18 Agosto 2009
Buon Giorno Famiglia Mia!
How is everything going? Hopefully all is well.
So, one more week down---we leave four weeks from yesterday. Next week will be a pretty exciting week. We have a district of 3 people who are leaving for Milan on Monday. They have to fly on a German airline after they stop in Frankfurt though, and they can only have one carry-on and it has to be under 18 pounds. We're hoping we'll have the same as the other Catanians---Delta, which allows two carry-ons---one can be 40 pounds and the other is just a "personal item."
And then on Wednesday of next week we should be getting new Catania missionaries, but we aren't sure how many will come yet.
The district that is leaving is way interesting though, it will be weird for them to leave. They have Anziano Malku, who is Albanian and was a Muslim until he was 14 and learned about the church and told his grandpa he didn't want his inheritance. He's very enthusiastic about missionary work---his dad isn't a member yet but he's working on it. And it's interestingto have an international missionary in the MTC. And they have Anziano Mangrum who is an MIT student and pretty good at piano. He's also learning Albanian from Malku.
And Anziano Portineri, who was born in Milan and moved here when he was 4, and the family stopped speaking Italian when he was 6 because they wanted his Dad to learn English so he forgot all the Italian. But his grandma and aunts and uncles still live in Milan. One uncle is in jail because he's in the mafia, so he's going to try and teach them.
We've been here a month! We started teaching Italian in the TRC yesterday. We had already been teaching Fratello Fife in Italian, so it wasn't as terrifying as it might have been. It is still weird to teach in a different language---actually it's still weird to teach. No wonder missions are exhausting. You're supposed to be friends with investigators so they trust you to tell you what they have issues with, you're supposed to personalize each lesson, and you're supposed to know all the stuff well enough that you can change your prepared lesson at the last second. It takes a lot of preparation.
We are also losing BOTH of our teachers, which is pretty sad. Fratello Fife's last day is this Saturday, and he's been teaching at the MTC forever, they're kicking him out now. So he's going to teach a Freshman English class at BYU. The class he's teaching is at the same time as Italian TRC, so he's pretty disappointed he can't volunteer and be a tough investigator (a lot of the volunteers REALLY feed us the lessons, it's kind of weird).
And Sorella Jones is now the boss of the Italian teachers. She's taking one class at BYU right now though which means she can't go over 30 hours a week. So she can't teach us anymore.
We're getting a new teacher---Fratello Stubbs---who just got back from Catania a few weeks ago. Hopefully he's a decent teacher, it will be interesting to have a change, although we're not necessarily excited about it.
On Sunday we didn't get to watch movies because the fireside speaker spoke for 30 minutes longer than he was supposed to. It was kind of dumb. They gave him 40+ minutes to speak already, and he just dragged it out forever, and it wasn't particularly exciting, it was just an analysis of the missionary mission statement, which all of our teachers have gone through with us anyway. It seemed pretty obnoxious to me, when we have such a rigid schedule, to go so long over, but oh well.
Relief Society was really good. Relief Society here is like a devotional just for girls, all the sisters meet together and they get a different woman every week to speak to us. This week Susan Tanner spoke to us, about catching the spirit of Relief Society. I always forget to bring my notes when I write letters though, so I don't have specifics, sorry. :(
P-days are nice, it's nice to have a chance to go to the temple, and weird that I won't get to go the whole time I'm on a mission. I think Alex gets to go to the Buenos Aires Temple once a month. If they had started the Rome temple when they announced it then maybe we could help at the open house, but I don't think they've broken ground yet so it will still be a while on that one.
Well, time for another new week. We're singing "Where can I turn for peace?" in choir tonight, and we're hoping for a general authority one of these days. Devotionals are usually good though, I like them. Firesides have gotten a little iffy lately, they called a new music director and she only picks the most obscure songs in the hymnbook, and it doesn't matter much if the words are on a screen when you've never heard the tune.
Well, I love you all very much, have a wonderful week.
