Unwanted visitor, 3 month conference, English Class

At our first zone conference. This is Sorella Chevalier and I with Sister Acerson (Mission President's wife). My mission president is in the background. :)

This was at the New Years party. The lady is one of the elders investigators named Nellie.
L-R: Anziano Brock, Me, Sorella Chevalier, Nellie, Anz. Lombardo, Anz. Bradford, Anz. Herrick
And there's Manni in the background.

This is clear back from the MTC. This is my roommate from this summer in Provo.
Sister Katy Knight. She is in Chile... I think.

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Well, if I haven't mentioned it enough, just let it be known that so much about a mission is unpredictable. For example, I awoke this morning, did some exercises, studied the scriptures, then had companion study (this is all usual right?), then since it's P-day we decided to do some cleaning! Since my mind is a constant jukebox whenever I have any cleaning object in my hand I get "A woman's touch" from Calamity Jane in my head. I put on some "spiritual music" blah blah and started cleaning. Well I went out on our balcony to get our mop to mop the kitchen. Check. SO...I'm on my way to put the mop back out on the balcony and....HOLY SCHNIKEEZ!! There is something that does NOT belong in our house, IN OUR HOUSE! I started freakin' out (at moments like this I realize I'm hardly as tough or brave as I'm convinced I am) I had no idea WHAT language I was yelling but my companion was in the bathroom and could not help me. I sat there with the mop in my hand staring at it and every now and then shaking and trying to translate "Holy crap there's a lizard in our apartment" in Italian. Needless to say, I got sufficiently laughed at by my companion (though she was afraid too) and we called our dear Portiere Marco Antonio to help us. All I have to say is -WHAT?!? I thought I got called to the Italy Rome Mission. What's going on that there's a gecko..lizard...something chillin' in our apartment. Not cool. Anywho, in case you were wondering, those critters exist in Italy and I'll probably have a girlishly difficult time getting to sleep tonight in my bedspread that I'm convinced was put in a blender before I got here, all the while thinking about all the other animals that live in our apartment. Oh well. Tough it out. ha ha I'm such a girl.Our three month conference was AMAZING! It was just our district from the MTC. 6 sisters and Anziano Herrick....And two Italian elders who came in with us. It was so great. The assistants gave us some trainings, we got to watch the Joseph Smith movie. And let's be serious, I've seen that movie several times (before the mission, MTC, etc) but I adore it quite frankly. It's such a great movie. I'm just constantly amazed by Joseph Smith and his love and dedication for the gospel. He and his family went through so much and it just makes me want to work harder and do my part. Sorella Acerson always blows my mind with all that she does. She made us every meal and fed us the most unusually delicious pancakes I've had in my life, plus gave us training. Sorella Hughes and I were laughing about how delicious they were. It's probably because they don't have maple syrup here. And they don't really eat pancakes. Also, our mission president is great. He's actually pretty funny and is a gold mine for good advice. I learn so much from him every time he talks. He's great.SO I wasn't at English class after all of our publicity but I heard that we only had 5 new students. Crazy right? We've still been hitting it pretty hard core. The other night my companion and I made posters and we met up with Anziano Herrick and Morris and we walked up and down the metro (while it's driving...I actually felt drunk because of walking up and down, starting and stopping, turning, and told people about our English class fliers. After a while I would just sit down next to people and talk to them about it. I think the one-on-one thing works better for me. I love meeting new people. I hope the class is bigger this Thursday. I'm pretty excited about it personally.Things are going well. My companion and I had a sweet talk last night about our goals as a companionship and things that we want to change and improve. I don't really know if I'll be with her for another transfer. All of the old sister missionaries are going home. She still has 3 transfers left. My district that I came here with are going to be old in the mission pretty fast because all the older sisters are finishing. But however long I'm with this companion I'm excited about. I really think we can push each other and get some work done. The sister missionaries are gonna be working hard. End of story. I love you guys. The chruch is true...and apparently I can't spell church. And the scriptures rock my socks...every morning. I hope you're all healthy, happy, and lovin' life. Sending my love from Italia,

Sorella Mallory Hansen

My little italian companion, SMILING, advertising....

I know I say this every week but what a week!! Holy smokes this week has been awesome. As you know, I got a new companion--Sorella Barbiere and she's fabulous! Oh man, we have so much fun together and we have a lot of the same goals as far as missionary work and our expectations of ourselves. I feel like this is going to be an amazing transfer. I can already tell that we're trying to push each other and be more effective and make missionary work fun.She's hilarious first-of-all. She kind of speaks a little bit of English (not really well) but still every now and then we have to get creative with actions and noises when we want to explain things to each other. I was just trying to talk to her about the vacuum this morning and that was exciting. ha ha She says some things in English that make me bust up every time. She loves the word "lame" and she tells me like 5 times a day "I love you with all of my heart". She's so fun.So from day one together we talked about how we want to step up the finding work and talk to more people. I think it was important that we talked about this from the beginning. On our way to appointments (like on the bus) we sit in different parts of the bus and just talk to whoever sits by us and it's been cool. I don't know. It's like Heavenly Father knew that we wanted to step things up and He's for reals been helping us do it. On Saturday, we had just finished an appointment across town (with some potential investigators) and we were riding the bus to church. Well, all I did was smile at a lady that made eye contact with me from across the bus. She came up to me and asked why I smiled and if we knew each other. I told her that I'm just a happy person and like to smile. Anyway, the conversation kind of ended and then I asked her if she wanted to sit down. We talked and I ended up giving her a pamphlet and got her number! I called her the next day and she'd read all of the pamphlet and wanted to know what the book of Mormon was. It was crazy! We had our first appointment yesterday. She met us in church and we taught about the restoration. She has some interesting ideas. :) But she likes what we're teaching and we have another appointment Saturday and she wants to come to church Sunday. It's so sweet.Also our district leader has been pushing us about publicizing English class. Up until now we've only been taping fliers to traffic poles (wow! WHAT do you call those in English? I honestly don't know...nor in Italian so...lose--lose) But Anziano Herrick and his new companion Anziano Morris printed off like 300 little papers to hand out that have the information for the class on it. They gave the stack to us kind of teasing if we could hand them all out. Well, we made a huge poster and went to the metro stop. One person held the poster and the other walked up to everyone leaving the metro and handed them fliers. We handed like 300 out in 1 1/2 hour. It was rad. So after an appointment we made more and we had Anziano Herrick and Morris join us at the metro and we did DAMAGE! I'm so sad that I can't be at English class tomorrow because it's gonna be PACKED! (Usually there's like 20 people....oh man it's gonna be crazy!)Oh, I won't be at English class tomorrow because I have 3 month conference! I'm actually so excited. My whole MTC district gets to go to the Villa and sleep over on Thursday night and have training and...I don't know what else. Nobody will tell me. I'm so excited to see all my girls again from the MTC. I'm stoked to see how awesome they are with the language and how much they've changed as missionaries. Missionary work has gotten more fun and I'm so grateful. Even Sorella Barbiere talks about how grateful she is that we're companions. I can't describe it but something happened since we've been together. We both feel like new missionaries. Like a fresh new start. I'm just soaking it all in because we both have so much fun together but we're working hard and making it enjoyable.I hope every thing's going great with everyone at home. Be safe and read your scriptures. ha ha I'm a nerd. I'm joking...but not. :) Have a splendid day. 5 scoops of gelato worth of Italian love....from my heart to yours....ha ha
Sorella Mallory Hansen

Comments...

Hello to all of you who read Mallory's blog.

First off, Thank you!, for taking the time to read her letters. Mal asks me quite often how high her 'hit counter' is up to. I know she appreciates your support.

So, I am proposing an idea... once a month I am going to put a post entitled 'Comments' and when you see this post it is your job to go comment crazy and tell Mal how much you love her and any other thing you feel the need to tell her. Then after the post has been there for a week, I will print the comments and mail them to her. So, it saves you a stamp and she gets mail. It's a win/win here guys. So, we start today... GO!!!

Hiding out, Women's Day, TRANSFERS

This week has been crazy sauce! SO much has happened I don't even know where to start! I'll start with a little story about our beloved Rosita.I don't know if I've talked about Rosita before but she is a new member. She was baptized about a 8 months ago or something and we're teaching her the follow up lessons. She is a bedante (which is an occupation where you're pretty much paid to live round the clock with an older woman and take care of them 24/7) Her signora is named Nadia and is hilarious. I actually adore her. ANYWHO the point of this story is that bedante's aren't supposed to have people over to the house. In this case, we're not supposed to be going over there because Nadia's son....is like "high up" in the catholic church. Anyway, I didn't understand it to be a big deal that we go over there because we go over every week and both of them are cool with it right? Well this week we just barely got inside and were setting our stuff down and Rosita was making hot chocolate for us, and the gate rang. So Rosita picked up the phone and the son was at the gate wanting to be buzzed in. Rosita ran into the room where I was talking with Nadia and grabbed all of our stuff and shoved us in her bedroom with the light off! I was freaked. I had no clue what was happening. So right when we got in the room I heard the son come to the door and I heard him and his wife talking with Rosita and Nadia in the other room. If you know me well, you know that I have an incredibly overactive imagination and had all kinds of thoughts going through my mind about how this situation could turn out. Sorella Chevalier said we should turn the light on in the room so if they caught us it wouldn't look as bad. I didn't think it was the best idea but I just sat there on the bed and said a little prayer. Anyway, while we're sitting on the bed, I hear the wife's voice coming closer (she was heading to the bathroom that's RIGHT by the room we were in---with the light on) I was just sitting there on the bed saying a prayer and I hear the door creak open behind me--it was the wife. But for some reason, she didn't see us and just went into the bathroom. A few seconds later Rosita came into the room, turned off the light, and left the door just a crack open. I sat there thinking about this as we were trapped in that room for like 30 minutes. My mind was going crazy conjuring up ways we could escape, but really, everything ended up being okay. It blows my mind that the wife didn't see us in there--with the light on, right next to the door. The only thing that makes sense is that we were both just praying everything would be okay. Rosita could lose her job and/or he could make it so that she can't come to church on Sundays. It would have been an amusing adventure, a little game of kick-the-can, had it not been that so much was in jeopardy. But we told Rosita that she had to talk to the son about how we're coming over because I DO NOT want to duck out in her room again AND, her job and future in the church is on the line. Anyway, prayer is actually fantastic and Heavenly Father listens and answers prayers. Punto.In other news, Diana got the holy ghost on Sunday! Although she was like ...a half an hour late to church. She said she waited for a bus for 20 minutes or something. Wanna know why the buses took so long? Because of a little holiday called "Women's Day". When I went into relief society a couple of women congratulated me that I am, in fact, a woman and we celebrated indeed. Actually, we just sang an opening hymn and said, "Happy Women's Day". But none of the women bus drivers had to work on this day so THAT'S why our dear Diana was late to sacrament meeting. But it was rad that she has the Holy Ghost now. She's so sweet and I'm excited to teach her the follow-up lessons and keep working with her because she's wonderful.And now what you've all been waiting for...TRANSFERS!! I was actually so nervous for Monday to hear from President about what would be happening with our district. Every companionship changed! My companion is going to the Island--Sardegna--to follow-up train Sorella Hughes who I was with in the MTC. And I am staying here in Roma 1 and my companion is named Sorella Barbiere! She's Italian! I'm so so excited. I drop off Sorella Chevalier and pick up Sorella Barbiere tomorrow at the train station. I'm so excited. I've never met her before but I just can't wait. I've learned an awful lot these last three months and still have oodles left to learn. I am thankful for my trainer and all the things that we've learned and accomplished together. This e-mail is forever long. If you've actually read it to the end then I will give you an Italian embrace when I return because if I was reading it I probably would have ducked out by now. :) Love you guys lots. Church is true. And Italian kisses! Sorella Hansen

