‏ 9 Feb 2010 settimana 3!

Family! Friends! Ciao!

Week 3 will be over as of tomorrow...how is that possible?! I feel like I've been here an entire 18 months, and then it feels like a moment ago when I was brutally pushed out of the car and dumped on the MTC curbside.

This morning started early, at 3:30, when we took Sorella Naslund to the bus for the airport. There were deer in the parking lot! Then, seeing that it was 4:00 and we had an hour before Sorella Lloyd had to leave, we creeped into the cafeteria and ate cereal. It was like a Jurassic Parks scene- huge cafeteria, empty kitchens, dim light, etc. We took pics,....soon to come Ü

TOMMY! Guess what? Our district goes to the TRC every Monday at 1:00 (LENORA!!!) and I've been assigned to teach with Pickett for the next couple of weeks seeing that her district just left....so we went in to teach lesson #2 in italian about the plan of salvation, and there were 2 young men. Our scenario was that they were Buddhists and we met them while shopping at a store and we returned to teach them the lesson. One of the guys kept refusing our invites to pray or to read and by the time we walked out, we felt like shaking our fists at him. That's when he calls after us 'Sorella, I served with your brother! I'm Fife'. So Tommy. I racked my brain trying to remember if you liked him or not, and the strange thing is that I think you did enjoy having him as a companion. He either transformed, or he's a good actor. I doubt it's the latter. Bahaha. I'm joking. I'm a missionary. I think the best of everyone and I don't joke about wretched things like a poor individual having no sense of humor. WELL. We got back at him. I have a sore throat and raspy mans voice, and we sang 'families are forever' to them...not once, but TWICE. We thought that was sufficient punishment.

Sundays are the best days here EXCEPT for the incredibly, unbelievably, undescribably HARD seats! I barely could sit through our last devotional, when President Hinckely's son came and spoke to us. Being in the choir is wonderful, but it fazes me how they get enough to fill the choir when the seats are as hard as they are. Do people have secret padding there? Do they shift their weight so their rears don't make contact with the chairs at all? I can't help but wonder. And be amazed. If there's one thing I'm in need of, it's a butt cushion. Sor Pickett, the intelligent one, has developed into a scavenger and she really does. In the cafeteria, she zooms around with her tray and comes back with the widest assortment of food that most never see displayed (I think she actually has a key to the kitchen cabinets) and in our dorms, there are boxes of stuff sisters leave behind, and the finds useful things in there. Well, back to the story. Putting her talent to some good use, she scavenged up a nice seat cushion that Portoguese Elders often try to steal away, but she rattles at them and they know not to ever forget to return it to its proper place- her chair.

One reason I decided to stay all 9 weeks was bc I really want to learn the grammar, so when grammar class rolls around and I eagerly inch up to the edge of my seat with full attention, hungering the things I'm about to lap up, the door creaks open and one of the other Italian teachers asks if they can steal me. I nod and squeak 'of course I don't mind' while inside my innards are boiling. (I'm really just exaggerating here, I often do things more willingly than I make it sound) and I go teach with Sor Pickett. On Friday, we taught her teacher a lesson who was pretending to be a store keeper that we contact. WE started with pretending to buy a sweater, and when we were getting ready to check out, he told us the total came to 7 euro, and so she passed him air money, and he said .... uh, where's the money? We looked at eachother and she blushed a little and said, it's here! And he's like 'Oh, you're trying to rob me is that it?!' and he raised his voice and rattled off about mormons robbing him, so we didn't know what to do bc we thought we were playing a pretend game, but he obviously wasn't thinking along the same lines. SO.... I couldn't think of anything other than to walk into my classroom and grab a couple of cookies that I'd just recieved from Grandma Spalding. To my horror, he accepted them as payment!!! He munched away as he agreed for us to return to teach him another day. It was all very funny, but during it, Sorella Pickett and I were wondering what he was doing. He really is so strange! The story's longer, but that's it in brief. It was just funny, and I don't think I explained it well.

OH another thing! Yesterday night, Fratello Bulloch (grammar teacher) came in at 5:15-9:00, and he didn't seem in his usual good mood (we found out later bc we think its time for midterms at BYU).... and I understood where he was coming from a little bit bc the Elders were talking to eachother and eating oranges and rolling around on chairs. Anz Gammel decides it's the perfect moment to tell a joke (NOT) (couldnt he tell bulloch was upset bc we were wasting our time?!?!?) and he stands up and says "Fratella Bulloch, let me tell you a joke. What is the stretchiest substance on the earth?" (Bulloch didnt even give him permission to talk, and he's staring blankly at him, and then asks, what?)
Anz Gammel "Skin. Moses tied his donkey (the real word) to a tree and walked 40 miles".

1) Saying the real word is always a little uncomfortable, BUT in the MTC, it felt like a bomb.
2) Gammel is, at this point, wheezing and holding his sides, I and the 3 other Elders have our heads in our hands and groaning inwardly about the whole situation and how he just made it worse, and
3) Bulloch REMAINED expressionless, and then turned his head to his binder and started writing it. AGHAGH! Not a smile, not a snort. NOTHING!

Ok, AGH!! Time to go. Shoot! Well, ok. 2 sorella are arriving tomorrow. one braizilian moved in today and a canadian is tomorrow. so 6 of us in one room. it's going to be so awesomly crowded!
thanks for your letters, your packages, your prayers, your everything!
i have much to share...but in the second I have, I want to say that I am so astounded with how deeply God cares for each of us. I'll write more in a letter that Lenora can type up- its so good, i dont want to wait till next week to write it.

we had asl girls teach us the first lesson and it was such a wonderful experience- the spirit really doesnt need language to teach truths or to testify of Christ.
ok, have to go. I love you all. I'll try to write better things next week that will be of some spiritual use to you all rather than hearing about how my rear is sore. Ü

Ciao!!