The Real First Letter

So I got the letters mixed up and this is actually the first letter. Not to be confusing or anything haha.


Hey everybody at home!!
This place is totally awesome! The spirit is way strong all the time. And even stronger sometimes! Like when we're "practice teaching" or in a fireside. My companions are really great! We're a threesome, and they recently changed stuff so the districts are smaller, so we ended up being a whole district just ourselves :) And this sunday they called me to be the District Leader or "DL" There are 17 missionaries total, here, all one branch. Seven of us got here last week, I think 8 of the others are leaving in two weeks! So we'll be all by our newish lonesomes for a day... My Companion Anziano Mercado is from Michigan and he speaks pretty good french, so he's picking up Italian way fast. Anziano Wright on the other hand speaks some German and Russian, so italian is way new for him, heh. He says piccolo like it's a german word. He's from Oregan :)

I've seen Elder Steinagel a few times! He's pretty funny :) He weirded out A.no Mercado the first time we saw him, haha. (A.no is short for Anziano, which is Elder in Italian) His dinner and mine overlap 15 minutes, so I usually see him just before I leave.

I've seen... two Sisters and four other Elders from our Stake here! Including Sister Story (Natalie) and Elder Martin (Dustin) I don't know most of the other's names though...

My teachers are both way totally awesome, Fratello Silva served in Roma and F.llo Tarwater in Milano, so they both have alot of different experiences and all that whatnot :)

Oh and hey there's this website called DearElder.com and I'm not sure how it works but somehow you write a letter or email on there and it gets printed off and comes here as a letter the same day! Pretty neat stuff this technology.

So yeah! thanks for the letters all y'all who wrote me!

Another Letter!

Hey! So I dug around in my classroom and in my "residence hall" room for all the Dear Elder's I've gotten, I'ma try to answer all the questions! On P-Days we get to go to the temple! We normally do an endowment session, but if we want we can do other stuff, initiatories, sealings, etc... And it is waaayy awesome! I love it. I learn everytime! and A. Mercasdo, my companion shared some things that he learned today as well, goood stuff :)
Like, I said last week, I have 30 minutes to use email, either reading or writing, so that's tricky. I'm not sure how much time I'll have once in italy, I heard it's the same amount of time but I guess I'll just hafta see when I get there! I've heard alot of really awesome things about President and Sister Acerson, the Roma mission president! I talked to an Elder a bit ago who was neighbors with them at home! He said they were some of his favorite people in the ward :)

So Conference was sooo Awesome!! I took notes on all but one talk, just because nothing struck me in that one, but total I took 20 pages of notes! wheew, I had cramps in my hand. And a sore bum too, they needed couches here for sure. I really liked Jeffry R. Holland's talk on sunday! I was just like yeeahh!! Way powerful and awesome!
I did notice how there were alot of talks on Love! I loved that :) love is definitely something needed today. I totally forgot about the World Report thing! That's cool that I was on it! woohoo I was on TV! I didn't think I was going to be.

So I am Not leaving early, most of the Italian missionaries left this morning to Italy :( but we're getting 6 new ones tomorrow! and two are coming early tonight. I have to find them tonight after the devotional, one's coming from Spain and the other fromGermany :) I'm excited to meet them!

They have a system here called SYL or Speak your Language, aand they pretty much just have you set your own goals for how much you'll speak the lanuage, we tried it for all of yesterday! That was way fun! we didn't talk as much as we normally would :) heh. But I answer questons all the time about italian, one Anziano who left this morning, A. West, called me Anziano Dizionario once, hehe. Guess what! you guys (family) remember Anziano Cagnacci?? His sister's here in the MTC right now! she's going to Washington DC! and there's one other missionary here from italy, going to London, named Anziano Boer, he's from Milano and he is veeerry Italian, hahah, he's awesome :) he came in to thecafeteria the other day singing a song by Queen, and then asked us if he got all the lyrics right :)

Snow!!!! aaahhh!!! I can see it up on Mt. Timpanogos! hooo, I want some down here :)

Oh, so I've learning alot lately about the importance of prayer! We neeed to pray so specifically! Heavenly Father Wants to give us EVERYTHING!!! all we have to do is ask for it. the other night I started praying and when I was done I checked my watch and it had been 35 minutes! wow, goodness.

Ciao!!

Letters From CJ!!

Hey everyone, this is actually Hanna and I will be posting CJ's letters for him throughtout his mission so here in his first one:

Ciao a tutti!
This MTC place is still pretty much awesome!
I've seen Jordy a bunch of times, but not for a while... Is he still here? Boh! But there are 8 people here from the O.V.! We all took a picture by the giant map.

I've been learning alot about teaching by the spirit and listening for what to say! It's really amazing! We plan out the lesson, what we're going to say, but sometimes other things just slip in your mind and you don't always know why, but you say them and it really touches the people! Even though everybody we teach is already a member, most have served missions, and they're just pretending.
One time we were in class with Fratello Silva -our teacher who just got home from his mission in Roma six months ago- and he said Ok I want you guys to teach Me, not me pretending to be an investigator, and so we prepared for 5 minutes and I found a scripture D&C 6:20 and while we were teacing him I had him read that (we hadn't been teaching him the lesson at all, we'd been talking mostly about the Plan of Salvation and we'd told him a couple stories of things from home) and when he read it he teared up, and told us about some hard things he's been trying to figure out in his life lately. That was absolutely amazing!
I definitely know now that the spirit's awesome :) and that you can't pray enough! I tried counting how many times we prayed yesterday and I lost count at 15 :) awesome!

So yeah! things are good. I did join the choir, that's fun! and I'm way excited about General Conference! I wanna see how much more I can get out of it with the awesomely powerful spirit here :D I haven't heard how long I'll be here yet, most likely the full nine weeks, which is fine, I'm learning everyday! My Companions A. Wright and A. Mercado are both really great! as DL I have to write a report letter to the mission president every week and tell him any concerns we have had that week, but I couldn't think of anything!! We're all pretty chill, friendly. I'm definitely the most talkative of we three.. A. Mercado is very good at planning and being on time though, so that's good for me :) He's a writer and he speaks French, so italian's easy for him to pick up, grammar wise. And A. Wright... He's learning really fast :) he speaks some German and some Russian, so those don't help much with Italian, haha! And he likes to lay on the floor while he studies.

Welp, hey my 30 minutes are up!
Ciao! Ci Parliamo alla prossima!