Week 2

This week was a lot better, I have finally fallen into the stride of the MTC. Every day is a challenge but I no longer feel like I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown anymore. I have the most amazing district. There are four sisters in my district and 5 elders. (If you are impressed at the similarity in numbers, don't be. There are 10 sisters in our zone and 40 elders. We are still the minority.) Our district is incredibly musical and we sing hymns in Italian about 6 times a day. We spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours in the same room every day learning Italian. There is one window that faces a brick wall so occasionally we go a little stir crazy. The other day we were singing a hymn and I hit a wrong note, and I apologized (in Italian) My companion thought it was funny and started laughing. This was the first verse. By the third verse, our district leader and one other anziano (Elder) were the only ones singing. I knew it was so inappropriate to laugh during a hymn but I literally could not control it. Our minds were so exhausted from trying to learn Italian, that they kind of broke at that point.

We are teaching multiple fake investigators on a regular basis. I'm struggling with the language so I generally just hug the Book of Mormon close to my chest to convey how much I love it. We have already gotten one "baptismal commitment" so it seems to be be working. We are all kind of struggling over the language barrier. One of the elders in our ward was talking to a volunteer posing as an investigator and he asked her how she was doing. She told him that she was having a really hard time because her dad was in the hospital. He told her that he completely understood , his grandmother had recently died too. In one of my lessons I was teaching a woman about the plan of salvation and I told her that because of our sins we could not return to our heavenly father, and then I ran out of Italian. Needless to say she was startled. In broken Italian my companion and I conveyed that with the help of the atonement we could return to live with our father in Heaven again, but it took a little bit of explaining.

Every day is a major challenge. Learning Italian is one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but I'm quickly realizing that if it weren't difficult it probably wouldn't be worth it. I have also begun to understand that the gospel is constant progression. There is never a point where we figure it all out. We should know more and feel closer to our savior at the end of every day.

much love
-Sorella Madyline Spencer