the streets and seeing old ruins just sitting there. So much history! I can't really explain how much I love it! I don't remember if I explained but I'm serving in Rome 3....which covers the "ghetto" part of Rome. I'll be kind of specific for those of you who are interested and might look it up on google earth or something....our area covers pretty much everything south-east of the termini train station. The three main streets that go through our area are the Tuscolana, the Casilina, and the Prenestina. We live right by the street Viale Alessandrino. This area is pretty much just lots of palazzi (apartment buildings). We get around on bus and by metro. It just reminds me of being in Milano again and London..Yay!!!

So, a little about the rest of the week. I got here on Thursday and we did a lot of finding work along big streets and in parks. I would say that the people here, the Romans, are generally more open and friendly, especially than those in tuscany. It's fun being back able to teach more. In Oristano I feel like my teaching skills went down because hardly anybody would stop for more than 2 seconds to listen to us. But here we are able to talk to people they at least listen and have a conversation with us. I also love the fact that we are using pub. transportation because you can talk to more people on the buses and metro. We were taking the metro the other day and I got to talk to this lady. She was so nice and I left her with a family proc. She probably won't call us but, man, I just missed this in Oristano cause we were just walking all the time!

Sunday was great. I got to meet all the members and introduced myself and bore my testimony. Whenever I do that, someone always comes up to me afterword and says, "oh, the daughter of Pres. Boynton?" So this time it was someone named Fratello Conforte, he said he knows you dad, so he says hi! To answer your question mom, the Milano 3 ward is a lot bigger than the Rome 3 ward. There are probably about 70 to 80 active members, so this ward is bigger than the branch I was in in Prato and maybe around the same size as the branch in Livorno, (obviously bigger than the 7 member branch in Oristano!). Can't wait to work more with the members and get to know them.

We've had only a couple appointments since I've been here. One with a recent convert, Nancy, from peru. She's awesome and has a little son. Then we had quite the adventure yesterday morning because we were asked by the anziani to bring a book of mormon in english to this lady they met on the street. We called her and set up an appointment with her. She is from canada but has lived all over the world and finally settled in Rome and has lived here for 30 years now! She's a socialogist and a little quirky but she invited us in and we got to have a visit with her and introduce her to the Book of Mormon. She doesn't want to take the lessons but she decided that if there's a mormon running for president she wants to know what the mormon's are all about. So she's not really an investigator but who knows if she'll get hooked... we hope so! We've set a goal this transfer to get many new nvestigators and little miracles have been happening all week...there's about 4 potential investigators that we have to check back on! We were walking down the street and only had about 20 minutes until we had to catch the bus home. We saw a lady standing on the street, probably moms age, and we talked to her. She was listening intently and we were able to leave a book of mormon and also to get her number so that we can call and set up an appointment! We also were doing house this week and this girl from nigeria let us in. We were able to teach her a brief 1st lesson and we'll go back to give her an english book of mormon later this week. Miracles!

My new companion is awesome. Her name is Sorella Steensen and we are having lots of fun together. She's from Oregon. She's in her 3rd transfer and these next few days will be going to her 3 month conference at the Villa (mission home) so I'll be doing some activity with the other missionaries.

If you can't tell, I'm loving life as a missionary in Rome and I'm so excited to work hard and finish the mission off strong! We are going to go see some sights today with the elders so that should be fun. For those who have been to rome, I'm open to suggestions on what I need to see and do here on p-days! (besides the obvious stuff like the vatican, trevi fountains etc.).

I pray for all of you always and know that your prayers help me out a ton. Lots of love,

Sorella Boynton