September 14, 2010

Ciao!

This week was awesome!  We learned a few more cool things about Italy.  First, for breakfast, apparently a lot of people do eat cookies dipped in hot chocolate or with nutella (I think that's better than cookie crisp Emily...).  Also, when you try to give an Italian a complement like "You gave a great talk today," instead of saying thanks or trying to push away the compliment, they say "Lo so," or I know.  Italians are also really straightforward - almost rude (my teacher gave the example of someone coming up to people and saying your tie is ugly, or when talking about companions, referring to one as the fat companion and one as the companion that can't speak very well).  That will be a fun/interesting change!

We also got to teach in the TRC again last week. For the actual teaching appointment (this week was the last week we'll teach in English), we taught a family who had been committed to baptism and had a date set, but who had word of wisdom problems.  We were supposed to teach them about the word of wisdom in context of the second lesson- the plan of salvation.  It went amazingly well (our teacher told us afterward that he'd never seen the plan of salvation be taught more smoothly with the word of wisdom)!  It's not our own doing, of course; it was the spirit that guided us.  What we've come to realize (all 3 of us in the companionship) is how well we complement each other - Sorella Laws has a super loving, happy, spiritual atmosphere about her and she can connect with anyone; Anziano Knutson brings excitement and gets/keeps the ball rolling while we teach and is always ready to step up if we need something done; and I'm the one with the more calm and peaceful energy (they called it super-focused energy - like a lazer beam while their energy/light are like spotlights or strobelights), and I am able to bring in scriptures for most of the things we teach about so we're really able to teach from the scriptures.  Anyway, the spirit was super strong and it was a really fun and edifying experience.