A Mission, at times, is bitter-sweet! Feb 1, 2012

Well, Milano is pretty sick. It's huge!!!! The biggest shock for me right now is the amount of public transportation they have! They have buses everywhere that come at least 5-6 times each hour, they have trolley type things (basically a train on the street) that come a little less often, and then Milano has a HUGE metro system. Spanning the entire city and more, with trains stopping at each stop every 3-ish minutes. It's crazy!!! And then there are also 4 or 5 normal train stations throughout the city. Milano is so big that our area is only a third of the city. If you were to cut the city like a pie, we are the south slice =) There are 6 elder missionaries, and 6 sister missionaries, just in milano. In Siena, we were the only two missionaries in that half of Tuscany. BIG difference! So here in a little bit I'll be going into centro to hang out with a friend of mine (Anziano Russo) that got transferred into another part of Milano 2.

There are about 100 active members in the ward, and they are all awesome! In my first 3 days, before I even got to church, I had already met more members than there are in all of the branch of Siena!

My companion's name is Anziano Camit. He's from Utah, but his parents have since moved to Las Vegas. Aaaand that's about all I know about him. Boh. He's pretty cool.

The work is pretty much starting from ground zero over here... They just had three baptisms last transfer, and now we don't have any investigators. But one of the new converts, his name is Eric, is super legit!!!! He's from Congo, and he's just so eager to learn and to follow christ! He's such a boss!!!!

Oh, and also, it has officially been snowing for 24 hrs now. NOT COOL! Snow is very strange...... It's so small, and seems so harmless, but pretty soon it's got you completely surrounded, and has multiplied a billion times, and then it sucks. BUT, we're surviving =)

I've had some pretty cool experiences, and some bitter ones already in this last week in Milano. Bitter moment first. So yesterday we were just riding the metro back and forth to try and talk to people, and one of the girls that I stopped quickly told me that she was not interested at all. But, having to wait for the next stop I figured I'd just try and make small talk or be friendly or something. Well, turns out she's french, and within a few short seconds she turns to me with that tone that you only hear from snobby cheerleaders in the movies and asks me "are you wanting to talk the entire trip?" So, I responded no and turned to walk away, when -no joke- 50 people get on, and completely surround me, and trap me right next to this girl. So, I was stuck there VERY uncomfortably for another 5 min until I could get off. It was painful.

ALRIGHT, SWEET EXPERIENCE TIME: Saturday night we were out knocking on doors, and all of the sudden this lady just let us in before we even introduced ourselves! She looked pretty happy to see us, and was talking to us like she knew us, and was introducing us to her friend, but my companion had no idea who this lady was (neither did I, of course). So we were kind of tentative, thinking she was mistaking us for Testimonies of Jehovah or someone else, but then we were quickly reassured that she was a member. But yeah, I'm bringing this up because in the 15 min that we stayed there, her and also a younger ex missionary that was living there both gave us referrals (without us even getting to ask) to teach their friends. SCORE! So, yeah. Haha idk, I thought it was cool.

Well, that's all for now folks! Tune in next time to here about how many awesome people are going to get baptized in the near future!!!!

vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!!!

-Anziano Bushman


P.S. There's a guitar here in our apartment!!!!! So instead of falling asleep after lunch when my companion takes his daily nap, I've been learning all the hymns on guitar!!!