Salute Per Tutti (Health for all)

(Cosi Cosi) Caro Family and Friends,
I'm afraid I've gone mad.

The Mediterranean Sea=)

​Genova the city a little bit.

It's been a great week. Sort of odd was that.... well the story is... Sorella Albos is from the Philippines and she did not know how to ride a bike before the mission and just barely learned how. Which was really cool and funny. Sadly She got hit last week by a car whose driver might have been a little drunk after New Years. She was fine except her ankle being a little scuffed up, and that she was in shock, then being taken to the hospital in an ambulance. and her bikes now ruined. She's fine now. Kind of gives a reality check of not being too crazy on the bike and that we shouldn't act like proud super heroes type of a deal. It's unusual for this to happen though.

​Genova. Italy kind of feels like
Europe's New York City,
slightly tropical jungle, type of a feel.

At a training a little over a week ago we got challenged to aim high with lesson count trying to get 21, President Dibb testifying of this. When the week before Anziano Lewis and I had gotten 7 or 8. Which seemed almost impossible to me at the time of getting 21 lessons, but this last week we were on the streets a lot more and I'm not exactly sure how but.... we got 21 lessons.=) Which was super exciting! We got a lot of new potential investigators, and I have hopes that some of these people we talked to will work out. We are having a decent amount of success though and it's nice to see. 

The outside of the Genova Church.
A little different than back at home.

We are on the streets a lot throughout the day, which is good and bad sometimes. I'm getting more into the swing of things, and I'm probably more officially level two on the language skill wise. When you answer the phone you say "Pronto" which means "ready" or if you are answering the telephone door bell which someone rings to get into your building, you can say "Chi è" which means "who is it". At the MTC we joked that we would say someone like Paura... which means fear kind of funny.

We had a conference in Genova on Monday which was really cool. I got to see the Mediterranean Sea, and we watched a little bit from Fiddler on the Roof, which brought back lots of good feelings from back in the day.

More of Genova.

There are quite a few Africans here in Italy, who mainly speak English, we got a lesson with one set up for Thursday and I'm really excited. They have a really great English accent like... How are you doing my brother. If you can use your imagination.

We met two people on the streets that stood out I guess. One was a drug addict who had been kicked out of his house and his family wants nothing to do with him even on Christmas day. He's now homeless and you could say a slave to his addictions. The other we call an assassin, then his name. He's awesome yet at the same time, disturbing. He loves his old girl friend a lot. If you can imagine we will see him and say hi, he will then come up to us and begin talking to us about 12 minutes about his old girl friend and what is the update with her. This has happened twice now. Kind of funny. But she broke up with him and started to date someone else, he still really likes her. He stayed two days outside of her apartment telling her that he loved her. She got him a restraining order. He likes her a lot to the point of rage a bit, so that's a bit scary. We try to help him do good things, like not kill people, but anyways.

It seems a lot of the time that the people who need the most help wont take it. (From a movie I cant take credit for the complete wisdom). I think that Heavenly Father loves us all equally though and he still wants to help all his children even those who wont take it, are we not all beggars, if we are the means of trying to help at times, and we don't accomplish too much really or are thrust out, I suppose we shouldn't take it too harshly. It does no good to complain about how things are in the world or in your situation. You can't control a lot of things but with what you can control you can do good and help yourself. 

One man was given 10 talents, another 5, another 1, they were then left to their own devices. Sometimes Heavenly Father isn't going to spoon feed you or even help too much with some things in your life, you are supposed to do it by your self and multiply your own talents you are borrowing not just sit there and mope about things. Just something I kind of put together for myself this week and maybe it'll help y'all. I hope you'll take the wisdom and it will help you. 

I challenge y'all to try to allow others to help you if you need it. Sometimes when you are in quick sand you need outside help to get out.

Do you want to know a secret? All the best people are.

With Love, 
Anziano Gridley
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Editor's addition:  I noticed they posted pictures of the incoming missionaries from December on the Mission blog and am adding those of Anziano Gridley, shown here: