Well,
this past week was truely a different one from the rest of them. I'm a
dad! I'm super excited! I'm training Elder Mellor! He's from Washington
and he is super cool! He also looks just like my brother, Vincent. It's
absolutely crazy. He really likes sports, and when we played soccor on
Saturday he was all over the place making goals. He's awesome!
SO. We have had a fun last week. Lots of new things,
like this cool things called the "12 Week Program", which is pretty
much an awesome guide for Trainers and Trainees. If you thought that I
just taught him every day in our apartment from just my brain, that is
so not true! The church has this thing DOWN. It's really cool.
Today we had New Missionary Training in Buda at the
mission home. It started at 7:45 AM. When I discovered that, I realized
that we would have to leave Szeged at like 4:00 AM, because three hour
train ride. Instead, we just left on Sunday night. We weren't really
excited about it, because we had to leave a baptism a little bit early.
When we finally pulled into the train station, I got a phone call from
Sister Smith, the wife of President Smith, and she knew about our weird
situation regarding trains, so she kindly invited us to dinner with her
and President! It was really fun! I had really missed homemade
cooking...sigh.
The next day (today), I got to pretend to be a
tourist while my new missionary was in training and doing offical
document stuff at the city courthouse. So, I got to hangout with the
Buda elders and they showed me around the city! There are two sets of
them, and I was older than all four of them! Weird stuff...but, I saw
Buda castle (seat of the Hungarian government since like 1200), went on
top of this tower that was just freakishly tall and dominated the
landscape of Buda and Pest (yes, they are two different cities...), and
we got to gaze over the entire capital! SO.COOL. Then, I finally got
re-united with my companion and came back here to good ole' Szeged. I'm
exhausted! SO MANY TRAIN RIDES.
So, I also gained a strong testimony regarding
something really random this week: about my mission president truely
being called of God and loving us, as missionaries. I had to call
President Smith the other day about a situation regarding one of our
investigators, and we ended up laughing on the phone for like 15
minutes! I knew that President was a funny guy, but I was laughing like
REALLY HARD. Then, when we had dinner with him and Sister Smith, I was
saying how I was feeling all nostalgic and everything with training and
not feeling up to it necessarily, and he said how he remembered an email
I had sent him LAST JULY about an amazing experience I had while
tracting as a new missionary in Szolnok, and he said that he knew that I
am always capable of doing great things because of my faith. The Spirit
kind of just kicked me and said "hey, he really does care for you!" I
know it sounds really weird, but honestly, as a missionary it's
important that you can trust your mission president and be yourself
around him, because if you trust him, he will trust you.
Well, I loved this past week. Change is hard
sometimes, but we grow from it. We figure things out, and most
importantly, we GROW. We become stronger and work harder. In the moment,
I personally do not like change, but I always-ALWAYS-seem to look back
on my problems or trials with fondness, and gratitude to my Heavenly
Father for allowing me to learn and to grow. It's a weird thing,
definitely, but essential to our development as children of God.
I love you all! Be safe, and for those kids getting out of school-DO NOT FORGET TO PUT ON SUNSCREEN OR YOU WILL FRY SO HARD.
Ok, that's it. I love you!
Sok Szeretettel,
Elder Giacalone
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