Beginning 2nd Month in Italy

It has been a wonderful week.  Yesterday was Flavia's baptism.  There were about 14 non members there from her family and friends.  They came from the minimum of one and a half hours away, to 5 hours away.  All of them are so supportive of her.  There were about five non members from our town who have come to support her as well.  So we had about 40 people there, which is about twice as many that come on Sundays.  Today they all returned for sacrament meeting to see her confirmed. We had testimonies afterwards which were very inspiring.  One  12 year old boy who is a non member but is the grandson of a new member, wrote his testimony out and  asked the branch president to read it today because he was too nervous to give it out loud himself.  But you could tell that he had thought about it all week and had planned it a head of time.  I couldn't believe how wonderful that was.
Just before sacrament meeting a councilor in the area presidency drops by our brand, and asked if he could talk to Paul and I upstairs.  He then calls Paul to be the new branch president.  We were both so sad to not have our current branch president continue in his calling.  He is so wonderful and is so dedicated.  He and his wife have the only children in The branch.  They adopted them 2 years ago from Mexico.  He became the branch president right after that and he has done such a great job.  He doesn't have any councilors  and so I am sure he is overwhelmed with his responsibilities and his ready made new family. He lives about a half an hour away from the church.  We are just right across the street but we were hoping to be a councilor and support him.  This is pretty overwhelming.  There are only about four priesthood men in our branch + the two young elders and Paul, making 7.  I guess that is better than one branch here in Italy that had just two males in the ward and one was only  two years old!
Paul is now reading the branch president handbook which is all in italian.  Even though his italian is ally good there are so many words he doesn't know so he h his dictionary right next to him and he is learning lots of new words as well as his new duties.
I got called as a visiting teacher today and i get to go with a darling lady that I love already.  No one has ever done visiting teaching here before, so this will be a good chance to help.
We had all of Flavia's family here yesterday before the baptism for lunch.  I cooked all day Friday and I think that all of it turned out pretty good.  They liked the orange jello the best.  Italians don't have jello.  They were amazed that it had bananas in it.  One person was brave and tried it first.  Everyone asked his opinion.  When it was positive, a few others tried it and then a few more until everyone had some.  They all liked it, I think.