Okay! I'm now officially in my third city of the mission: LADISPOLI! And I feel closer to civilization than I have in a long time. Why? Because we're only forty minutes away from the mission office (as opposed to 6 hours away in Bari and an ETERNITY away in Mistretta). And it's here at the mission office, aka the PROMISED LAND, where all the mission voodoo/decisions happen. This means that, when we visit the office once a week, we get MAIL and we SEE PEOPLE/MISSIONARIES and we don't have to wait until January to get our Liahona magazines from October. It's a Christmas miracle!
Also, now I'm doing "real" "missionary" "work." Having finally been liberated from the car, I get to live all of those "real" missionary stories: waiting for hours for buses to arrive, baking in the sun, sweating up and down mountains, WALKING. This is missionary work AS expected.
There are a TON of missionaries in Rome. I'm stationed at Ladispoli. It's about 40 minutes outside of Rome (by train). It's actually the ward of one of the Italian sisters I met in the MTC. She swore to me I'd go to her ward, and look at me now! Her brother is the ward mission leader... good stuff.
It's a small city right on the coast. We don't have any huge metropolisis in our area, mostly smaller villages and a few coastal towns that we reach by train. But it's gorgeous and the ward is boss.
Other plus? I'm serving with Sorella Piccirillo and two Italian elders in my ward. Which means we speak ONLY Italian ALL the time. Except when I'm teaching them the lyrics to Footloose (ah, yes, sidenote: we got special permission to perform in the ward talent show and we wanted to do a song that had some connection to missionary work. Naturally, we picked Footloose by Kenny Loggins. Bwhaha!). I'm still far away from the Italian I want to have, but I predict this transfer will do me a world of good.
Also, I hope our talent show number will give the ward a good impression of me. I left my shampoo in Bari because I was out of room in my suitcase and I assumed there would be some in the house. Well, there wasn't any, and I was a little short on funds. For the sake of my mother, I won't tell you how many days I went without washing my hair... but to try and salvage it, I used baby powder to absorb the moisture. But I missed a spot and went through the entire Sunday meetings with white powder in my hair. The members told me afterward they thought I either had chalk in my hair or I had a white stripe. OH THE SHAME! Anyway, to everyone's relief, I'm washing my hair today.
Okay, I think that's all. Ladispoli is great... stay tuned for all the amazing miracles that are going to happen here.
Oh, I can't remember if I gave a LETTER SHOUTOUT to Brooke Ellis. I got your DearElder letter... thanks a ton!
You're all grand. Keep on keepin' on.
love
Annie
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