Italy at Last

(Anziano Wilkinson)

So as many of you already know, I have finally made it to Italy! And if my mom hasn't already told everyone, my first area is Pisa! After thirty-some hours of lugging my bags across two continents and an ocean, I have made it in one piece, thank goodness! By now I'm mostly over the jet lag and am settled in. We really hit the ground running when I got here, cycling all over in the hot, humid weather to reach appointments and what not. I was severely sore for the first few days and I have to drink my weight in water just to stay hydrated, but I can promise all of you back home, there are few things cooler than riding through the streets of Italy on a bike!

We travel by train a lot in this area; the ward boundaries are quite large (yes, pisa has a ward, thankfully!). So one of the prime ways to find people to talk to is on the trains. Italy is a tough crowd to talk religion with though; finding people who will listen to you, let alone who are interested in your message is very, very difficult. The work is difficult, but evidently not impossible, or else I wouldn't be here! My trainer is Anziano Robinson and he and I get along well; he's been a great help for me as I've tried to figure this place out. He's on his 12th transfer, so he's pretty seasoned already.

Sunday night we had an extremely heavy rain storm, which flooded a good potion of the streets and in particular, ours. The water even reached our apartment building and flooded the basement floor (we're okay though, we're on the third floor). Our bikes we're not so lucky on the other hand, since they were in our tiny little garage space. We had to wade through the water a bit to get them out or else spend an hour walking just to get to the church and then another hour to get back. It just occurred to me that I am completely understating the severity of the flood; I'll just post pictures. Oddly enough, this sort of thing isn't really uncommon in Italy I guess, since the emergency infrastructure is well equipped, enough to have cleared out basically all of the flooding within 24 hours. I'm not sure why they don't just fix the gutter system instead, but oh well; this way is for fun for missionaries!

But really though, we are having a great time in Pisa and I can tell that it is going to be a great experience! Until next week, Can't wait to hear from you all soon!

-Anziano Wilkinson