Well readers who never comment and make me wonder if I am typing to an empty internet...fret no more!! I now have a place to live...in August! Whether I will be homeless in September and October remains to be seen, but I'll worry about that later. Or maybe I'll finally learn my lesson and let Jehovah do His thing. When I sent a rather stressed out sounding e-mail to my COBE in Bologna inquiring about any options I might have for a CHEAP apartment there, he responded very promptly that there are a couple sisters sharing an apartment and there will be room for me in August because one of the sisters is going back home to Scotland for the month. This was after he called me "woman of little faith" for even worrying about it. Some might be offended for being called out on their lack of faith, but this is the same brother who, while choking back laughter, called me Babylon the Great after I kind of, sort of, definitely tripped coming off the stage after a demonstration. When you are informed before the meeting that when you say a certain word in Italian it sounds like you are cursing, you focus your prayers on not doing that in front of your whole congregation and forget to ask not to trip off the stage. Some lessons you learn the hard way.
Here are the things I DON"T know about the apartment :
Where is it?
How many girls live there?
How many bathrooms?
How many bedrooms?
How crazy are any and all of these girls? (I prefer to be the second craziest person in any given situation. You can still have fun but you have enough sense not to be THE craziest person)
Pretty much everything else you might want to know about the place and people you will be living with.
Here is what I DO know:
I will have some kind of living space while I am in Bologna.
Good enough for me! If I can survive living in a one bedroom, two room apartment with THREE other girls and absolutely love it, I think I can handle whatever comes my way.
In other news, I had a little Skype reunion with my roommate from Mexico. We met when she came to serve at Bethel for a week and we bonded over raw cookie dough and UNO/Texas hold'em with my Bethel roommate Melissa (who later was my roommate here in GA) (Man I have had a lot of roommates!!) (I don't know the proper use of "()" for a tangent of a tangent) ANYWHO-after we both came home she e-mailed me that she wanted to go serve in Mexico for awhile and I said "Why not?!?!" And roommates we became! I learned that grocery shopping is not as fun when everything you buy comes with the thought "Is this worth it's weight in my backpack for 20 blocks?" I learned that true friendship is helping your camel-like drinking roommate (me) lug a 5 gallon jug of water several blocks and up three flights of stairs a couple times a week-all to save a few pesos for delivery. I learned that homemade margaritas taste so much better when you only have to pay $7 for a good bottle of tequila. All lessons I will take with me back to Italy.
While Gail and I were having our little adventure in Mexico, her parents came down to visit. Her dad made the comment during the Watchtower study that week that I will never forget. He said that a lot of young people get out of high school, go to college, and try to get a good paying full time job-all so that they can afford to travel and have the freedom to do whatever they want. It sounds nice in theory, but it rarely seems to work out that way. But using your youth in Jehovah's service can get you anywhere! I am constantly amazed by how someone as broke as I am is somehow managing to spend half of 2012 in Italy. I have seen firsthand so many times how Jehovah rewards those who put Him first. And I'll tell you one thing-He sure doesn't skimp.
33 more days!!
