Cara Famiglia,
The MTC is still flying by. I can't believe it's been a week since I wrote you guys, it feels like yesterday. My companion and I always joke about how fast time goes and we say 'It's service day tomorrow!!' almost every day. Service Day is Friday where our district does an hour of cleaning in our building in the morning. But it always seems like it's the next day. In big news the older districts left today, which is pretty sad. The residence seems really empty without them, and our table at lunch will be less crowded. That includes Elder Luke from Stafford who was my former ZL and he's going to Rome, he's a cool guy. The only exception was Elder McMullen (sp?), one of the Elders from England, is staying for an extra month or so because he had to get wrist surgery a couple weeks ago from some pre-existing wrist injury. But he's really cool and optimistic about it.
Also, I got to be a host missionary this week! Basically my job was to tear families apart. Not really, but that's what it sort of felt like. I would take the Elder from the car to the administration building to have him get his tags and everything and then show him where his classroom/residence was. The first Elder I hosted probably thinks I'm really dumb because I couldn't find his classroom; the reason was because we were in the wrong building. But oh well. Then the second Elder I hosted was from upstate New York going to Rio de Janeiro and his name was Elder Dickson! He was a cool dude, and he actually lives down the hall from me and is in my branch. When I took him to his classroom I thought he might get Maria Dickson as his teacher because she taught on the floor where he was (it's our old room that my district misses because it has a white board instead of a chalkboard and is nicer in general). But alas, she wasn't. I did hear about Palmer, I last talked to him on Thursday or Friday, I don't remember, but he told me he was leaving Saturday morning. Didn't get to see him take off or anything, I saw his companion later in the day to ask about him though.
Italian is still going awesome, we had a talk with our teachers on Thursday and got really pumped about about the SYL(Speak Your Language) mentality. Basically we all want to speak Italian as much as we possibly can, so I try to almost never speak English. Unfortunately one of our teachers, Fratello Taylor, is leaving, but we met our new teacher Fratello Tate yesterday. He's a really nice guy and served in the Catania mission, so that should be good. On his last day Fratello Taylor just showed us pictures from his mission and stuff, and our district gave him a thank you card from the bookstore. I dunno if I mentioned before, but he was the last American to serve in the Switzerland part of the mission, soooooo lucky. I'm hoping they open it up to Americans again while I'm there. Also had some sweet pictures of other Milan Mission shenanigans that gives us something to look forward to.
I did get the package Mom sent with the cd, so that's good. And I have played a fair amount of piano here, I played for Priesthood and two Sacrament meetings on Sunday. One was ours and the other Sacrament Meeting was a special one for all the employees that work in the cafeteria on Sunday, that was really cool.
This week we had an awesome discussion about being afraid in one of our classes. Basically, we determined that we have nothing to be afraid of because the Lord is on our side. We looked at that awesome scripture in 2 Kings 16 I think where it says "do not fear, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." And then another awesome couple of scriptures are 2 Tim. 1:7 and D&C 68:6. Brother Bulloch talked about an occasion how they encountered a large Catholic youth group thing and just thought of that scripture and so they decided to go testify to them. It sounded really awesome, and it gets me pumped up to go talk to people in Italy about the gospel. I know this church is true, I know the Book of Mormon is true, and I know that the work we are doing is the work of God. I'm very grateful for my family and all they've done for me and am thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I finished reading Jesus the Christ this week and it basically blew my mind, it's such an awesome book. I learned so much and gained a lot of appreciation for what He went through.
Ciao!
-Anziano Benjamin Smith
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