Arrived in MIlan at last

Well, Drew is a citizen of Italy now. He arrived on the 22nd. He left @ 1107 on 21 April, went to Chicago, then to Germany on Lufthansa. Arrived in Germany about 7 AM the 22nd. He then boarded another flight, and 1.5 hours later he was in Milan.

The Assistants to the Mission President met his group at the airport and took them back to the mission office. they then went on a small excursion to see some of the sights in Milan and to pass out Books of Mormon on their first day. Later that night, after dinner, he had an interview with the mission president and found out who his companion would be and what city he would serve in first. They are 8 hours ahead of us. Kris got a phone call from the Mission President's wife informing us he had arrived safely and told us what was going on.

He will serve with Elder Wigant in the city of Cuneo. Do a maps.google.com search and you will see that it is about 45 miles south of Torino where the Olympics were held. He is about 16 miles from the French boarder. He will certainly use his 4 years of French there. Not too far away is Monaco, Nice and the French riviera. Yes, I'm already planning our trip over there.

He will have e-mail there, but will only have 1 hour on the computer, so time will be short. His preparation days are on Wednesdays. That is the day he cleans, does laundry and plays tourist for a few hours, then it's back to being a missionary.

Hopefully he will start sending pictures back so I can get them up on the site, until then you can do a search and find beautiful buildings and places where he will be.

Well, here we are so close to his leaving the MTC. This week we got an SD card with pictures and a 25 minute video on it. It was wonderful. He is very anxious to leave, but is still using every minute to his advantage. He is able to read the Book of Mormon in Italian, and understand much of it.

He had two, very challenging experiences while answering inbound phone calls from people investigating the church. He spent about 30 minutes with a man, whom he later found out does this very often, who calls to try to discourage missionaries. He (the caller) started out very well mannered, but as Drew answered each one of his difficult questions, he (the caller) became frustrated and began to ask questions at a rate at which Drew could not respond. In other words, Drew has a strong testimony and the knowledge to accompany it, and the caller thought he could sway a young 19 year old, but could not. This conversation did nothing but further solidify Drew's commitment and testimony. The second experience was on line chatting with those who are asking questions. As luck would have it, it was the same person, the same outcome.

As you can see, there is no shortage of goodies for him and his fellow missionaries. We thank you for your generosity and kindness you have shown by sending him many goodies. He mentioned how he was not sure he would enjoy the MTC. I did my best to convince him, but he was reluctant. He admitted that the MTC has gone by so very quickly, and he has really enjoyed it, although there is no doubt, he is anxious to get to Milan.

We, as parents, have finally begun to get paid for all the late night talks, and trying times while he was a teenager and "knew everything". He has told us he loved us and missed us, and that we actually knew what we were doing when we were raising him. Hang in there parents!! It really does come!!!

April Fools Day
He did a really great prank on his companion. For those who are old enough to remember MASH. He did the same thing as BJ did to Hawkeye. Hawkeye did not believe he could be "had", so the whole camp pulled together and pretended to be "had" by BJ's practical jokes. Drew did the same thing. His companion did not believe he can be fooled, so Drew spoke with 4 of his fellow missionaries and asked them to pretend to have had a practical joke pulled on them by Drew, but to make sure they reported to Drew while his companion was listening. By the end of the day, Elder Bevan was paranoid. He was incredibly jumpy, and thought something would happen any minute. At the end of the day, Elder Bevan said that the jokes would end at 10:30, bedtime, but Drew said no, April fools ends at 12:01. Elder Bevan stayed awake just watching Drew sleep until 12:01. The next day, the plot was revealed. Elder Bevan said he knew what was going on the whole time, and would still not admit he had been "had" by Drew.