A Muggle In Milan: Chapter 4: How I Got Kicked out of the MTC

Ok first of all, don't worry- I was not kicked out of the MTC lolololol I'll get to the reasons for my title later...

Did you guys just love love LOVE conference?!?!? I literally died! It was all just so good, I couldn't write fast enough!!!! I always love choosing questions or topics to think about during conference, and we decided to do that as a district. We left first session and went outside and we all had already had ALL of our questions answered! Yay! It was just too good, and so fun to experience it at the MTC! The missionaries treated it like a concert or something- cheering when their fav. speakers went on, and waiting outside the auditorium like 2 hours before it started, it was seriously great!

We've still been teaching our 2 investigators (our teachers) and our TRC appointments. It's a lot harder now, because we got a new missionary in our district. Her name is Sorella Stevens. She’s lived in Italy for 5 years so she is just joining us now (the milano mission only accepts new missionaries every transfer, so there's no way to leave early) sadly, they put her with S. Lo Russo since they're at similar language levels. It's for the best though, because it forces S. Fife and I to use the language more on our own in lessons and whatnot. So it's been hard but ultimately for the best! This week in trc we taught an actual native Italian, Max, who knows zero english which was scary but afterward he said the spirit was there and we spoke beautifully (thank goodness the lang. of the spirit overpowers my broken italian lololol). When we were teaching “ afaella" she kept refusing to pray and so we took time to talk to her about it and explain the process to her and show her examples and finally the other day she agreed to do so! Her prayer was so cute "Dio, e mi Rafaella" (Hi God, it's me Rafaella) my heart literally broke.

Ok now for the title... No I wasn't kicked out, nor will I be. But this week has been rather hilarious, and I've realized that if I WERE to get kicked out, it'd be for one of these reasons:

1- Pranking

Ok, so we don't prank each other or anything. Butttttttt it waaaaass April Fools Day last Friday, so we HAD to do something to the Roman district... They always make a big deal about how freaky bananas are. And anytime a guy talks to a girl, they say "33" or "flirty-three" (referring to page 33 of the handbook which talks about the relations between guys and girls during mission stuff) so we took the awkward couples pictures from the chastity pamphlet and taped them up in a "33" on their wall, and put bananas everywhere! It was sooooo funny! And we wrote "mi piace" all over their board (that will make sense when you read reason number 3)

2- Footloose

Ok so the MTC has a rule about no dancing during exercise time (the fact that they had to officially make this a rule kinda concerns me lololol). S. Anderson and I, however, are the world's best awkward dancers... So like sometimes it just happens like back in the residence, or like sometimes others in our district play the piano and we just awkward dance like crazy. So we're convinced that the plot of Footloose is going to occur at the MTC and WE will be the causes of it lololol...

3- Very Much Wrong Italian

Um so you know how you always hear stories about missionaries saying the WRONG words when speaking another language? Yeah same. Lol first of all, in TRC we taught about forgiveness... However, the verb "to forgive" is "perdonare", and the verb "to stalk" is "perdinare". I don't think I mixed them up during the lesson... but I totally stressed out the entire time. Because saying "God forgives us" is very very VERY different from "God stalks us"... Also, the elders have been struggling with mixing up "mi dispiace" (I'm sorry) with "mi piace" (I like)... kinda awkward to run into someone and mean to say "I'm sorry" but really end up gazing into their eyes and saying "I like!" lol. Also, for our last three investigators, at some point I've said "Jesus Christ suffered and died for our sins". tbh it's one of the few phrases I have totally memorized... Yeah... for the last three weeks I've been saying "Gesu Cristo soffrito e morto per nostri peccati" um turns out soffrito and sofferto are also different words... "sofferto" (the word I have NOT USED ONCE!) means "suffered"... "soffrito" (the word I've used in multiple lessons) means "deep fried"... I have literally been saying that Jesus Christ deep fried and died for us! Holy awkward what even is my life?!? I even rhymed lololol... scomedo (awkward).

Also funny, Sorella Anderson and I were joking about doing a dance number instead of a talk on Sunday, and quiet Sorella McCormick started laughing way hard and said "Do it! I wanna see if they'd kick you out!" lol so funny!

Sorry for the random crazy letter. But life is random and crazy so all is well! Until next week!

XOXO

Sorella Smedley

PS-Pray I don't say anymore totally awkward things during the lessons lololol

PPS- A literal bat may or may not have flown into the auditorium during our devotional Tuesday and I nearly peed my pants because it was swooping!

PPPS -Our tripanionship was at ShoTab Sunday night and we came back and realized we'd forgotten to unlock our room... so that's the awkward story of the time we locked ourselves out and had to talk to the front desk lol. what even?! Quick explanation- annoying girls kept singing really off key in the shower and we could hear it from our rooms, so now our entire district showers at the same time and sings from a setlist of disney songs and its great. Calling it "ShoTab" was my idea lol!