Buongiorno, famiglia!
I hope y'all are doing well; this week was a good one in the MTC, aside from ridiculous crazy weather. It keeps getting really warm and then snowing within a four-hour time span, over and oer again. Utah weather is silly. But the snow is still pretty; it always is.
So, you know how I am really out of it when I first wake up, and can't think too clearly? Well, in order to keep my companions from thinking I am crazy, I have been strictly adhering to a no-talking to anyone policy for the first fifteen minutes after I wake up, when my brain starts to click into gear. Unfortunately, a few days ago I was so out of it that I forgot to keep quiet. I was laying in my bed, and my companion, Sorella Shuel, was the only other person in the room, sitting getting ready over at her desk. I said, "Sorella, is dwander a word?" and she said, "I don't know, what does it mean?" and I said, "I don't know, but I was telling someone that they were dwandering the word in my dream." and she said, "well then, it's probably not a word." Then she got up and walked over to me while I forgot everything that just happened. She said, now standing by my bed, "it sounds like a combination of dwindle and wander." And I sat up abruptly and said, "What on earth are you talking about?" And she said, "Really, sorella? We just had a five minute conversation about the word dwander." And I said, "Dwander? Is that even a word?" and she said "no! you made it up in your dream!" and proceeded to explain to me our conversation. Then she left the room, and I forgot everything that happened again. She came back in a few moments later and I said, "Sorella, I have this vague, strange, dream-like memory of us having a conversation this morning, but I'm not sure if it was real..." and she said, "Sorella! This is the third time!" and had to tell me all about it all over again. It was very funny.
This weekend, as you know, was general conference. That's a really interesting experience in the MTC; we all sit in the giant room that holds 2000 missionaries and watch it on big giant screens. It was fun! I really enjoyed the sessions, and thought they were wonderful. It was amazing how much focus was placed on family and raising children, wasn't it? I thought that was neat. We were all encouraged to come with specific questions written down to look for answers to, and I found that to be a productive and enlightening experience. I especially enjoyed Elder Uchtdorf's talk, Brother Anderson and Brother Martino, and Sister Beck's. What were some of y'all's favorites? On Saturday night, while all the elders were in Priesthood, they re-played the Young Women's conference for us, and President Uchtdorf gave an awesome talk there. He told about how he met his wife, which is always fun to hear. I loved it when President Monson was talking about his wife at the beginning on Saturday morning, remember? It's neat listening to the prophets of our day when I spend all my time teaching and testifying that we have prophets on the earth now. It is so true!
Yesterday we taught our first all-Italian lesson in the TRC. We spent 15 minutes getting to know them over "dinner" (fake dinner), then planned our lesson, then went back in and taught the message of the restoration for thirty minutes, all of it in italian! It was so much fun, and so hard also. One of the other sisters told us that night that during the food section she asked for a salad because she knew how to say that, but then their investigator asked them what she wanted on it. The only food words she knew were potato and fish, so that's what she asked for! We had a few language glitches as well: right towards the beginning, when we were explaining dispensations we mixed up our tenses, and our investigator ended up convinced that Noah was still alive and leads our church today! We also accidentally said "Gesu Smith" instead of "Gesu Cristo," a pretty awful mistake to make, and one that we were worried about making beforehand because we kept doing it during practicing, and then it happened! We laughed at that, so it was a good think it was a fake investigator who was super patient with us. At the end, he brought up that scripture in Revelations that says you're not supposed to add unto these words or whatever, but my companion misunderstood and thought he was talking about James 1:5, where it says to ask of God. So she turns to Moroni 10:3-5 and says, "we have a scripture that says the exact same thing at the end of the book of mormon!" And I had no idea what she was talking about, because the book of mormon says no such thing, and he was confused too, so we had to work through a few minutes of confusion there too. It was funny, because the scripture she turned to was exactly the one I wanted to turn to, so I thought we were thinking the same thing at first, but then she was saying how it said the same thing as the scripture in Revelations and we all got beffudled! This teaching in another language thing is really tricky. I told you last week about "uomo" (man) and "uovo" (egg), right? We actually did get that mixed up this week just in conversation. I had these chocolate easter eggs in the pocket of my coat for us to eat during general conference, but one of my companions asked for the man in my coat instead of the egg in my coat and our elders looked us very strangely. We've discovered another word that makes for a horrible mistake: 'il dono dello Spirito Santo' is the gift of the Holy Ghost. But if you accidentally say 'donna' instead of 'dono', then you are saying 'the woman of the Holy Spirit'! It's the same for the gift of tongues: il dono delle lingue, if you mix that up. That's happened to us a couple of times, but never with teaching, just in conversation or prayers so far.
Mom, you asked what Sundays are like here. We get up, have breakfast at 7, then go to our classroom and study until 10, when we go to R.S. After R.S. we have lunch at 11:30, then Sacrament meeting at 12:30, then a district meeting until 2:30, which is sort of like sunday school combined with district goal setting time. Afterwards we take a walk up to the temple and are usually there from 3-4, then head back down and eat dinner. After dinner we study for another hour or so, then go to the Fireside where someone speaks to us, and after the fireside we get to watch a church movie! We've watched the Joseph Smith movie three times and the Testaments once so far. Sundays and P-days are by far the most relaxing days in the MTC.
Well, that's about all I have time for right now. I love you all very much, and love getting letters from you!
Love,
Sorella Langham
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