New President, Teaching in Italian, and Jack Bauer...

So this week was a slammin' good time. So I guess we chose a new president? Man we are seriously so sheltered in here. Wednesday morning we went to pick up "sack breakfasts" because we had gym in the morning and there was no announcement or anything of who the new president was. We just had to ask one of the workers here who the president was and they told us. I totally thought they'd announce it or something. Well we have surely missed the missionaries that left to Italy last week. It's pretty pathetic actually how much we miss them. My companion and I constantly find ourselves saying things like, "Hey is that Anziano Carter over there?" or "What's Anziano Herbert doing going out the wrong door?". I guess we're delusional or something because we keep "seeing" them everywhere. It's weird and pathetic. We miss them a lot. Even though they were only here for three weeks they were like family to us. I can only imagine how hard it's going to be when I have to say good by to my district.But out with the old in the with the new. We got 7 new missionaries on Wednesday. Two new sorelle and 5 new anziani. Two of the anziani are from England. We met them on Tuesday before the rest of their district came in and we were worried. ha ha Luckily our first impressions were incorrect and they must have had a lot of jet lag. ha ha And the anziani in our district have certainly warmed them up to the idea of hugging. It's so funny because the first couple of days when all of the anziani would hug at the end of the night...the two anziani from England looked SO uncomfortable. ha ha I think they're more used to it now. One night at dinner we were all laughing about something (I can't even remember what about) and one of the anziani from England leaned over to me and said, "I don't get American humor." ha ha Just like the hugging thing, I'm sure we'll break them in to our humor sooner or later. All of the new missionaries are fun. All 7 of them will be going to Catania but they're a good time.So in our class we all have "investigators" who we teach. For example one of mine is named Isabella and I know her whole life story because some anziani in our district teach her and are progressively working with her. Sorella Millis and I have about 5 investigators (so just 5 different people from our class pretending to be investigators) and we've been progressively working with them, giving them challenges, and trying to teach to their needs. Well starting on this last Friday our teachers told us that we have to start teaching them in Italian. So we're on the second lesson with most of them and teaching about the spirit world and kingdoms of glory in Italian is actually pretty hard! But every time we do anything in Italian I'm always amazed by how much we can explain and get out. It's truly amazing.So on Saturday night the district leaders came and asked me if I'd give the closing prayer in our Italian sacrament meeting on Sunday. I was kinda nervous but excited. So also, I don't remember if I've told you this or not but, we have to write a 5 minute talk every Sunday in Italian. And right after the sacrament, someone from the bishopric stands up and tells us who will be speaking that day. So besides the fact that I was thinking about saying a prayer in sacrament, I had to write a 5 minute talk in Italian about repentance. So before sacrament meeting one of the new anziani was sitting by me and asking me to help him pronounce somethings in Italian. He pretty much went through his whole talk that he'd written (ha ha mostly quotes from Preach My Gospel) and was asking me to help him pronounce things. So guess who the bishopric asked to give one of the talks? yup, yours truly. I assume they saw me talking to one of the anziani and thought I was dinking around or something so they thought they'd put me on the spot. ha ha It was actually pretty cool. So myself and another anziano had to give the talks. I spoke about repentance and how preach my gospel says that when we repent, it changes our perspective of other people, the world, and ourselves. I shared a scripture and bore my testimony. It was pretty cool actually. Italian is sooo beautiful. I'm sure I don't do the language justice when I speak it but I love speaking it none the less!!As a closing story, I wanted to share a tid bit with you about the wonder that is our teacher Fratello Fife. He is cool because he gives the most powerful and amazing lessons, is INCREDIBLE at Italian, AND is just flat out hilarious. So we were learning the verb "Piacere"--which means "to like" or "to be pleased with". So he was giving us a sentence and he said, "Mi Piace Jack Bauer". (For those of you who have never seen 24, you probably won't fully appreciate this) and someone in the class said, "Does that mean you have a man crush on Jack Bauer? That's kinda creepy." ha ha And Fratello Fife, without even thinking said, "Well if you think that it's creepy, then you're probably a terrorist." ha ha! So che la chiesa di Gesu Cristo e vera. So che quando abbiamo bisogni di aiutarci che possiamo pregare e Dio rispondera.

I love you all. Sorella Hansen