Ciao famiglia!
So, normally I like to come up with clever titles for things that I write, but with a thirty-minute time limit, I figure the content is much more important than the title. This week I kept a list as the week went on, so that I don't get to the computer and have brain freeze about what on earth to say like every other week! Let's see how this goes.
So we have gym time every day, as I think you know, for fifty minutes. During the past week or so I've taken to sometimes playing basketball or foursquare during my gym time. A lot of people play volleyball, but I hate volleyball. Four square is really interesting; the funny thing about it is that the gym is pretty dominated by the elders, but they are all so afraid of treating the sisters disrespectfully that when we play games with them they practically let us win. So I'll go to play foursquare, and when I hit the ball towards one of the elders, he often will just stand there and not even try to hit it. Using this to my advantage I have been able to advance to the second square! woohoo! I have still not achieved queen of the four-square status yet, nor do I think I ever will. Even with the elders' extreme (and kind of ridiculous) leniency, I simply do not have the hand-eye coordination!
One of our teachers, Fratello Tilini, is super gung-ho about teaching us the language. All of it. Right now. He loves Italian, and loves teaching it, and gets sooooo excited about it. I really like that; it helps make class more fun for us. But this week he came up with a fun review activity for all of us. Each companionship (there are six companionships in my district) took one grammar concept and made a poster for it, and then we each taught the class a short, five-minute lesson on our poster's concept. We taught pronomi diretti e indiretti, which is one of the trickiest things we've done so far. We've been told that some missionaries never catch on to using these in speech, not even by the end of their mission, but that if we can it's great and really aids in our fluency and sounding like an Italian. I really want to get this language down well, so I hope that I can catch on!
Also, the showers are interesting. They are, of course, very echo-ey, and they are in stalls with curtains with one central water sprayer thing (so the stalls are kind of in a circle around a central point). One of the sorelle in the other district, Sorella Snodgrass, and I once this week decided to sing Pocohantas together in the shower. Let me tell you, that was fun to bust out 'just around the river bend' at the tops of our lungs. Way fun. The elders are always telling us about how they sing Taylor Swift in the shower...our Argentinean elder especially seems fond of the song 'love story.' What strange nineteen-year-old elders we have.
I am trying to read through Il Libro di Mormon in Italian as much as possible. I've gotten through Lehi's dream; it's interesting, but difficult. Reading Predicare il mio Vangelo (Preach my Gospel) is a lot easier, just because it's simpler language. La Sacra Bibbia is even more difficult, and the format is bizarre because it's not the King James version in Italian, it's different. I kind of like it sometimes, but there aren't really any footnotes. I am also shocked at how much longer the Old Testament is than the New Testament!
Every week we have what's called companionship inventory, where our companionship sits down and we discuss how we are doing as a companionship, in studying, speaking, teaching, and getting along with each other, and anything else that needs to be addressed, and we set goals and stuff. I kind of like it, because I am big on telling people how I feel about them all the time. I can see how that would be a difficult thing for some people though. It's been very useful for our companionship, however. Mi piace companionship inventory!
I got a letter this week that totally made my week. Every Thursday night a bunch of my London friends and I gather for London movie night here at BYU and we all watch a movie. Of course, I don't gather with them anymore because I am in the MTC. But they still gather. One of them works here at the MTC Laundry, so I saw her once while I was here (Annie is her name). So the next week she got all the Londoners to write a bunch of group letters - mostly in crayons, and with pictures too - and she brought them to me in the MTC and dropped them off in my mailbox. It was so exciting, because it was like five letters in one! It completely made my week. It was so great to hear from all of them.
This week in class we watched a talk from Elder Holland that he gave here at the MTC about ten years ago, called the Miracle of a Mission. It was completely incredible! I'm not sure if it's possible for y'all to get a text copy on lds.org, but if you can, you should. I think he talks about a lot of the same things in a talk called The Atonement and Missionary Work, so you could check for that one too. He talked a lot about how much his mission meant everything to him, and how it changed his life and can change ours. Then he stopped and suddenly changed tracks and said, "I get the impression that one of you here is seriously considering going home" and started talking about that. In a room of 2000 missionaries, he got the impression that one person wasn't going to stay, and adjusted his entire talk to meet that one person's needs! It was incredible to watch him follow the Spirit like that, and then testify so powerfully of the importance of a mission and he said don't you dare go home to whoever it was. It was really neat.
This week we've taken it upon ourselves to SYL (Speak Your Language) every single day until dinner, then take a break for the evening. As a result, we've learned a lot of new words. Get this: the word for man is 'uomo' and the word for egg is 'uovo.' My companions and I were joking about how easy it would be to get those mixed up in a Plan of Salvation lesson and start teaching that God sent the eggs down to earth. He created the eggs in His own image, and wants them to gain experience and grow to be like Him. Isn't that hilarious? So now we try really hard not to mix up those two Italian words. Our teacher taught us how to say a phrase with the basic import of "I’m down with that" this week: ci sto. (pronounced chee stow.) We also learned 'how come?' which is 'come mai?' (pronounced co-may my.) Y'all should learn Italian pronunciation rules this week, please, because I just realized I don't want to explain how to say all the phrases I type. So learn them and then you can know! How exciting that would be! Italian is really beautiful; I love listening to it, reading it, and trying to speak it. We all keep talking about how someday we will be fluent and how we can't wait to be able to speak quickly like our teachers do!
Please write letters and emails both, but remember that I can only get emails on Tuesdays, so make sure to have them written by Monday night. And I (like any missionary) love to get letters. I hope y'all are doing well!
Love,
Sorella Langham
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