August 24, 2010

Yesterday we had our first TRC (teaching resource center) visit, in which we got to contact investigators "in a park" in Italy (we had to speak italian while introducing ourselves and our message, learning a little bit about them, and seeing if we could come by some time to teach them more) and then we got to teach one of the people we contacted about the restoration of the gospel (1st lesson - in english, luckily).  It went really well!  In meeting with one of the contacts in the park, a family of 3 native italians, who were very hard to understand and who were asking us harder questions than what we were anticipating, Sorella Laws let loose and told the whole story of Joseph Smith in Italian.  Anziano Knutson and I were just there to smile (Sorella Laws was on a roll - we couldn't even add in the very few phrases or thoughts we knew!), but it was still fun.  And, in the lesson, it went very smoothly.  We taught a lady named Miranda (I think that was her name).  She works at a troubled teen center (where they go after juvenille jail to overcome addictions and stuff), loves her family (she has 2 younger brothers and her parents, and her mom just got over cancer 4 years ago).  Anyway, we were able to teach her and it went very well.  There were some downer moments as well, but we all definitely learned from them.  One thing that I realized that I need to do better is make sure I'm not thinking about what I want to say while someone else is talking, or about what I could have said better (the selfish things) because that makes it so I can't feel the spirit, and then the lesson doesn't go smoothly!  But, we came out feeling very edified, and we could tell that Miranda was touched as well.  And we got her to commit to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon!

We finally started to dive into the language yesterday, and we'll be learning it like crazy the next several weeks.  Right now, I can pray, bear my testimony, introduce myself and my companion, share a little bit about our message, and I've learned the present tense (example: I am going...), but I don't have a huge vocabulary of nouns and verbs to apply it with.