Baptism!, Word of Wisdom, Transfers

(Last week's zone confrence. Mal is in the lower left, 2nd row)

Well hi-dee-ho~
What a week! Last Preparation Day I had to go to the Questura and do my permesso. (It's just like the paperwork that makes it legal for me to live here.) Anywho, so I had to go in a back room and the guy like steam-rolled ink all over my fingers and palms. And I had to do fingerprints and all that jazz. I'm so lame because I actually had this thought go through my head, "Dangit! I'm on the grid!" ha ha So much for my dreams of being an undercover spy. ha ha Also, I had thoughts pass through my head about back in high school reading that book "Black Like Me". ha ha Oh man, sometimes there's nothing to do but laugh my life. ha ha Good times in Italy eh? So last Wednesday after I e-mailed you we had to finish teaching Diana the lessons. AKA...like all of the commandments. I was a little worried for some reason because we were teaching tithing but Diana went to the meeting with Elder Oaks last week and he talked about tithing so...yeah. Golden. He gave this little equation in his talk that I thought was interesting. He said 90% of earnings (money) + Blessings > 100% of earnings without blessings. True right?So we taught the rest of the commandments and everything was good. Seriously, she just accepted everything like no big thing...honestly it kinda freaked me out. Who's that awesome?!? So yeah, she went for a little swim on Sunday baby!! It was so rad. One of the members (who's only been a member for like 7 months but is ridiculously amazin') baptized her and it was so cool. No worries, I took pics, and will send them....eventually. Diana actually kills me because after we taught her lesson last Wednesday we went to the closet that has baptismal clothes and were getting different dresses out for her and stuff. ha ha Oh man...she couldn't just pick like the generic ones that everyone uses. SOMEHOW somebody snuck in this horrid dress that, in my opinion, looked like something from the witch trials and ...our little Diana thought it was just the ticket!! ha ha Oh dear. She actually asked if we had the pattern for it! But I the important part is that it was white...not the fact that in my mind anyone who goes under the water in that kind of dress...usually doesn't come up. Hope that doesn't make me a judgemental person.The ward was an awesome help too. Different sisters in the relief society brought food and some members stayed after church for the baptism to meet her and congratulate her. It was pretty cool so see them fellow shipping our cute new member of the church. :) Loved it. It was a really cool experience. I've seen like 3 or 4 baptisms since I've been here but it was so cool to see someone that I've taught make this decision and follow through with it. I'm just so excited for her. Another investigator that we've been working with is a lady named Erica. We don't get to see her very much but the last thing that we've been working on is the word of wisdom. The first time we taught it to her and then followed up, she wasn't obeying it. So Sorella Chevalier and I decided that we'd offer to "give up" something with her, for moral support. :) So we told her that if she would live the word of wisdom for a week, that we would go without all sweets. She kind of laughed at first because she didn't understand how often those kinds of things are offered to us by members. So anywho, we made this deal and Sorella Chevalier and I were doing good. Well, we have a meeting on Mondays and someone always has a treat assignment. Sorella Skabelund brought Carrot Cake---Sorella Chevalier's favorite. She tried to call Erica to make sure she was obeying the word of wisdom because if not, she wanted to eat the cake. ha ha Well, we decided not to have any. And later that day...we got a text from one such Erica that said, "Have you had sweets? I haven't had coffee. Have a good day. Erica" We were so excited!! I called and talked to her about it the other day and she was so happy. It was crazy cool.Well good times in Italy indeed. We find out about transfers on Monday and I think my companion's out. She's been here for over 8 months so I think she's over and out. But we'll see what happens. I probably won't go anywhere but who knows really. OH ALSO: I just wanted to say that I only get mail like every 3 weeks. So...if sorry that it takes me forevs to write back but I do and I love it. :) Anywho, as always, I'm shipping Italian love your way, everyday. :) Sorella Hansen