Monopoly and Brother Holland's Opus

Cara Famiglia,

So this week has flown by as usual. The MTC is still the same, and is going great. Classes are fun and we've learned a bunch of new Italian in the past week so that's good. Yesterday in the TRC we taught the first lesson fully in Italian for the first time. It was kind of scary but I think we did well. The first part of my subject line comes from that, it's a really funny story. We were getting to know the people (it was a guy and a girl), and the guy said he was from Napoli and the girl was from Roma. So my companion was asking them if they liked those cities and so he said Ti piace Roma? [Do you like Rome?] to the girl and she was like yeah it's great. Then he was trying to say the same thing for Napoli but he accidentally said what basically sounded like 'ti piace monopoly?' [(Do you like monopoly?] It was really unexpected and funny and the guy was just like "I mean, yeah, I like to play monopoly." Maybe it doesn't sound as funny in the email but it was really funny in real life.

The other exciting thing that happened this week was that last Tuesday (after P-Day was over so I didn't write about it then and they don't actually tell you who's coming until like 10 minutes before) Brother Holland came to speak! It was awesome, he's really passionate about missionary work and really lays it on missionaries to be better. One of the things he said that I liked was something like "Called to serve...we sang that as our opening hymn and I've sung that song ten thousand times. Called to serve -- but so what? You better do something about it!" It reminded me of Elder Bednar's talk from a while ago where he said "don't just go on a mission, become a missionary!" He also talked about Peter and the feed my sheep story after Christ was resurrected, and about how awesome Preach my Gospel is. It was a great talk. Also I'm hoping Brother Gong comes to speak tonight, that should be sweet. Also on Sunday we had a talk from our new MTC President who's name is Gordon Brown. It's funny because there was a counselor in the last MTC Presidency who's last name was Clegg. I hear David Cameron is running for MTC President in 2012. Scherzo!

Not much else is going on, the schedule is basically the same all the time. On Thursday we're going to only speak Italian, which should be fun stuff. Oh one thing is I actually saw David Cramer on the campus yesterday, he was walking in to volunteer for the Norwegian TRC. So I talked with him for a little bit, that was cool. Also everyone at the MTC gets really mad when the mail is closed, so unlike when we were at school we didn't like the federal holiday yesterday because no mail came. Today should be like Christmas for mail; they closed the mailroom early on Saturday too.

Sono molto grato per questa possibilita d'essere nell'MTC. So che Il Libro di Mormon e vero e so che c'e un profeta vivente nella terra oggi. Sono grato per tutte le benedizione di Dio che ho ricevuto, e so che il popolo in Italia hanno bisogno d'ascoltare al nostro messaggio. So che Joseph Smith era un profeta di Dio, e che ha tradotto Il Libro di Mormon. [I am very grateful for this possibility to be at the MTC.  I know that the Book of Mormon is true and I Know there is a prophet living on the earth today.  I am grateful for all the blessings of God that I have received and I know that the Italian people have need to listen to our message.  I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he translated the Book of Mormon]

-Anziano Smith