Vi amo!
Eliza
How is everything going? Hopefully all is well.
So, one more week down---we leave four weeks from yesterday. Next week will be a pretty exciting week. We have a district of 3 people who are leaving for Milan on Monday. They have to fly on a German airline after they stop in Frankfurt though, and they can only have one carry-on and it has to be under 18 pounds. We're hoping we'll have the same as the other Catanians---Delta, which allows two carry-ons---one can be 40 pounds and the other is just a "personal item."
And then on Wednesday of next week we should be getting new Catania missionaries, but we aren't sure how many will come yet.
The district that is leaving is way interesting though, it will be weird for them to leave. They have Anziano Malku, who is Albanian and was a Muslim until he was 14 and learned about the church and told his grandpa he didn't want his inheritance. He's very enthusiastic about missionary work---his dad isn't a member yet but he's working on it. And it's interestingto have an international missionary in the MTC. And they have Anziano Mangrum who is an MIT student and pretty good at piano. He's also learning Albanian from Malku.
And Anziano Portineri, who was born in Milan and moved here when he was 4, and the family stopped speaking Italian when he was 6 because they wanted his Dad to learn English so he forgot all the Italian. But his grandma and aunts and uncles still live in Milan. One uncle is in jail because he's in the mafia, so he's going to try and teach them.
We've been here a month! We started teaching Italian in the TRC yesterday. We had already been teaching Fratello Fife in Italian, so it wasn't as terrifying as it might have been. It is still weird to teach in a different language---actually it's still weird to teach. No wonder missions are exhausting. You're supposed to be friends with investigators so they trust you to tell you what they have issues with, you're supposed to personalize each lesson, and you're supposed to know all the stuff well enough that you can change your prepared lesson at the last second. It takes a lot of preparation.
We are also losing BOTH of our teachers, which is pretty sad. Fratello Fife's last day is this Saturday, and he's been teaching at the MTC forever, they're kicking him out now. So he's going to teach a Freshman English class at BYU. The class he's teaching is at the same time as Italian TRC, so he's pretty disappointed he can't volunteer and be a tough investigator (a lot of the volunteers REALLY feed us the lessons, it's kind of weird).
And Sorella Jones is now the boss of the Italian teachers. She's taking one class at BYU right now though which means she can't go over 30 hours a week. So she can't teach us anymore.
We're getting a new teacher---Fratello Stubbs---who just got back from Catania a few weeks ago. Hopefully he's a decent teacher, it will be interesting to have a change, although we're not necessarily excited about it.
On Sunday we didn't get to watch movies because the fireside speaker spoke for 30 minutes longer than he was supposed to. It was kind of dumb. They gave him 40+ minutes to speak already, and he just dragged it out forever, and it wasn't particularly exciting, it was just an analysis of the missionary mission statement, which all of our teachers have gone through with us anyway. It seemed pretty obnoxious to me, when we have such a rigid schedule, to go so long over, but oh well.
Relief Society was really good. Relief Society here is like a devotional just for girls, all the sisters meet together and they get a different woman every week to speak to us. This week Susan Tanner spoke to us, about catching the spirit of Relief Society. I always forget to bring my notes when I write letters though, so I don't have specifics, sorry. :(
P-days are nice, it's nice to have a chance to go to the temple, and weird that I won't get to go the whole time I'm on a mission. I think Alex gets to go to the Buenos Aires Temple once a month. If they had started the Rome temple when they announced it then maybe we could help at the open house, but I don't think they've broken ground yet so it will still be a while on that one.
Well, time for another new week. We're singing "Where can I turn for peace?" in choir tonight, and we're hoping for a general authority one of these days. Devotionals are usually good though, I like them. Firesides have gotten a little iffy lately, they called a new music director and she only picks the most obscure songs in the hymnbook, and it doesn't matter much if the words are on a screen when you've never heard the tune.
Well, I love you all very much, have a wonderful week.
Vi amo!
Eliza
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