Construction in Bologna!

Email: September 25, 2013

Attached is a picture of the Duomo in Centro. Its under construction though. They are redoing the front as it started to fall apart...

Cool story I guess: some catholic leader a billionish years ago wanted to be more powerful than the Pope so he started building his chruch (the Duomo in Bologna) and was making it bigger than the one in Milano. The Pope didnt like that and canceled the building of it and made a rule that no chruch could be bigger than the Duomo in Milano. So the Bologna Duomo never was finished as planned. 

Well this week was great, the missionaries in Ferarra were "white washed" two new elders last trasfer so they had no idea of the investigators or who to get around the city. Both came in blind to the area basically. They had a miracle 2 week baptism! 

The sorelle in Reggio Emilia will baptize this weekend and we shoiuld baptize on the 12th!

Zone leader is fun, its really rewarding too. 

Also, our church is under consturction. they are redoing all the inside. New tile and tearing down a wall to make it bigger, new bathrooms, ect. So we are renting a British Institute, a english school, so we have church in a school right by the train station. We will move into our "new" church by Christmas....or maybe longer...but lets hope not.   

Also, we had to take a missionary to the train station this past week. The Italian who is in my apartment. He has medical problems and had to go home. That was a weird issue. President Dibb called at night right before bed and told us to take him to the train station and get him to Milano the next morning. Super short notice and he had to pack super quick. 

So that left Anziano Cook alone with out a companion so I was in a trio with him. The EXACT SAME trio I was in for a week in Piacenza! Super crazy! Flash back! haha We were in a trio for a few days and Anz. Cook recieved his companion monday afternoon. 

Thanks for all your love and support.

Love Anziano Edwards!

Bologna Duomo

Super old and super small Mini Cooper

Church under construction in Bologna

Remodeling the church building

Inside church reconstruction

"Mr. Cloud"

Email: September 18, 2013

I use my shoe horn every day and I switch shoes daily, every other day. I slacked off a little on shining them, but I shine them every two or three weeks and wipe them with a rag every other day because we walk a white sand/dirt path everyday through a park so they get dusty.  
I did not take a picture of me and the car, I didnt have my camera and the first week we gave it to the zone leaders in Torino as they had a bigger need for it. :( it was a Opel Corsa. An ugly grey color. haha
They do not make that fake bologna meat here! Gross! I have never seen or even heard of it in Italy. Bologna, Firenze and the little cities near by are know for the best food in Italy. Spaghetti Bolognese is famous here.
My favorite food is gelato :) haha Well best food would be a lasagna, anything the South Americans make or a carbonara. Oh and a real homemade Pesto Genovese with gnocchi or Fusilli is amazingly tasty!.
My favorite school year was 12th grade, 5th or kindergarden. But the best school years were in elementary school because I didnt have to go to the crapy bobcat school hahah jk, but I loved the buccaneer bazaars in elementary school.
Bathrooms in Italy are like 1 euro. Quite expensive. You find very few public bathrooms. I have seen a few train stations with free bathrooms, super dirty though, and in a few parks maybe. I just use the one in the appartment in the morining, at lunch and then hope we have an appointment in the church of an appointment at someones home haha.
I send an email from a public internet place. It is 50 cents for 30 min. Most cities have the internet caffe for years so they often get discounted internet. There is one city in the mission that gets free internet becuse they made friends with the owner. The one here in Bologna is really nice and isnt dirty. The one in Vicenza was really gross with scary people.  
This week was great! We have two people with baptismal dates so we should baptize twice this transfer. Also the other bologna Anziani will baptize and everyone in the zone too! Bologna zone is one of the best zones as far as finding, teaching and baptizing. We are the smallest zone too becuause right before I came, they split Bologna in half and made a new zone, the Ravenna zone. So now San Marino is in the Ravenna zone so I cant go there for p day :(
Our investigator from Gahna  gave me the wizard name "Mr. Cloud" becuase he says I am wispy and come and go as I please just like the clouds haha he is the funniest guy, I love him!
Coolest news ever. Sunday was stake confrence fro the Venezia Stake. So we watched it via satilite and they announced the men who will be getting the Melchizedek Preisthood. They read the name William from Udine! The william that I found and baptized! He is solid in the church and really making eternal progression! It was super awesome. I was the happiest missionary every I'm sure.
Cool spiritual thought! I was reading in 3 nephi 11:39-40. I had the thought of the rock vs sand. The rock is the strong foundation that doest change. But sand is the same as a rock, one is just compacted together so its stronger. So, we are all on a sandy foundation but we need to compact it so it doest fall apart when the though times come. We will have have the though times so we need to prepare now as it teaches in Alma 34:32.
Well Capo Zona is great! It helps that I have an amazing and super funny companion, but we have a buch of success and lead the zone for lesson taught, which happens to be one of the highest in the mission. We are well above the mission averages in all key indicators and the zone is too! We rock! hahaha, but really we are a strong zone.
Well until next week!  Ciao!
Anziano Edwards :)  

