I thought I was safe for my last transfer. It turns out that there's no such thing as "safe!" For my last transfer, I'll be leaving Lodi and the office and going off to a city named Merate. It's really close to Milano, like most of my cities! I'd say I know the Milano area better than anyone else by now. Merate is about 30km northeast, so I'm just taking a couple skips down the road. Also, we get a car! Woooo! In my mission, only a few zone leaders + the APs + the Office Elders have cars, so I get to break the tradition. I'm pretty excited. The Merate ward has been asking for a while for some missionaries with a car. Most of their members don't live in or near Merate, which makes it hard for the missionaries to get a lot of work done because it's hard to get around on bus/train around Merate. I'm looking forward to introducing this new element into the work at Merate. My new companion's name is Anz. Keller. I don't know him much. He got to the mission in September, so he's decently new still. I haven't been with a younger missionary in quite a while, so that will be fun too. Overall, my last transfer will be quite an adventure. I'm looking forward to it.
My only concern is training my replacement. When I first got here, I had a week and a half of training. With my replacement he'll have barely three day's worth; even less because we have a conference and then transfers. It'll be quite an adventure! I feel like I've been using this word a lot "adventure." I feel like a while ago all this would've really stressed me out, but working in the office has really taught me how to welcome change. Now I just think it's all a barrel of fun. The office was such a dynamic job and I never really knew what I could expect for that day. Of course, my whole mission is that way, so this is just another chapter to add to the novel that is my mission.
This week was a great week in Lodi. Last week, our Bishop asked us if we would organize a family home evening for the ward. We were excited to have an assignment from Bishop so we jumped on it immediately. We talked with the Sisters and we decided we would use it as an oppurtunity to put into practice some of the things that Elder Fingerle taught us in our conferences a few weeks ago about social media. We decided to watch the Church's Christmas video (christmas.mormon.org) and discuss the meaning. The title of the video is "He is the Gift." The video talks about how the first gift wasn't wrapped or bought in a store, but given by a Father to His children. We talked about different ways that we can share the gift through social media and through other means. The activity went really well and we had about twenty people there, way more than we expected! The Bishop was excited to have the activity too and would like to start making it a monthly thing. Our Bishop in Lodi is great. He's really involved in all the different parts of the ward. It's got to be pretty hard to be a bishop.
We don't really get a P-Day because there's so much work to be done for the transfers. I'll end this email here.
I love you all so very much and I'm grateful for the love and support that you all have given me over the past almost two years. Even as I go into my last month as a missionary, you've all stuck with me and this would be a whole lot harder without you.
All the love, Anziano Simcox
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