If you know Elder Cox -- you know that he is NOT a big sharer. His letters are clever, but short and there is a definite lack of specific details. That is all fine and dandy -- because we love him anyway.
I will be sharing some tidbits from his letters from the last 4 months -- but first I have a request.
Nathan will turn 19 on SATURDAY, October 31!!!! Happy Birthday Nate!!
The mission has discouraged us from sending packages, so I'm waiting until Christmas to send snail mail.
THAT means that he won't GET anything for his Birthday -- but we can send ALL the emails we want to:
ncox@myldsmail.net
He doesn't need a long letter or even a paragraph -- just send him a quick Birthday Message -- starting today would be great! He would LOVE that and really make his first Italian birthday special.
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| Anziano Cox reading a role play scenario at Taranto Zone Conference |
Now on to the tidbits… which I'm going to do chronologically backwards and NOT all 4 months -- just October. You are welcome. :-) I was pondering shortening them -- but when you read them, you can hear Nate's happy sass and it's hilarious.
October 26 - The long week in the wrong city.
Ciao Belli!
Oggi, pensavo che sarebbe bene se scrivo questo email in italiano. O forse, soltanto l'inizio.
I'm still not sure how much Italian you guys want. I can give a little bit at a time, or I can just full out send only poorly phrased Italian.
Eh. You guys can't tell it's bad.
So this week was lots of traveling. On Monday night, I think, the office called us and told us that Anziano Covalt's permesso is ready! So that meant we had to go to Catania! Catania is in Sicily, which is about a 6 hour train ride away. So this was a three day excursion.
We left Thursday morning. Technically, Thursday afternoon because Italians don't know how to properly organize public transport, but we made it in the end.
We called Catania beforehand to let them know that we were coming. The zone leaders (who is Anziano Pope - Anziano Covalt's trainer-, and Anziano Kawai -my trainer) told us that they would be out of town on a scambio.
Liars.
They picked us up from the train station in the fancy car, and we spent the night in Catania. There is also another companionship in Catania right now whose training, so everyone was either the trainer of one of us, or the trainee. It was a nice three days. I got to see a new city, how the missionary work is there, see Anziano Kawai, and taste some super good Arancini. Also some Sicilian pizza, and American ice cream. Think McDonald's. That's basically what it was. Yummy soft serve.
Did you guys know they have McDonalds here? I don't know if I told you or not. They are on just about every city. And they are fancy. Not American fast food. Classy fast food. I'll take some pics of a McDonald's sometime (if I remember) and show you how swag McDonald's is here.
Friday morning, we went off and picked up Anziano Covalt's permesso. This was probably the simplest permesso pick up I've ever heard of. We walked in, waited in line for ten minutes, got his permesso, and left. Usually it takes a super long time at the police station for them to call you up, and then about a 15 minute process of verifying who you are. But this was super simple. Not complaining at all.
In the afternoon, we went with the other Catania Anziani to a new converts house and taught a lesson about the restoration to him. It was pretty cool.
We left the next morning to head back to Catanzaro, but not before eating ice cream for breakfast at this little stand next to the train station. They sell these brioches for €1.50 that are the size of my
fist. Yum.
That was most of our week. Being in the wrong city, but still trying to do stuff.
Spiritual thought! In Italian!
Oggi, ho letto nel libro di Mormon sulla qualità di pazienza. Sono in secondo Nefi. Lui ha tanta pazienza per i suoi fratelli. Loro sempre fanno le cose male. Mormorano. Vogliono uscire Nefi. Ma sempre, Nefi ha pazienza e carità per loro. Ricordava che loro sono i suoi fratelli, e hanno la stessa opportunità essere pure tramite l'espiazione di cristo. Anche quando Nefi aveva una visione che loro andranno via e fare tutte le male cose, aveva amore.
Now in English.
Today, I read in the Book of Mormon on the attribute of patience. I'm in 2nd Nephi right now. He had a bunch of patience for his brothers. They were always doing the wrong things. They murmured. They wanted to kill Nephi. But always, he had patience and charity for them. He remembered that they are his brothers, and they have he same opportunity to be clean through the Atonement of Christ. Even when he had a vision that they would go away and just be bad, he had love.
Anziano Cox
October 19 - Facciamo la spezza e poi andiamo al parco.
**we asked him to write in Italian more -- because it's cool.**
Should I put English translations next to the Italian, or should I leave it to google translate? For now, I'm a bit lazy with not so much time, so google translate will have to pick up my slack. I may have forgotten an accent in there somewhere. Sue me.
Did you know that Italians don't have the following in their language?
K- it's always a c.
J- it's always a soft g. Such as ginormous.