The middle of the city area. (centro) in Bologna

Bologna, Big Improvement, and Growth

Email: September 11, 2013

Bologna is a bus city, which mean it is a big city :( I dislike the big cities! But big city=a big branch or a ward so that is always a help and a benefit :)

As capo zona I travel to Milano the first Monday of each month and we get trained on the months focus by president and the assistents, then that week on thursday we as zone leaders hold a zone meeting and we teach all the zone members. 

We collect the weeks numbers from the district leaders and then input them all into the computer to the assistents(lesson count, progressing simps, referals, baptism al dates and baptisms ect.)

We then help teach and train in zone meeting which are 1 each trasfer except for this trasfer because Elder Teixierà is coming to the mission the 22-24 of oct. That will be really good! We are all really excited.

We have a ward, but a really small one, like 65 maybe in church. 

In my zone, there are 3 cities, and some cities have more than one companionship:

Bologna (me) 

Bologna 2

Ferarra 

Reggio Emilio 1

Reggio Emilio 2

Reggio Emilio Sorelle

Modena 1

Modena 2

I live in 4 and its really fun. My room mates are great! The Itlaian is from Taranto. All great missionaries. 

Cool sutff is in Bologna we are appartment shopping. as soon as we find one and get it approved, and bought, we will have 1 or maybe 2 companionships of sorelle here in Bologna! 

All are really young except for a few missionaries. A few people in training. So in total there are 14 anziai and 

Bologna is a really old city and is famous for having the most arches and cover walkways in the world. Nearly all sidewalks are covered with arches. 

We had a car, but we had to give it up and now the capi zona in Torino have our car :( I did drive in Italy before we had to give it away and we didnt die! hahaha, Italian driving is crazy but super fun.

Exciting news in Italy! The temple in rome is going to be done in 2015...its takes for ever to build anything here, plus the temple in Rome is HUGE and super super super amazing. So much cool things there! It will make an impact in the world, it already has. Plus, it is located right in the middle of Rome. :) But the best part is on Sunday, there will be a second stake opened in rome, it will split from one into two! The true church is growing! I think Elder Ballard will be comming over for it. I dont remember which quarm of the 12 will be in Italy this weekend. 

25% of the missionaries are being trained, aka, the mission is full of super young missionaries. 4 went home last week and 30ish came to replace them!

Some mission stats, when I came last year, there were 7 zones I think, now there are 10. There were 130 missionaries, now we have 234ish. This last trasfer (6 weeks) we had like 25 baptims. Last year we averaged just under 2 baptims a missionary and now we average like 3. Not sure on that one 100%....

Well I am loving life and the mission is the best thing ever!

Love your favorite missionary ;)

Anziano Edwards

There are these things that look like legos and they are all over teh city to advertize for some art show somthing or another. I like them just because thay are like gigantic legos! 

