Anziano Jonathan Bushman: Promptings/MTC Mafia/Talent Show

Here's the second email from Jon. BE WARNED, we did not fix his spelling. It appears that his Honors English classes (and Spelling Bee awards) have gone out the window in favor of Italian. I have provided annotations for some confusing parts.

Ciao!

Before i really get started about the week i just want to say that this feels really weird using english; a couple anziani and i decided to go the whole day with out english, and it's turning out to be really helpful.

Martedi- Our first p-day felt kinda wierd.... We didnt have class or anything, and we didnt even get anything done that we should have, and i really regretted it... I had a hole in my new sweater i needed to patch, and shoes to polish and niether got accomplished.... oh well. The choir's musical number was pretty fun though (i was in it, along with the rest of my district, but i cant remember the name of the song we sang...)

Mercoledi- Okay, first off, let me just say that Anziano Webb and I have had A TON of ups and downs since we got here, but wednesday definitely was an "up." We were supposed to be practicing teaching about the restoration (but it always got side-tracked to another topic), and another companionship in our district was pretending to be investigators, and it got intense. Anz. Hater we later found out was portraying what he would be like iif he didn't have faith. He would say things like "Well, if I was God, i'd be bending over backwards to make sure my children made it back to me" and we tried for about 40min to convince him that God was doing everything possible, but he didn't think so. And it wasn't until (and mind you, this thought flickered through my mind at least 3x and i ignored it untill my companion finally brought it up) my companion had Anz Hater read John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave His Only Begotten Son" that he felt the spirit truly testify to Him that God does love us, and that He did do everything he could to help us return to him.

Giovedi- Ehhh, i don't remember exactll all that happened, but i know we made some "lame di luce" (lightsabers)

Venerdi- Reminded me of waiting in line for a midnight showing. so, there are over 2000 missionaries at the MTC, and we all figured an apostle or the prophet would speak to us around Christmas, so when Christmas Eve devotional came, we got in line at about 5. And the Devo started at 7. It was awesome. we took lightsaber pictures and memorized sciptures unitll the rest of our italian mafia (zone) arrived and then we were asked to help pass out popcorn treats to all the missionaries after the devotional, so we got to go in an hour before everyone else and save our own seats. Unfortuantely, there was no apostle friday night, BUT it was still a great devotional.

Sabato- Christmas was awesome. We went and had our meager MTC breakfast, and then our district joined together to open presents, by the way, I LOVED my presents, theyre perfect! thanks mom, dad, chelsea, and zac! oh, and i recorded that 20 min on my camera, so you can watch that when it gets there in like 2 days. After that, we went to the CHristmas talent show, and it was AMAZING! it lasted about 3hrs, and about 90% of the performances were outstanding. I also recorded like 3 of those, but my bvattery died, so i couldn't keep recording. Butt! you should call the MTC and see if you can get a recording or something, it'll be worth it. After the talent show was a pretty decent turkey "powder" (-Anz. Hater) and gravy, and theen we immediately got in line for the next devotional. on our way there we saw up at the front office that something was going on, and my companion noticed that elder Russell M Nelson was there, so we rushed to get in line, and of course, the italian mafia had dibs on the first couple rows. Causer we're that cool. I don't have much time to talk about what he said, but the biggest thing that struck me is that he was VERY intellectual. He dissected a lot of words, and connected all the sccriptures together, and w/o any notes. It was amazing. We also heard from him that night and in priesthood on Sunday.

Domenica- ruinning out of time, nothin special happened though. stayed awake during my meetings, so that's improvement.

Lunedi- we met with Giacomo (one of our techers portraying an former investigator he had) for the second time and things went great. We had planned on teaching him about the plan of slavation [salvation - but funny mistake], but the Spirit led us otherwise, and we ended up discussing faith, and having enough faith to pray, and by the end of the lesson he was praying for us, and excited to keep praying, again, sorry i cant give too many details, i only have 3 minuti left.

Martedi- today was awesome. a HUHGE improvement from last p-day. anz hater, terry, parrish and i are not speaking english (only italian) and it's great. Also, i had been missing my italian scriptures for 3 days now, and really didnt want to buy a new set, and i found it today! so that was a huge answer to prayers. We played a lot of ches today, while i folded my clothes and we snacked on christmas junk.

umm... quick extras; i'm currently in the process of translatinmg "i love the lord" to italian, almost dont [done], i'll have it to you guys next week =P and.... ya. mom, dont worry about sending too many letters, you can send as many as you want. same goes to the rest of you, i like herain [hearing] ohow things are goin.