So took an airbus to London, it's a two story plane, and 11 seats across. But it
was such a bad ride because we couldn't watch movies in the seat in front of us
for 9 hours or something like that. Then the plane was 20 minutes late landing
and our next flight was in 40 min, so we totally missed that because we had to
find the gate in London airport which is huge and go through security again, so
we had an 8 hour layover there, which actually helped a lot with jetlag because
we all just slept all day. Got off the plane, pizza at 11:00 at night, got with
my trainer Anziano [Elder] Locklear the next day and went to the duomo, or main church [Catholic cathedral],
to strada(street contact) Then we took a train and we're about 40 minutes
outside of Milan, they might have said Merate, but it's an even smaller city
right next to Merate called Cernusco. We cover all of the Mirate area though,
so a bunch of small cities around that area. We mostly walk, but we'll take the
bikes for longer trips and the train when we need to teach somebody in another
city like Ancore down the tracks. Then we usually do some strada there before
heading back. Not even close to the size of Milano, most everybody here takes
the train into Milano to work in the mornings. I've got the train schedule
figured out now, but the metro in Milano is so confusing finding our way around,
so I just follow a lot.
Anziano Locklear is such an amazing
companion. He's from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I'm learning Italian and my English
is starting to have a southern twang, he has a really strong accent. He's
really outgoing and a really hard worker, which is great. It's a tradition to
take the junior companion out for gelatto, but we haven't had time yet. And a
lady who's not interested in the church but really nice offers us over for
pranzo(lunch) and the last companionship did it all the time since it was really
good Sicilian food, but it doesn't help us fufill our purpose so he doesn't.
Miracles happening in this mission now. 2 transfer before I came here they
were teaching 2-4 lessons per week, and the [mission] president really pushed standard of
exellence at 15, and they did 15 and we did 9 this week, with 20 lessons planned
but the majority of them fell through (called bidone,trash).
Language is getting slowly better, trying
really hard to obtain His word and then the words will be given to me, but I'm
pretty quiet most of the time, which I shouldn't be. Just need to open my mouth
and say what comes out. It's actually an advantage to me because I can only do
simple statements of bold truth, which is ideal for all missionaries, the only
problem is I don't know what they are saying back to me.
Bore testimony [what know to be true] to the ward on Sunday, we
have about 80 people in the top floor of an apartment building, and I planned
it all out and role played with Anziano Locklear so I wouldn't get grammar wrong
and I thought it went well, but mi collega (companion) said afterwards my voice
was so low that he couldn't understand anything. I'm taller than mostly
everybody, and I thought Brian's voice was low compared to mine, but everybody is
higher with the sing-song way of talking. But it's all good, think I made a
good first impression.
Very beautiful county, anything will grow here including stuff from Canada,
like I saw a spruce the other day next to a palm tree. Crazy drivers, and maybe
not that bad compared to a big city in America, but coming from Red Deer
without motorcycles driving in between cars and all that, very new experience.
And really narrow streets, even for the smaller cars which is all you find
here. Most of them don't have sidewalks, so we just walk single file when a car
comes by. Reminds me more of paved alleyways.
 |
| View from our apartment window |
We
live in top story of an apartment, just us, but they
have siesta here from 1:30 -3:30 so we eat a big lunch at home since nobody is
out on the street during that hour, and then language study. President said just
study inside because you won't find anybody and they're all taking naps. The
humidity is the worst part of adapting right now, everyday it's short sleeves.
On the first day I wore a long sleeve and took my suit off, but just in the hour
it took to get home I was considering taking a picture of the sweat stains on
the collar. It's always muggy, but bearable though. Italian immersion is hard,
we speak English inside the house but outside try to only speak Italian. And
it's not like Italian speaking in the States, where you can still resort to
English, it's "hopefully mi collega [my companion] can translate that because I don't know what
it is". We spend most of our time trying to go to lessons, the President has put
a focus on investigators we already have in the area book and nonactives, but we
truthfully spend most of our time doing strada. Haven't actually done casa
yet(house to house) just do a giro centrale (circle lap that covers the center
of the city and where all the people hang out) of Merate or Cernusco and talk to
everybody on the street. At zone conference, APs [assistants to the president] were saying that if you present
the Book of Mormon the right way and leave them wanting more so you can give it to them in
their house with a return appointment, they will want to take it out of our
hands. And it had happened the day before, a man, P., said let me see that book and
took it from me and S. saw a passalong card sticking
out of Anziano Locklear's pocket and took that. So really excited to teach them
next week. And so big lunch and no supper, or a snack when we get back to the
house.
Zone conference before we started there
was a tally on the board for what I thought was a vote, but lunch comes and they
had made every person there own large thincrust pizza for lunch.
Cool story, doing strada and a lady was
sitting down on the other side of the street, passed her, felt we had to turn
back which would be really awkard after she saw us just walk by, told my
collega, and I was kind of scared if it wasn't really a proper prompting and she
told us to get lost, which was a totally irrational fear once even if she did
turn us down, but walked back and she invited us to sit down and Anziano
Locklear talked for 15 min. I timed it. She's a really strong Catholic and
wouldn't accept a Book of Mormon, but now she definitely
knows that we aren't bad people and knows a little more about our church. So
even though we didn't get a baptism date or anything like that, it was just cool
to realize the spirit so directly in my life, which is most of the time, but
more directly so. And they haven't had a baptism for a year and a half, used to
be considered a bad mission, and we have 2 baptism dates for next month.
And President saw I had juggling written
down on my papers and everybody had seen me juggle at the Missionary Training Center and they told the
president he needed to see it, so I had to juggle with apples and eat them when
meeting up with our trainers and again at zone conference in front of 60 people.
So that was fun.
[Check out the video of him juggling on the mission blog under "June Arrivals" and hear his new companion, Anziano Locklear's reaction!]
Went to language class after zone
conference yesterday, I'm doing most of this by memory because I haven't been
writing in my journal in the most interesting time of my life, so most of this
is fairly recent, but expecting to teach people who didn't really know English
and it's just people who have accents who don't have an opportunity to speak
English anywhere else. So we talked about politics, which we're not supposed to
get involved in, but it's important to them right now. So that was super fun as
well.
Signing off now, thanks for all the letters. Will try to send
pictures, but I've barely taken any anyways, just from our window. TTFN
God Speed,
Anziano Berg
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