Last p-day with Anziano Gainer

Roberto and Angela, our gelato guys, thay gave us gelato cheap because we went alot....maybe like average of 4 times a week...maybe once a day....hahaha gelato is super good and plus these two are maybe the coolest Italians in Genova. Also, they would try to teach us Genovese(the dialect oin Genova) 

People from my MTC group. My group is 5 sorelle and 5 anziani.

We alstarted trasfer 9. 4 of the 5 sorelle are traveling trainer sorelle and 3 (one not pictured) of us anziani are zone leaders! Fun stuff! 

Worn out Shoes

Capo Zona

Email: September 4, 2013

Why are the temples so exquisite/fancy inside?; kind of depicts worldliness and boasting. Because the Lord said to use the best material for his holy house. It is respect to the Lord. Would you want to put an old dirty couch into the Lords house? No. Our church is not a worldly church, we are the ture church with the authority, but obviously we are not going to dirty and such. Our chaples are nice and not exquisite, just simple nice and clean, how the lord would want it. My thoughts are that the Lord or God would not appear to anyone  unless is is a consecrated place prepared the Him. Other churches are very fancy on the insides and often times the outsides....I have seen many of them. They are really nice but they are statues and pictures of other people to be warshiped to  other than God himself. We need to remember our nature to God and his Son, our Savior. If we do this, we will know that we need to obey HIm and understand they His house doesnt need to be suepr fancy, just nice. The temple to me is nice, its not over the top and not worldly at all. Clean and simple, and beauty all around. Hope that made sense :)

I have never seen corn on the cob in Italy.  My favorite veggie here is all of them! Nothing has changed. I do miss corn on the boc ALOT! Anziano Gainer will only eat corn if it was on the cob, so when I cooked lunch with canned corn, there was more for me! haha

Well transfers, or as I know them as trasferimenti, I am getting transfered :( I will be going to Bologna to be with Anziano Thompson (the same Anziano that I was with in Piacenza for 1 week in a trio. Anziano Cook, who was also in my trio will be living the the same appartmemt! :) I knew I would see them again, Anziano Cook told me I would be his leader in the near future. 

Well to get to the good stuff, I am going to be CAPO ZONA! or maybe you would understand, ZONE LEADER! Yeah no jokes! Zone leader in my 9th trasfer! Scary, exciting, fun, nervous, yeah everything. I am ready and willing to go. 

Funny part of trasfers is we get called on Monday morning if you are a zone leader, district leader or training and we didnt get a call so we were really confused. Then the assistents called us at 8 at night! and told us sorry as they gave presidente Dibb the list to call the zone leaders and district leaders and they forgot to put my name on the list! So I was supposed to get a call from Presidente Dibb, but the assistents messed up. 

It was such a supprize! I would have never guessed to go zone leader so young in the mission! My trainer is also a zone leader so I will get to see him the first of every month as we have mission council with all zone leaders and president and the financial mission couple. Exciting stuff! I will let you know if I die because of all the stress and stuff to do. It will be really exciting.

Also, in the apartment, there is a native Italain being trained so that will be a realy help for the language. 

Well have a great week, I love you all!

Ciao!

-Anziano Capo Zona Edwards

The mafia....hahah funny you ask. Honestly I dont know much about it, there are all sorts of misisonary stories that flote around, usualy about how the Rome mission does stuff wrong and they are all apostate. They one story I have is there was a companionship whe went out in the moring to find they car was stolen. They went back inside and their neighbor was leaving the appartment building at the same time and asked how they were doing, which led to them telling their car was stolen. This man said, come back in three hours at lunch time, smiles, and walks away as he knew the missionaries were of the Mormon church. This man was part of the mafia and had the missionaries car back and even washed and cleaned by lunch.
I dont really beleve the story, but hey, its cool I guess.
I do know the mafia likes the mormon church because they are not part of the government or the catholic church. So the story makes sence. The Mafia is scary but actualy really like and respect the LDS church, so as missionaries we dont worry about them at all. Plus, the Mafia is basicaly 99% down in the Rome mission.