sweet is the work : Final Training and My Future...

Let's be honest; I'm not ready. Aaaaah! It's fine.

I am excited and want to be there so, so bad but my Italian is not great, haha.

When I start to freak out I watch Marco Petrollini, and then I feel better.

He is so precious! Our district quotes him all the time: "This is Cammiilllaaa." "I smile because I am happy." Ahhhh, I want to meet all the Marco Petrollini's. Speaking of "Marco's"...

my future

Sorella Egbert likes to predict the future. My future is going to be a good one. (Being nice to the fortune teller is ALWAYS a good idea.) ANYWAYS... according to Eggie, I will meet my husband at the NYC temple. His name will be Marco Velenzia, and he will be wearing a european navy blue fitted suit. He will be tall with olive skin (his mom is from Italy and his dad is from Portugal, but he was born in Virginia) hahah. He'll ask me out for lunch after the temple, and it will be love forever! We will get married in Rome and have three children (girl, boy, girl). We will live in California but we also have an apartment in London because of his job.

my fate

So, we're at temple walk on Sunday and Sorella Egbert points and says, "There's Marco Velenzia." My heart stops. Walking down the stairs comes... wait for it.... Ben Patch.

Paige and Marco, I mean, Ben Patch

At this point I am distracted from missionary work and focused on B.P. (Brother Patch). He is wearing a fitted navy suit, and I am dying.

Flash back to class on Saturday and Fratello Jeter is giving us a pep talk on how we need to contact pretty people too. So I'm back in missionary mode and jump out of my comfort zone and walk right up to him. (Sorella Bennett has no clue what is going on and is really just trying to keep up.)

I walk up to him and say, "Hi, my name is Sorella O'Connor. You don't know me, but I LOVE BYU Men's Volleyball."

making contact

Sorella Astel makes fun of me every second for this moment in time. But I was practicing contacting! Anyways, we chit chat and take a picture and I was distracted for a minute, but I'm not sorry about it. hahaha. He is totally my Marco! That was the highlight of my week.

stuck

Another funny story! The popscicles here are really frozen. You have to let them thaw out before eating one. This poor new sister, hahah, just went to town on her Orange Creamsicle, AND IT GOT STUCK.

In her mouth. like Christmas Story status, she starts freaking out!!!! hahahhaha.

At this point I'm crying (laughing), and her sweet companion starts to pour water on her mouth/popscicle to get it unstuck. It takes FOUR regular sized glasses of water for them to realize they should warm the water in the microwave first to get this sister unstuck from her worst nightmare. hahahaha.

She is drooling and spitting everywhere; it was not pretty. Everyone is just dying laughing and, she was a good sport about it and was laughing too. She finally got unstuck, five glasses of water later.

She 100% deserved the round of applause everyone gave her after. I have yet to attempt the popscicles here at the MTC.

finding myself

Everyone here (including me) is trying to find themselves and figure out who they are as a missionary. So you kind of forget about who you were before the mission and are trying to gain really good traits.

But I have a theory: When forgeting about yourself, you become really susceptible to everyone else's traits.

So it's really funny, because I'll make a face and someone will point out, "You took that face from Anziano G!" or Sorella Astel now says, "It's fiinneee." and "Okay fiinnee, I'll eat a cooookie." (like me).

But it is really funny to see what we pick up from each other. I can't explain it properly, but our district is basically one person.

the field is... green and ready to... play

The field is open now! So we get to go to the outside world every day! It's so fun. Sorella Bennett LOVES kick ball hahah.

hosting

I got to host yesterday! It was so so fun! I hosted just for the possibility of getting Natalie.

ANYWAYS I saw her! She is two floors below me. (I practiced my casa in casa last night until I found her.) I love her. She is so great. It's true. She loves it here and likes her companion! We plan to meet up at the night time every night time until I leave.

shout-out

Fratello Merrell has NO IDEA of the Commencement plan >=] i'm so excited. His entire family is in town and going too!! It's gonna be good. I wish I was there to see his face turn so so red hahaha.

(Paige's Dad spoke at Commencement for BYU graduation and mentioned her teacher in front of about 20,000 people (and on TV). He said, "I would like to congratulate Josh Merrell for not only graduating today, but also for surviving 12 consecutive weeks of teaching Italian to my two missionary daughters. Tell Paige hello when you see her.")

Good Luck again Dad! I love you! and HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! It sounds like today is gonna be so so good!