Monza, Italy and 5 course meals! - March 3, 2011

Buon Giorno!

So, I just realized that none of you are probably awake right now, and that seems really weird... oh well. Second of all, Italy has weird keyboards... the apostrophe isn't where it's supposed to be... kinda annoying.... oh well!

To start off, I didn't get to email yesterday because we had an unexpected leadership training (which apparently everyone goes to, 2-3 zones at a time) And as soon as my companion found out and told me, I knew that you wouldn't like that I would have to wait another day to send an email....sorry!!! So, today is p-day, but normally it is on wednesdays. And yes, email is supposed to be a thousand times easier, but also we are not allowed to have email correspondence with anyone other than pres. wolfgramm and our immediate family, so mom dad chelsea and zac, you can all email me at this email address, but no one else can. If anyone else wants to stay in touch with me they can send letters though, and you can just send it to the mission home if it might get here between transfers (thats the safest way) or if you know I will still be in muggiò when the letter gets here, you can send it to

5 Giornate 14/9

20835 Muggiò (MB)

Italia

OK, now i'm going to try and summarize the week....

Mercoledì- we were met at the airport by Pres and Sis Wolfgramm, and i immediately shoved a whole bunch of overnight stuff into one bag, and then the assisstants to the president and the president drove us to the mission home. We got there at like 6pm or something, and then we split into two groups, and my group went out and did some <<strada>> (street contacting, and they use those little bracket things instead of quotation marks) and some <<casa>> or door to door. The first thing that I noticed though that was kinda different than what i expected, was that everyone drove on the right side of the road, and not the left like i thought it was... oh well, maybe im just dumb. ALSO everyone drives kinda crazy. But the more I paid attention, i think they just drive like that because they know everyones paying attention (way more than in america) But if an american were to drive out here, or an italian in america, people would get upset. and possibly injured. anyways, the casa was pretty fun, we talked to one guy when we were leaving a building, and i bore my testimony of the book of mormon and talked about how much it had changed my life, and we gave him a book of mormon and he seemed really interested, so that was awesome! After that we had interviews with the president, and Bro Ritchie told us about the whole money situation in the milan mission, and then we went out to dinner. We went to a pizzeria, and each got the huge pizzas. I ordered one called vulcano, and i didnt exactly know what to expect, but when it arrived I found out why it was called vulcano- it was hugely inflated, like the top layer of cheese just had one ginormous air pocket between it and the rest of the pizza! But it was wayy good! there was one kind of meat on it that i didnt like and had to pick out though, and then it was way too big for me to be able to finish, but it was delicious. Then we got taken to a hotel where we would stay the night (i roomed with anz terry and scheurn) and it was a pretty nice hotel.

wow this is taking a long time to type.....

Giovedì- first off, we never got a wake up call like we were supposed to, so instead of having 90min to get ready, we had 20min, and we ended up being 10min late. Oh well, we survived. We then went to a long meeting where I dont remember much of what happened... It kinda just seemed like the same kinda meeting that Anz webb and i as zone leaders would give to the new missionaries in the mtc, so that was alright i guess. I met my companion, Anziano Jenson- who is a very awesome guy! He reminds me a lot of jeremy hunt, except, different, but i cant put my finger on why.... Oh well. We are serving in the Monza area (we live in Muggiò though, which is 2-3k away from monza, and monza is the biggest città there).

    -just a little bit of info about our area, on our map in the apartment, there are about 40 cities in our area, and there's a ton that we cant even go see ever, in fact, (because we're on bike, and theres not a decent metro system there) we only can really afford the time to go to MAYBE 10-12 of the cities, ever. It's kinda way depressing.

