Ciao!
This week was amazing!! We get our
travel papers tonight after dinner!! I got to welcome Courtney... eeerrrr
Sister York to the MTC!! I got to see the eclipse!! and all other sorts of
exciting stuff!!
This Monday was the eclipse.
We basically spent a whole class period outside and talked to our teacher in
Italian while waiting for the eclipse. It was weird. It got super
dark, and cold. Luckily there were some missionaries who had the cool
glasses thingies and they were super nice and let my whole district use them.
Two of the districts in our zone
were selected to be the missionary hosts on Wednesday. I was so
stoked! Fortunately I was stationed outside of the New building where
Courtney has class, so we got to talk for a bit! It was probably my favorite
part of this week. It was super weird though because I was authorized to
be without my companion for that time period. I have been with Sorella
Pacheco 24 hours 7 days a week for the last month. It was super weird to
not have her around. Wednesday just happened to be the day that our
district had decided to go on an English fast. There was another Elder
working the doors with me, and his district was also having an English fast.
(He is going to Taiwan) So for the first five minutes we were both
speaking in our mission languages. It was super fun and cool. We
actually understood some of what the other person was saying. Then later
he left me and I was all by myself. That was weird. I was like 30
feet away from my classroom, and Anziano Kjar kept waving at me from our
classroom. And Anziano Gomez and Empey waved at me from the other
classroom, so that was fun, lol.
So four-square has taken over my
life, lol. It is so much fun! We have this feud going on between
the French and the Italians. We have very similar ideas for the rules,
and what is okay to do in foursquare, so now we just play foursquare together
every day. Anziano Empey and Elder Bearington are like the two
leaders. Within each nation you have little groups. Anziano Empey,
Anziano Dunn, and I usually are a team, and Sorella Pacheco usually teams up
with me or the other Sorella Nelson (yep, there are two of us). It gets
really awkward when it is Anziano Empey, Dunn, and Sorella Pacheco and I are
the four players. The Anziani know I won’t go against my collega, but we’re
a team, so usually we play nice, and someone makes a mistake and gets
themselves out. Or it will be girls against guys, or A and D square go
against B and C. It’s fun, lol.
Anziano Empey actually got his
appendix taken out last week. In his priesthood blessing he was blessed
that he would heal quickly. Less than 24 hours after surgery he was in
class. We was in a wheel chair for like three days, and on the fourth day
he was playing foursquare, beating Elder Bearington. It was awesome.
It was actually really funny because
Anziano Empey was working one of the elevators that I was sending missionaries
to, and Courtney happened to be going that way, so I told her to ask him how
his appendix was doing. His reaction afterwards was hilarious.
In the past we have been able to
teach our teachers who have pretended to be investigators, and we also teach
people that come in, or we skype actual Italians. All of these lessons
are in Italian. It is very cool. Now they have changed it up.
We are now the investigators and one of the companionships in our district
teaches us. Basically we pick someone we know that we have shared the
gospel with, or wish we had shared the gospel with, and we act how they would
act (in our minds). It sounds really weird, but it is awesome! It
is my favorite part of the day. It gives you a really good perspective,
what is confusing, what wouldn't they understand, etc. I am, (well, my
alternative persona) is being taught by Anziano Welch and Wilks. They are
awesome. So far they have given really good lessons on how the gospel
strengthens families, that you can live with your family for all eternity, and
how there is a prophet on the earth today. The hardest part is coming up
with something they can improve. I guess it’s good that It is hard for me
to think of something, lol. Sorella Pacheco and I are only taught once
every two days, but we teach every day. One day we teach 3 investigators
(Matt, Eric, and Daniela) The next day we teach Matt and are taught as our
simpatizanti (investigators). We are the only collega (companionship)
that teaches that much or that frequently, and poor Anziano Haws (playing Matt)
has to be taught by us every day.
Speaking of Sorella Pacheco, We are
soooooo in each other’s heads. Yesterday we were in a meeting with all of
the Sorelle working on organizing the musical number we were going to sing, and
they needed a volunteer for the closing prayer. I said I can at the same
time she rose her hand. We do things like that all the time. We
have the same thoughts, and we even sometimes start singing the same song at
the same time. It’s awesome, but also a little scary, lol. We are also
really good on building off of each other in lessons, or in meetings,
etc. One day we decided to play a prank on li Anziani. We both had
the idea to switch the desks around. And then we decided to leave one
companionship's desks the same so that they would think it was them. It
would have worked, but we both are really bad liars, and our faces gave us
away.
Something else that is funny about
the two of us is that we both lose track of time super easily (I know, me? lose
track of time? never....) That is one of companionship goals, to be
better with time. But, something super cool, is that even though we have
terrible sense of time, we always finish our lessons at the exact right
time. Regardless of how long we have to teach we finish right when we are
supposed to. That has to be Heavenly Father looking out for us because we
never know how long anything is.
We were setting goals for the rest
of our time here in the MTC. One of my goals is to use less than 50
English words a day. I start tomorrow. I was going to start today,
but Sorella Ewing (my AF friend who's family is living in Germany) and Sorella
Pacheco wanted me to speak in English on Pday. (apparently my sunshine
personality is muffled when my vocabulary is a lot smaller.) I can
promise you I speak the same amount of words (if not more) when I'm only
speaking in Italian, but a lot less makes it across. For example, have
you ever tried to tell a story about the time you got into a balloon sword
fight with a friend, and ended up tripping on the hem of your pants and almost
knocking yourself out on the balcony of the boys dorms, without knowing the
word for balloon, or sword, or dorm, or hem? Considering that was a very
specific example, you probably haven't, lol. It is really hard, and by
the time you have managed to use all of the descriptive words you know, and
lots of body language, the story isn't funny anymore. So we have
compromised. P day and when I’m in the dorm at night I can speak English.
(and when I am speaking to someone who doesn't speak Italian, obviously.)
It's weird not having Marshall
around. I still run into Joseph though, so that's fun!
Vi voglio bene!
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