Mission Call

On December 12th, I woke up, taught class (taught is being used loosely here), and then everybody gathered around my laptop to skype my family. My mission call came. After a month of waiting (longest wait of my life!) my call finally arrived at my house in Highland, Utah and I could not have been more excited to hear where the Lord wanted me to serve. My dad held up the call to the webcam and I read the words…

“Dear Sister Knudsen: You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the ITALY ROME MISSION. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months. You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Wednesday, May 1, 2013. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Italian language.”

I could not be more excited for this call!!!!!!!!! I was so surprised for this call, but now it seems perfect! Living in China, learning some Chinese,adapting so well to the culture, and even turning my papers in China made me feel sure that I was going to Taiwan or Chinese speaking. But now I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve in Italy. I’ve taken Art History and Latin all through high school and loved those classes (which I’m sure contributed to me going to Italy). I’m actually really grateful that I get to learn Italian, instead of Chinese (let’s be honest here—I would’ve failed at Chinese). Plus the Rome Temple will most likely be dedicated while I’m there and I could not be more excited for this huge event!! My availably date was February 1st, but I don’t’ leave till May 1st and you know what? I’m okay with that! I can wait that long for Italy, it’s enough time for me to take classes (already registered for Italian!), I get to be there for one of my best friend’s wedding, and I get to see my sister who will get off her mission in April! All of this just shows me that my call truly came from God and I hope I will not let him down!

Kiera made me these brownies in celebration, isn’t she the best?

Man I can’t believe it. I feel so blessed. I can’t wait to help those people of Italy!

Playground

The kindergarten has a playground for the kids to play on each day. After a couple months of living in China, I realized how much fun it is to play with the kids and tried to as much as I could. Sometimes the kids are very bad in class (and you want to hate them), but when you visit during playtime, suddenly these little devils turn into the cutest kids who absolutely love you. They’ll run up give you a hug, grab your hand, make you follow them everywhere, show you everything, play ninja and superpowers, and suddenly you just can’t help but fall in love with these kids. They also love to steal your camera and take pictures—so the majority of these pictures (especially the ones I’m in) were taken by the kids.

One day Cole gave me this pipe cleaner butterfly and it kind of melted my heart.

When you tickle Tim his vein sticks out—so adorable and funny.

I can’t tell you how much fun I have with these kids. Also, incase you can’t tell—I completely favor the boys. I don’t know why, but I just love these playful, little guys!

Lessons

My program, ILP, encourages all the schools to organize classes for us English teachers so we can learn more about their culture. We didn’t have very many lessons (part of this could’ve been our fault for not organizing them), but we were able to have many Chinese lessons, a cooking class, a pottery class, a couple Ku Fung lessons, and play badminton many times.

Chinese Lessons: These were taught by our native coordinator, Mary, and we had it almost every other week.

Cooking: Mary also taught us how to make dumplings! As shown in this post.

Pottery: The pottery teacher taught us how to make pots. Sadly, he didn’t let us keep anything, but it was still fun!

Kung Fu Lessons: We had the most legit Kung Fu teacher who gave us a few lessons. He taught us some defense moves and the basic Kung Fu sequence.

Badminton: We got really into playing badminton the last couple of weeks in China and we started getting pretty good at it! The school has a class of orphans that would come in and play with us all the time (these kids were GOOD) and we had so much fun!