   Comunque, we then ate lunch, and I specifically was remembering how much italians ate, so i made sure not to eat a lot at lunch, and then we headed out to Muggiò via the Milan grand central station (which was way awesome). Around this time I found out that most missionaries dont take the time to eat dinner, and instead just eat a really big lunch. And i kinda really wished I had known that a couple hours sooner, and I very much felt like the hobbits when they first started travelling with aragorn (i actually just barely thought of that analogy, but it describes it pretty well). But, i survived. Also, on one of the trains, I felt a huge responsibility to talk to people, but i was wayy too afraid of not being understood, or being made fun of, so it took me a long time before I did.... but when I did, it was to ask this waayyyyyy grumpy looking lady how to say <<luggage>> in italian, and she immediately was smiling and talking with us, so that was a huge surprise to me. And as we talked, all the previously grumpy faces around us turned into smiles, and at first i thought it was because they thought that i sounded funny, but for some reason that didnt matter to me anymore. And I have since learned that italians just love to talk, and they love when anyone comes up to them and talks to them. They all start with grumpy faces, but my companion described it pretty well, he said that its like a huge scary, intimidating wall that they put up, but then as soon as you start talking to them, 90per cento of them just throw away that wall instantaneously. It's awesome. And also, there are SO MANY foreigners in this area, so no one speaks correct italian, and i fit in just great! I then unpacked and settled in a little bit.

    -Our apartment though is pretty awesome. We have 3 main rooms: the bedroom, study room, and dining room, and all three are pretty decent size. We also have a little kitchen, and a little closet, and a storage closet outside for our bikes. Some things that I wasn't expecting to be in our apartment: two fairly large nice desks where we study, washing machine, a nice hot shower, tons of food (apparently we do service for a lady every once in a while and she gives us loads of pasta and crackers and stuff), a weight set (theres a bench with i think about 50kilos/110lbs and the bench has a little thing to work out your legs, and there are also some dumbells), and tons of leftover clothes from missionaries of the past.

   Alright, so after getting settled in, we got on our bikes and headed about 7-8k away to an appointment. It was with a woman named Vanessa (and her husband, but he's in romania most of the time) who is from ecuador, and talks really fast, but she's also way nice, and they fed us these little cake treat things that had pieces of pineapple in them, and it was wayy good, and I was definitely needing food, so that was good. They had a ton of questions, but it mainly seemed like they were more interested in teaching us about God, so we kinda walked away from that with little hopes of returning. Then we rode back home, and I realized that I dont like bike seats. Because now it hurts to sit on them. Bahh.

Venerdì- we talked to a man in the post office while we were waiting (for literally an hour) to start my promesso application, and he was wayy chill. He wasnt from italy, i think he may have been from nigeria, but it was a long time ago.... and we talked and gave him our information, so if he ever is interested in the church, or remembers that day, he can call us. (and I started off with really weak contacting- i know now what i should be doing better, so yeah. non giudicatemi).

Well, i'm just going to talk about some stuff about italy real quick cause im out of time- so, we had a lunch appt with the ward mission leaders on sunday, and theyre an older couple, and way nice- the montrasio's- And I just want to describe to you how this meal went down.

Course 1: some decent slices of salami/sausage meats on a plate, some cooked mushrooms, and some other weird stuff, all of which they made us eat more of.

Course 2: lasagna, the main dish, what i thought was the last dish. This lasagna was green, and kinda mushy.... But after i overcame the look and feel, it was wayy good, and they tried to offer me more, but i was full, and they made it a point to not push it, because then they started talking about how italians always do that, and they really shouldn't. So, i was stuffed, ready to give a spiritual thought and go home.

Course 3: they brought out some meatball deal-ios that were wayy good, along with some type of wayyyyy watered down mashed potatoes (maybe) and gravy, and this jelly stuff. And the jelly actually tasted wayy good with the meatballs, but like i said, i was already stuffed.

Course 4: fruit. this was our second lunch appt, and fruit seems to be a common way to end the meal. The fruit is wayyyy delicious though, the oranges are super delicious, so i didnt mind stuffing that down so much.

Course 5: they brought this holiday cake thing out that was like huge slices of some fluffy cake thing. It was kinda flavorless, but kinda good, but also had a weird taste to it.... sorry, im not being very descriptive, but i've got to end the email there, so hopefully i'll be able to write more next week.

vi amo tutti!

-Anziano Bushman

My MTC District when we first arrived in Italy. Left to right: Anziani Ellsworth, Smith, Russo Webb, Parrish, Wilkey, Cluff, Portellano, Me, Jeter, Jeter, Terry, Scheurn, Murray and Warren, and Sorella Maciel and idk the other ones name.