Email from Rebecca, March 23, 2010

Hello Family and Friends!

This week we had a zone conference, our first, on Saturday. In fact, I don't think we have zone conferences very often; it was apparently the only one that the oldest district has had. It was the most amazing meeting - all of the Italian teachers spoke, and the district that left this week all bore their testimonies. Everyone was really touched by it. Afterwards our teacher, Fratello Clarke, had us all spend twenty minutes writing about the impressions we received during the meeting and what we feel we need to individually work on, and to set some goals. They are really big on goal setting here in the MTC; it's really interesting. We set daily goals and weekly goals and companionship goals and district goals and personal goals, all sorts of goals. And then we really do keep them and follow up on them and check ourselves to see how we did. It's a really effective way to measure improvement, I've found.

There are two districts that are older than us that have been here since before we got here. One district has only two elders, both going to Catania. They are both super tall, so we call them the giganti (italian for giants). The oldest district had four elders and one sister. Since she was the only sister in her district, she is what is called a 'solo' sister, which means she doesn't have a companion. Instead, she uses two elders together as her companion, or tags along with some of us. Her name is Sorella Urban, and we all love her a ton; she was in my bedroom. Today that oldest district left for Italy. It was the first people we've seen leave, and it was really emotional for all of them. All the sisters had an ice cream party in our room before going to bed to say goodbye to Sorella Urban; it's sad because she is going to the Rome mission, so we won't even see her when we get there! My whole district, thank goodness, is going to Milan, so we will all still see each other every mission conference. That will be very nice.

On Sunday we walked up to the temple and took a bunch of pictures, all the Italians in the MTC together. We sang together Army of Helaman, and some of the elders in my district had put together an arrangement (really awesome one, too) of Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy. It's fun to be so close to my district. We've had a couple of really good district evaluation-y type meetings this week, where we've really openly discussed what we feel that we as a district can do better to really be representatives of the Lord. I love the spirit of constantly seeking for improvement that exists in the MTC; there is no way to be happy here if you aren't humble!
Last week for devotional on Tuesday night Elder Cook came and spoke to us! He gave an awesome talk about what a great time it is to be missionaries, and left us with an apostolic blessing that we might know that we are in the right place. It was beautiful.

Every Wednesday and Sunday they give us ice cream. I love ice cream, and it's BYU creamery ice cream too!

We taught the second lesson, about the plan of salvation, on Monday in the TRC, with the fake investigators. It was really enjoyable. The more I am here the more I realize the beauty and importance of the fundamental, simple doctrines of the church. And how there is so much to them, and always more to be learned. I love studying the scriptures topically, and I feel like I'm finally understanding better how to do that. We will write down questions our investigators (simpatizzanti) ask us, and then spend our study time studying the answer to that question. I love it here.

Ti voglio bene (I love you when meant non-romantically),

Sorella Langham