Verona, Italy - September 14, 2010

So, my new companion, her name is Sorella Mullen. She is from California, and is way cool and super optimistic and energetic and ready to go. I love her already, she is so awesome. One of the weirdest parts about going to train was traveling from the train station in Milano to the church building in Milano without another sorella, just with a bunch of elders. How bizarre. Then we got there, and there was actually only one sister coming in, so we knew right away that we were each others' companions. (The elders had to wait until the suspensful moment of announcement to get matched up with each other.) We had a cool meeting all together, just like the one when I got here, where the assistants read off who is with who and where in front of everyone and you get up and go sit with your new companion, and president talked to us, and sorella wolfgramm also, and then each of the trainers bore their testimonies. It was really cool and really exciting to be with a brand new missionary, there really is an extra fire and energy in them and I love it! Her first week has been a little strange though, and will get even stranger tomorrow. With the new schedule for missions all over the world they do this leadership training thing where all the zone leaders, district leaders, and new missionary trainers (I think that is everyone?) go to Milano for three to four days for extra training. So tomorrow two sorelle from Pordenone will be coming here, and one will stay here in Verona with my companion while the other will come with me to Milano to be my companion for the conference. How crazy is that! I have to leave my new missionary in her very first week! It will be potentially stressful for her, because the sister coming to be with her does not know Verona at all of course, and she is still so new here that she doesn't really know where things are either, and the two of them are going to have to go visit a bunch of people that neither of them have ever met. So weird. So she will spend the next three days basically like she has been whitewashed into the city. But I am super impressed with how incredibly capable and wise she is, so when it comes right down to it I am not at all worried about her being able to handle it. I know she can.

Her very first night here a couple in the ward, were kind enough to pick us up from the train station with her bags and take us, not only home, but also to the grocery store so that she didn't have to ride the bike with groceries on her very first night. Then we went hurrying off to an appointment with these two Nigerian girls that we are teaching, and she loved it. She was awesome! Her very first lesson in the field. Then we come out to bike home, and it starts raining. So she even got to ride in the rain on her very first night.

Sunday was an adventure too...um, we closed the door to the apartment with the keys inside. Bah! So we couldn't get in and the zone leaders had to come and try to break in with a credit card, and they tried and tried and couldn't do it. We were starting to think we were going to have to sleep at a member's home for the night, when suddenly this other man on our floor that I had never met before came home and the zone leaders asked him to help and he really pulled out all the stops trying to help us. He comes out with some real breaking into the house materials (why he had them, I did not ask). But still couldn't get in. So I go down the stairwell a ways to start calling members to find somewhere for us to sleep, and suddenly turn around to the sound of a power drill...this guy brought out his power drill and just starts drilling holes in our door to break in! It was crazy! And he did succeed, I suppose, but now we have a pile of sawdust in the doorway and a rather less secure door that doesn't let the key turn as easily...hehe. What an adventure.

And then last night we were on the bus instead of bike because it was raining, so to come home we hopped on the bus, but I was making phone calls the whole time so unfortunately I did not notice until it was too late that we were not going the right direction. The bus driver stops and tells us we have to get off because it is the end of the line. So we find the nearest street sign and try to look ourselves up on the map with no luck whatsoever, and so we finally stop this passing lady and ask her where we are, and she said we are actually outside Verona off the map. And the busses were all done for the night. Ah! So we called our incredibly awesome ward mission leader, who looked up where we were on the internet, and then sent his brother and his girlfriend to come pick us up because there was no way we could have gotten home at that time of evening without a ride! How embarassing. But also completely hilarious. I am so grateful Sorella Mullen is so patient and so optimistic; she looks at everything as an adventure, so we spent all this week laughing like crazy because of how many funny things happened to us, where someone else could easily have gotten angry or sad. She is so awesome, I am so happy to be with her.