June 16, 2010 - Verona, Italy

Ciao Famiglia!

Last week of transfer 1! I cannot believe a whole transfer is almost complete. Even more shocking, I cannot believe what is happening for transfers! I will be staying in Verona, which is nice because I am just getting the hang of the city a little bit. But Sorella Harper is leaving! My trainer is going to Modena, and the sister I did scambi with last week, Sorella Rossi, is coming here to be my companion! This will be Sorella Rossi's last transfer, and she actually started in Verona a year and a half ago, so people already know her and a few of our new converts she baptized, so this is going to be really interesting and super cool. I so admired how wonderful of a missionary she was when I met her last week, and I am so looking forward to what I will learn from her this transfer. And she speaks Italian really well, so I am sure that will help my Italian as well. I am sad, because Sorella Harper is so much fun and I am really going to miss her, but I am a little more used to the idea now and know it is right, so all will be well.

Sorella Harper makes very good zucchini bread and I have, surprisingly, discovered I like it! Can you even believe I tried it in the first place?

Fruit juice is incredibly popular here. Every time we go to someone's house, whether it is just a random door we have knocked on or a member or an investigator, they give us some really amazing random flavor of fruit juice. It is really fun. One of my favorites is ananas, which is pineapple, and red orange.

People cannot pronounce my name, by the way. They sort of say it like 'long-gum'. One lady wrote down our names, and she wrote down Herper for my companion and london for me. How funny! I almost can't even say my name right anymore, because I just introduce myself like they say it.

We have one amazing woman, a semi investigator right now. She is so amazing. She has a twelve-year-old son who is really cool. We met her on the bus, and ran into them again when we were doing casa in their palazzo. We taught her a lesson and had an appointment to meet her again, and called to confirm the day before only to find out that her son had been hit by a car and is now in the hospital, pretty critical, in a coma. It is so sad. We wanted so badly to help her, the only thing I could think of was bake her something and drop it off the next day, so we did and were hoping to find her at home, and instead randomly met her on the street on our way there! She was so frazzled seeming and keeping so strong and such a good attitude through the whole thing, so we chatted and then told her we had brought her a note (we wrote out Helaman 5:12 for her) and some sweets, and I really thought she was going to break down and cry on the spot, she was so overwhelmingly touched and grateful. And then miraculously she came to church on Sunday just because she felt like she needed to see us and pray together with us! How amazing! We pray often for her and her son.