Greetings from Bari and surrounding areas

First of all, the package came and I love it. It came on Monday like I predicted. Only glitch was that you need to always say that its worth 5 or 10 dollars because I had to go on an adventure to the post office to go get it. It wasnt a bad adventure though.


I love the outfit (need it too because all my skirts are getting those fuzzy things on it...I think that means I am getting old...1/2 way through, oh and just to point this out before you start counting down, mom, I am actually not coming home in February like you keep mentioning because the transfers are the end of January or early March so I have to decide at some point which one) and thanks for the fruit snacks!!

I love the picture of Caleb and his soccer mates and the picture of Sybil and Zoe from the 80s. Classic. Also, if you send me pictures printed out that I can put in my album thats always great because people love pictures, that goes for everyone. Email pictures are great too though, I love pictures!!

Second first of all, it was great to talk to you/see you on Saturday!!! And you got to meet the famous Fratello Curci. And the look of confusion on your face as he was speaking English was priceless. Now you have a tiny taste of our lives here in Bari..In fact, heres another Fratello Curci highlight from our Corralation meeting last night.

him: which day would be better for you?

after some discussion with Slla Foote

me: Well, I think next Tuesday would be better.

him: What Sorella Laws says is the Law, she is our Moses

me: not exactly.

So aside from the blasphemy he really is an amazing person to work with. A very good heart. Dad, did you get an email from him with a link to all his songs? Did you think it was spam because of the broken English?

Here are some cool stories for the week.

So I sort of told you on the...computer how this lady gave us directions to her house that were kind of vague and without a street name, just a number and the church it was by. But we found her! Her husband said to come back later so we went and found this less active lady (who turns out is the cousin of members we know really well). We get to her door and there is a "Testimoni di Geova don't knock, we are Catholic" and we think. Hm, well, they are Catholic. But we ask for her and her who family is there and then some and she lets us in and we talk to her and her niece for a while and we find out she stopped coming to church when she broke up with her boyfriend who was also a member. And how she is almost never home, but we found her there by chance (but we, of course, dont believe in chance) and then she tells us about this other lady who lives downstairs who used to be a member. So we go downstairs and say hi to her and she's like, "oh, yeah, I am a member of your church" and tells us to come back later. We get home and shes not on the list and asked F. Curci and it turns out she never was a member. Confusing.
Thats on the list of mysteries to solve.

So then we go back and we teach Antonio and Vanna and he is telling us exactly what he thinks about everything, but not in an annoying way and all their children are adorable and well behaved and talented and
we are just in love with all of them.

The other day we were knocking on peoples doors and this guy answers and talks to us and tells us we can come back in 15 minutes when his wife was there, so we did and talk to his wife (who we have seen before but we cant figure out where) and all the sudden he is like, "wait, I'll call the pizzeria and we will get panzarotti!!" and we are like, um, we have another appointment, maybe another time...


So Saturday we are going over there and they called us today to make sure we are still coming. At first we are like, okay, maybe they are kind of crazy and just love us because we are American and we shouldnt make promises to come back. But we showed Nella (the wife) the Plan of Salvation pamphlet and she started reading it right away and admiring the pictures of Jesus and was like, "I really would like to know that there is a life after death" and she definitely feels like a special person.

In the same building was a couple who opened the door and were like, "sure, come back tomorrow afternoon" (which they ended up forgetting) but when we asked their names they said, "Giuseppe and Maria" and their daughter goes, "like the parents of Jesus" So needless to say we have a good feeling about them too.

And another lady, Natasha, who we talked to for an hour on her doorstep and answered lots of her questions. Afterwards she was like, "thank you so much!" but the next time we tried to see her she was on her way out, though she stopped and talked to us for a few minutes.
She has four kids also.

Not only did we find families...we found big families.

I had lots of pictures for this week because we went to some intense airshow with the GANS (giovanni adulti non sposati (giovanni adulti non sposati [young adults that are not married, eloquent, eh?]) where they all flew around and would do a crazy free fall thing pretending like they were crashing and Slla Foote was gasping because sometimes they looked like they were going to crash. But it was in celebration of San. Nicola the patron saint of Bari. It was cool.

And this morning we went to Matera where they have filmed some Italian movies from the New Testament and also Mel Gibson's the Passion because it sort of looks like Israel and it is real pretty and we made friends with 2 Polish girls that speak English and tried to see how fast we could guess what language the tourist groups were speaking and ate overpriced gelato and bought postcards that had been sitting in the sun for maybe years.


Not a bad day.


We missed the train at first so we went to a bookstore downtown and I forgot how much I love bookstores and almost bought Hamlet in Italian, but it really just isnt the same so I bought Harry Potter instead. Which also isnt really the same because apparently they changed McGonagalls name, but we will forgive them.

So look for lots of pictures next week.

Not to make it a competition, but Slla Foote's family has introduced about three different people to the gospel this past month, giving away Book of Mormons and letting the missionaries teach people in their home.
What are you all doing?

Tonight we are going out to pizza with our English Course students because they have been wanting to for weeks and we asked President and he said it was okay as long as it wasnt two men and a secret date and we said no because there are twice as many women as men and they have promised several times to have us back by nine so it should be a good time and
I think they are going to make us eat a lot.

And we are pretending like transfer calls arent coming and we secretly think we are staying together for another six weeks, but we will see...I told president that its not too late to open up Malta to sisters. And I just hope I am not in Sicilia for the summer because I hear its real hot,
but its also hot everywhere.

I love you all, buckets and buckets

un bacio

Sorella Laws