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3/24/2017
Ciao amici e Familia!
This was a great first couple days at the MTC!
Martedi-
I started my trip as a missionary on Tuesday by flying from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. I got to say goodbye to my brothers, Mom and Dad at the curb and then was off on my adventure. I got picked up from the airport by my Aunt Denise and Uncle Paul who live in Sandy Utah. We were able to visit my cousin Emily, her husband Doug, their beautiful dog Penny, and best of all - my first Parker nephew Silas! [actually a cousin -- first of the next generation] He's just a couple weeks old but he's so happy! After visiting we went back to have a home cooked meal at Aunt Denise's where I had Elk steak for the first time! Definitely the most gamey meat I've had. We met up with my Aunt MayLynn who I stayed with Tuesday night before heading into the MTC on Wednesday. (We got to watch the Best 2 Years and have turnovers before going to bed!) I also got to hear some amazing mission stories from Uncle Bryan about his time in New Zealand and what impact sharing the gospel had on a family during their time in Montana.
Mercoledi-
Got all my stuff gathered up and Aunt MayLynn and my cousin Daryl took me out to a brunch where we met up with my cousin Lorri (who is going to BYU Provo) and her boyfriend Garrett. Got to learn a little bit more about what the MTC and mission experience would be like, and then they dropped me off! I got to shake hands with President Martino, the MTC president, when I was coming in off the curb and it turns out he served in Italy as well! (Milan sadly, not Rome) Got my official name tag, in Italian, study books, and scriptures, and then was popped right into class with 9 other people. My 4 years of Italian have been amazing! I'm keeping up pretty well and I've been able to help a lot of my classmates understand the teacher since he only speaks Italian. Surprisingly I'm not the most experienced in the class, we have an elderly man who can speak fluently because he lived in Italy for 9 months with a family in Venezia. My companion while I'm here at the MTC is Anziano Bardsely who hails from Perth Australia of all places. He had 30 hours of travel time to get to Utah! He has a crazy Australian accent and he'll be serving in the Rome mission with me. Everyone else in our class is going to Milan. There are 3 Italian classes total, with various combinations of Milano and Roma missionaries in each one. Anziano Bardsely and I are living with 2 other Anziani, Anziano Imes (from Las Vegas) and Anziano Sanchez (from the Dominican Republic) both of which are hilarious. We had introductions in class, and then went to an introductory meeting with the MTC presidency. Also I saw 3 people I knew from outside the MTC all on the first day! My friend Trevor (now Elder Woods) from Pacific YSA ward I caught before going inside my residence. Emma Guiterrez (from Las Vegas) is a sister I met at EFY a couple of years ago who is going to serve in Brazil. Finally I saw Isaiah Elias, Bishop Elias' grandson who is going to Kentucky! So exciting to see so many familiar faces.
Giovedi-
Tons of study time in the morning with my companion where we worked on the language as well as a spiritual thought for Thursday night. Then we learned a bit more about how to relate to investigators and share Christ's love. Italian class was super long, like 4 hours! We got ready to teach an investigator from Italy over Skype the next day, all in Italian. We had our branch meeting after class, where we introduced ourselves to the Branch Presidency their wives, and President and sister Martino (they wanted to crash in on our branch meeting). We had some great testimonies we heard and then Anziano Bardsely and I talked about adapting to the mission.
Venerdi -
We got up at 6:20 like normal and got to go to the Provo temple right across from the MTC. It looks so small on the outside but it's ginormous on the inside! Once we finished our session we came back to the apartment, changed into some casual Preparation day clothes (normally we wear a white shirt and tie but on prep day we can wear street clothes) and did some emailing. Since we didn't have much to do we just started preparing for our first lesson which we did all in Italian! We have "investigators" that are actually members who volunteer at the MTC to help us get experience in role play lessons. Ours is from Verona and her name is Polin. It went pretty well but we couldn't get around the Pope topic, haha. She also was blown away when we invited her to church that it was 3 hours long. The only other thing we did was go to the gym for the first time, and I got to play volleyball! So nice to play with a full 6 on 6 since I haven't had that since BYU Idaho.
That's about it per ora, ma finche poi -
Arrivederci!
Anziano Parker
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