October 28, 2008

Ciao, tutti!
Only 1 week til Italia!!!!!!! To answer your questions, the skirt is a size 6. My flight leaves SLC at 7:20 am next Tuesday, and I'll be in Chicago from 11:40 am to 5:05 pm Chicago time. So if you could all decide which time you want me to call and what number you want me to call, just message me on dearelder.com and let me know. The address I gave you is to the mission home, so you can send all my mail/packages there.Anyways, it's been another fantastic week at the MTC! Funny story (you don't have to put this on the blog- only my family will really truly understand this)- all of the anziani in my district pretty much think I'm their big sister, so they harass me like crazy. They tease me all the time about my supposed evil-eye and say that it "pierces their soul with intensity." So they dubbed me Angela from The Office. Any time I give them what they call "the look," they call me Angela. It's kinda funny.Another funny story- my district went to a workshop the other day. It was only my district there with a teacher. My companion and I were taking notes and participating, and we looked around at our anziani. 3 of them were sleeping, 2 were sitting on the opposite side of the room as each other and throwing a pen back and forth any time the teacher turned his back, another 2 were playing tic-tac-toe, one was drawing pictures, and 2 were doing "sign language" across the room at each other. The things we sisters put up with all day!Anyways, I'm just about ready to go! I've had my departure interview, I have my official flight plans, and we've had all our departure meetings. I can't believe it's so soon! Sunday at our fireside, the director of the missionary department spoke. He is a ward mission leader in his ward, and he brought a man who got baptized about 10 months ago, Edward. Edward got up and bore his testimony to us all, and thanked us for serving missions. Watching him speak, missionary work became all that more real to me. The MTC is great and I love it here, but I can't wait to go to Italy and talk to real people, with real problems. I can't wait to be able to teach them that we have a prophet on earth today, that Christ's gospel has been restored. I can't wait to help people come unto Christ, the master healer. I'm so excited!Our speaker also spoke about the process of getting mission calls, as did our devotional speaker last Tuesday. Both of them told a couple stories of observing the call process with one of the Twelve. They said a picture would come up, and the Apostle would read a couple lines in the application, then he would say something like "I see who his companion needs to be, now where is he?" and then quickly narrow it down to continent, then country, then mission. Another time the Apostle said something like "That missionary needs to be with this mission president," or "That missionary has a family to teach in this mission." It was really neat to hear those stories, and to be reminded that my call comes from a Prophet of God, who represents the Lord Himself. I know I'm going to Italy for a reason. I know that there are specific people and families that I need to find. I can't wait to go and find them!I love you all! Thanks for your prayers. Mom, I hope you're feeling better. Know that I love you and you're in my prayers. You all are in my prayers always.
Vi voglio bene!Sorella Hawkey