The "th" sound. I tried getting an Italian to say he was born on the thirtieth this pass week in English course. The poor guy.
Any other questions about the language? No?
ANDIAMO AVANTI.
So first, the week. We had some sick lessons, some super cool people, and some awesome
sights to see this week.
Lessons, you ask? On Friday, we did a lesson with our neighbor. She wants to be baptized in the church. She likes the doctrine, she's reading the Book of Mormon, asking all those great questions, BUT her parents don't want her to join another church. SO, we are probably going to go over to their house next week and teach them the restoration, and show them that the Mormons are a'ight!
That was probably the most memorable lesson this week.
Also this week, we were waiting for a contact in a park. We had about 45 minutes to kill, and there was no one in the park. So, we went to the museum that is in the middle of the park. It's a military museum that has stuff that goes all the way back to the napoleon era. Crazy stuff. The funny thing is, it's open every day of the week except for Monday. Our p-day. So we can't go and explore it more in depth. But, it was a super cool museum.
Another thing..... We finally have internet in the church again! And running water!! You never realize how much you take these things for granted until you don't have them anymore.
Now..... Spiritual thought! Woohoo!
So, this morning in fact, I was reading the Book of Mormon. Go figure. Right now I'm in 2 Nephi, chapter 4(ish), and I just finished it. Chapter 4, for those of you who don't know, is when Lehi dies and Nephi mourns for a while. In his mourning, he isn't really sad for his father's death. He knows
the plan of salvation. He knows where he's at. He's sad, but not devastated. He's mourning a lot about his shortcomings. About his weaknesses. About his struggles. I mean, he was only human. He made mistakes too. He may have been a prophet, but he wasn't perfect.
But the thing that he always brings it back to is his trust in God. He recognizes his shortcomings and relies on God to help him overcome them. And he knows that God can help him overcome anything.
Anziano Cox
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| I love this picture from August with his cheesy grin. Anziano Cox & Anziano Kawai with the Mission Pres looking on… |
October 12 -- Waves shouldn't be that color.
So this week has been full of some fun stuff!
I am loving the little emails from you all. They are super fun, and I wish I could send some in return.
**we have been trying to send him SHORT emails everyday for his Birthday Month -- since we can't send a package of Birthday stuff.**
Alas, I got one day to write and send. So let's get to it!!!
First off, this week has been super stormy. Hence the title.
Because.....
When it gets stormy it Italy, it gets windy too.
When it gets windy, a lot of stuff gets blown around.
When stuff gets blown around, some of it ends up in the ocean.
When enough gets in the ocean, it starts to get dirty.
When it gets dirty, the water turns brown.
So we had brown waves this week.
It was a bit startling to see that, but cool nonetheless.
It's been a fun week showing Anziano Covalt the ropes in Catanzaro. We've had some cool lessons with some super cool people. And I'm hoping that we will continue to work hard and succeed.
So, this week in English course, we had a cool experience happen.
We have an investigator who has started reading the Book of Mormon who comes to English course,cans we've been meeting with her a bit before every English course to answer any questions she has. While we were doing that, a couple other English course students came in and started asking questions about the Book of Mormon too. We ended up have 2 different lessons going on at the same time for these students. It was a cool class.
Anziano Cox
October 5 - I'm in charge?!?!?
This week was cray!
I meant to type crazy, but I'm gonna stick with that. So Thursday was my first real transfer. I said goodbye to Anziano Kawai, and said hello to my new companion, Anziano Covalt! He's closer to me in age, but I'm still younger. He's 19, and he's from San Diego. He's been in the mission six weeks less than I have. So I'm in charge. It's pretty interesting being in charge. My pride is growing tremendously (not really) and I'm completely independent (again, relying heavily on the Lord in this case.)
It's been a good first three days on the transfer. We watched general conference with some members, because the Internet in the church still isn't working. So we watched conference in Italian. It was nice, but I'm also DEFINITELY gonna download the talks in English and put listen to them. It's gonna be a while before we have a regular Sunday here. This week is conference, and next week all of the Ranieri's are in Bari for some seminary thing. It's gonna be interesting have half as many people in church.
I'm totally loving the email a day thing for October. I'm a fan of this birthday month.
Now for the spiritual thought.
So in my last lesson with Anziano Kawai, I had the spiritual thought. And I decided to talk about the first point of the restoration. How God is our loving Heavenly Father. This is one of the points that I've been learning a lot about on my mission. It's definitely a foreign concept for a lot of people. That He isn't just our Creator. He's literally our Father. And being our Father, He loves us as children. Because we ARE His children. We should always remember that, no matter how we feel, how good or how bad, we can always turn to Him for help.
We need to remember this basic truth. Everything in the gospel is because of His love for us.
Anziano Cox
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