baptism - the hottest of hot

Well well this week has been anything but boring! To break the news fast I got transferred to Reggio Calabria! I am right on the toe of the boot! Right across from Sicilia. You literally can see Sicilia just across the bay! 

Transfers and traveling have been so crazy. It was really sad saying goodbye to Lucky and so many of our other friends and investigators and just to leave Cagliari. Anziano Hunsaker and I were joking that president Pickerd was looking at our companionship and thought it was just going to good so he had to shake things up. Haha I am grateful for everything I learned in Cagliari. 

Here in Reggio Calabria the work is very different. It's a small branch of around 12 members and we are the only missionaries in our city. I am follow-up training my companion Anziano Cooney and I feel such a big weight to keep the work going and strengthen this little branch.

Back up to before transfers, me and another missionary in my zone were expected to fly out of Cagliari Thursday morning, but just before on Wednesday afternoon we found out that instead of leaving at 8:10 Thursday morning we would be leaving 8:10 in the evening on Thursday. I was so happy because I hadn't even started packing my bags. Haha so Thursday night we left for Rome. We were in Rome for approximately 50 minutes because we literally got off the plane and then got on the next one for Catania, Sicilia. We landed after 11:00 at night and then got taken to the Catania Anziani's apartment to sleep. We didn't get to bed until 1:00 in the morning! It was rough. I have not done that in awhile! Haha the next day we headed to the train station only to stop at a couple bars for the long missed Sicilian food. Let me tell ya, Sardegna has good food, but nothing is like Sicilian food! Taking a bite into an arancino was like coming home! After that we went to Messina where I met my companion and then took a boat and went across to Reggio Calabria. 

The next day, Saturday, was highly-anticipated because I had found out just a few days before that there would be a baptism of a women named Anna! It was crazy to go to the baptism and meet her for the first time AT her baptism. Haha nothing like an awesome welcome to a new city! Saturday morning we got a ride with members up to a town called Locri where Anna and her husband live. To make things even cooler the baptism was in the sea! It was a beautiful service and afterward we went to their house with family members and branch members to eat lunch. I will look forward to getting to know them over the coming weeks. Haha

One great thing about Calabria that I have seen is that they love spicy food! I didn't think that was really thing in Italy at all because from what I've seen Italians don't really care much for spicy food. But at the lunch the branch president made a joke that he wouldn't sit down until there were peperoncino's on the table so after that comment, I knew I was home. They have this thing where they just take a bit of olive oil, put it in a jar, and then basically gut out the seedy-hot insides of a bunch of peperoncino peppers and let it sit for along time so the olive oil just gets flavored with the hottest of hot. It is SOOO hot, but good if you just put a little bit. Haha

That's all for this week, love you all! Anziano Stucki

Me after I arrived in Reggio Calabria. It just rained which was probably the first time I've really seen a good amount of rain in my whole mission. That is Sicilia behind me in the picture.

​Me and my new companion Anziano Cooney!

​A member had this grape vine growing on his house and we stopped by his house and the drive back down to Reggio from Locri after the baptism and he gave us some. We are in a town called Anoia here.

​An arancino!

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