Buon Giorno!
The MTC is awesome. It's also stressful, but I love it. Everything is go, go, go! A typical schedule is wake up at 6:30, study from 7-7;30, have breakfast, class from 8-11, study until noon, lunch, study until 2, class from 2-5, dinner, MORE study/meetings/devotional, back to the dorm, write in my journal, sleep. Rinse, lather, repeat. It's a busy schedule, but I love it. I would be lying if I said it didn't get frustrating at some points, but that's to be expected with learning another language! I also love my class. We're split up into groups called districts. My district is made up of six anziani (elders) and four sorelle (sisters), all going to Milano. We have definitely become a family already. We spend more than twelve hours a day with each other, so I'm glad we get along. There's Sorelle Bucco, Reichert, Jameson, and Stephens, and Anziani Green, Anderson, Jaramillo, Speiser, Mata'u, and myself.
My companion is Anziano Mata'u (Mah-TAH-oo). He is from Orem, Utah. He could literally walk to his house from here. He's a pretty cool guy. In many ways, he is the Samoan version of me. Haha! We're different in a lot of ways though too, so that's awesome. He loves to sing too! In church on Sunday we're doing an a capella version of "How Great Thou Art" with Anziano Burton (one of our roommates) and Anziano Green. I'll let you know how that goes. We're also thinking about auditioning to sing at one of the devotionals.
We have devotionals every Sunday and Tuesday night. On Sunday night we also watch recorded conference talks (sermons) by leaders of the church. Sunday's was called "The Character of Christ" by David A. Bednar, one of the twelve Apostles. Look it up. Seriously. It changed my life.
Speaking of life-changing, missionary life is something else. It actually wasn't terribly hard to adjust to. The days are long though. The first three days felt like they took two weeks, at least, but they're speeding up now. Ahhhhh there's so much I want to write, but if I wrote everything I'd be here for hours. It's a good thing I can type fast. :)
The Spirit here is amazing. We're learning so fast. I definitely feel God's hand in my life and in our classroom. We've picked up quite a bit of the language. I can pray and bear testimony in Italian already and I can carry on a basic conversation too!
The most important lesson that I've learned though is that God is our loving Heavenly Father. It's the first lesson that missionaries teach. It's so simple, but I never realized how important that is. Until people understand that one fact, nothing else we say matters. He loves us SO much. He is not some incorporeal cloud floating around in space. He is not some emotionless architect that created us and then left us alone. He is our Father and he wants to bless us. He WANTS us to return to Him and He WANTS us to be happy. He wants to bless us and be a part of our lives, but we have to let Him. He doesn't care who we were or what we've done, He only needs a contrite heart and soul that's willing to repent and turn to Him. None of us are perfect, but we can be through His Son Jesus Christ.
Thank you to everyone who's sent me letters so far. Seeing a friend or family member's handwriting is one of the highlights of my day, seriously.
Noi vogliamo bene (I love you all),
Anziano Simcox
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