21

Wow, I love that MTC picture of Audrey!  Great colors!  That doesn't look like the MTC, though... I guess things change in a year and a half.

Yup, it's my last day of being 20.  Starting tomorrow I'll be an adult... I guess.  Ha!  If you say so, society.

This week was nice because of the weather, sopratutto.  It's been cloudy and grey and cool and I LOVE that.  It's like happy birthday present from God.  Especially since it hasn't rained, and rain really ruins the work.

This week has started well.  We've met some cool new people to teach on the streets and invited tons to our fun English Class.  We got to teach yesterday and did lots of games about phone calls.  It's hard enough to communicate in another language face to face, but on the phone?  Without facial expressions or hand guestures or anything?  I remember how nervous I was in Padova with my first Italian phone calls.  Now it feels like second nature.  "Pronto!"

Rung by rung

Thanks for the concern and prayers, those many of you who wrote to me about my lost scriptures.  So far they're not back, and there's no trace of them.  But hey, everything happens for a reason, I guess. Maybe somebody needed them more than I did.

Though this week felt really long, it doesn't feel like there's anything to write.  Things are going along fine.  Days fly by -- it feels like I'm jumping in and out of bed over and over, week by week.  I guess that's what happens when you do essentially the same things for 18 months.

Baggy Pants and Glasses

Transfer weeks are always longer, it seems.  I feel like I haven't written an email in ages.  Quite a bit of "negative" stuff happened this week, but I feel pretty good right now.  I'll just walk you through what happened:

During a scambio (companion exchange) in Modena where my Zone Leaders serve, I lost my nifty little scambio bag that Anziano Treadway gave me on the train.  It had all my needed toiletries in it, including my contact solution and case.  Since Italy is famously the Land of Inconvenience, I wasn't able to find a case to put my contacts in for a few days.  Thanks to sweat, heat, and allergies, they dried up really fast in my eyes and even started to shrivel.

13th of 16 Transfers

This week is a happy one, if unusually sentimental.  The last six weeks have been some of the best of my mission.  They have flown, as happy moments always do, and I can't believe I'm about to enter my 13th of 16 transfers.

We were confused when the transfer call came, telling me that Anziano Carter would stay a fifth transfer in Reggio while I was being transferred to Brescia.  We were puzzled, saddened, and tried to accept the news for over 24 hours until a second call came straight from the Assistants.  They told us there'd been a mistake in communication, and that in reality I am staying here in Reggio while Anziano Carter is going to Brescia.

We're both relieved at the truth, but the whole experience was just muddling.  I was trying to understand why I was only staying barely over a month in this wonderful place, having hardly started to get to know the members and investigators we frequently visit.  I can't explain here or anywhere else the strangeness of the feeling, especially when it was partly pacified and partly accented when the second call of apology and clarification came.

Either way, I'm staying here, and tomorrow I'll meet my new companion, Anziano Ty Smith.  I don't know a thing about him, except that Sister Jackman in my district and the Assistant, Anziano Johnson, says he's cool.