Ciao Carissimi !!
Another week down in the Great Italy Rome Mission. Battipaglia feels more like home everyday, as I can now recognize the local Jehovah's Witnesses, avoid the local crazies, and have made friends with the people who run a crepe stand, the cafe owners, and the sandwich makers. I've basically got the whole food pyramid covered with all of my strategic friendships.
We had zone conference this week. It was great being able to get together with everyone and learn from President Pickerd. We discussed 2 Nephi 2 about life before and after the Fall of Adam and Eve, and about life thanks to Christ's Atonement. It was interesting to see how the things we lost because of the Fall (being in the presence of God, easy life with no worries or sin) can be restored through the Atonement of Christ. Thanks to The Fall, we can progress and grow, and we can have families. God's plan is truly one of happiness!
In true Christmas tradition, we acted out the nativity as a zone. We had a full cast; inn keepers, wise men, shepherds, a flock of sheep, an angel, even sone pigs. What was my role? The star. What did that entail, you might ask? Standing behind everyone, with my arms stretched out. I had flashbacks to the time my dad made Stewart and I have a contest to see who could hold their arms over their head the longest, and afterward I couldn't move my arms. It wasn't quite to that level, but I will say I'm glad I had practice.
Highlight of the week was for sure my scambio with Sorella Taylor! For those who don't know, we were next door neighbors for a while, and grew up in the same ward. It was a miracle she was the first sister I had a scambio with. She. Is. A. Fireball. She talked with every single person we passed and was so bold in sharing our message. I'm hoping I can become the same type of missionary she is.
Finally, as my spiritual thought/Light The World promo/crazy story, I want to tell you about the miracle of the banana bread. Our day started out by us trying to figure out how we could use #siiunaluce. The theme of the day was helping those who are sick or afflicted. One of our investigators had been having a very hard time with her depression the day before so we decided to make her some banana bread and give her a visit and a lesson to comfort her. So we made banana bread, not realizing it needed an hour to cook... the brilliant missionaries that we are, we just cooked it for 45 minutes, then just cut off the raw bottom part. (Sorry mom) Then we ran to catch our train. Somehow we made it to our investigators house, only to have her tell us she couldn't see us until 1. We were a little disappointed, BUT here's where the miracle comes in. We stopped to do comp study at a grubby looking cafe, and within minutes, the family who owned the cafe was out talking with us and asking us questions and inviting us back so they could learn more. So our impulsive decision to bake banana bread and go to Eboli turned into an amazing teaching experience. "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass"
I love you all, have a wonderful Christmas!
Sorella Maxfield
Monday, December 18, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
Week 8 - B is for Brownies
Ciao famiglie e amici!
I don't have a ton of time to write so I'll give you just a couple quick updates:
The work - awesome. We teach the most amazing people. We've had a hard time getting people to church, but most are progressing well in the Book of Mormon! We're tagging this awesome man (who we're going to pass off to the anziani if all goes well this week) but he's so sweet and see s to be genuinely interested in learning more. We're also teaching this family that are just the best. The dad is a little scary, and he speaks proper Napolitano, which means I can't understand him at all. But he's awesome. We had a brownie baking competition with him, and he just destroyed us, his brownies were amazing.
English Course - oh boy. English course. Here's what I've learned I English course:
1. Italians never stop arguing.
2. Italians will always think they're right and you can never convince them otherwise. (even when you're trying to tell them you know how to speak English)
3. In the end, all arguments can probably be settled by eating food together.
4. I'm an Italian.
Funny experience - we had an awesome service experience. I loved it because I felt right at home. To preface, for those of you who know my family, you know yard work doesn't mean weeding or planting flowers. It means digging in the mud like the delinquents in Holes, sifting rocks like people at labor camp, or moving a 1000 pound piece of granite using only your bare hands and some logs. This family has the same work ethic as my family. Basically, their driveway was made poorly, so when it rains, all the water piles in this huge pool where their cats live, and then their cats can't eat or sleep comfortably (side note: this family has 13 cats) so they asked if we would help get this water out of their drive way. So using dust pans, we scooped the water into buckets, then walked the buckets around the side of the house and dumped them down the hill. It was a strange strange project that took a long time, but it was fun. The I out problem is that it's rained again, which means we'll be back at it on Tuesday. Hopefully we can think of a more permanent fix.
Food - I have to talk about food, this is Italy! I love the food culture here, it's always always about sharing. For example, we were out finding and we stopped this random lady and while we were talking with her, she just offered us her fresh homemade zeppole. A complete stranger. Also every time we visit people they give us food. Its amazing.
Spiritual thought- we had a lot of interesting conversations this week about why we need a church organization. This was something that I've never really had a clear explanation about, but I found this great scripture in Ephesians 4 that says
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
I just love that this church gives us clarity of doctrine and a unity of faith. We don't rely on the church for personal revelation, but with it, we can all build each other up and practice and understand the true doctrine of Christ.
I love you all so much!
Sorella Maxfield
I don't have a ton of time to write so I'll give you just a couple quick updates:
The work - awesome. We teach the most amazing people. We've had a hard time getting people to church, but most are progressing well in the Book of Mormon! We're tagging this awesome man (who we're going to pass off to the anziani if all goes well this week) but he's so sweet and see s to be genuinely interested in learning more. We're also teaching this family that are just the best. The dad is a little scary, and he speaks proper Napolitano, which means I can't understand him at all. But he's awesome. We had a brownie baking competition with him, and he just destroyed us, his brownies were amazing.
English Course - oh boy. English course. Here's what I've learned I English course:
1. Italians never stop arguing.
2. Italians will always think they're right and you can never convince them otherwise. (even when you're trying to tell them you know how to speak English)
3. In the end, all arguments can probably be settled by eating food together.
4. I'm an Italian.
Funny experience - we had an awesome service experience. I loved it because I felt right at home. To preface, for those of you who know my family, you know yard work doesn't mean weeding or planting flowers. It means digging in the mud like the delinquents in Holes, sifting rocks like people at labor camp, or moving a 1000 pound piece of granite using only your bare hands and some logs. This family has the same work ethic as my family. Basically, their driveway was made poorly, so when it rains, all the water piles in this huge pool where their cats live, and then their cats can't eat or sleep comfortably (side note: this family has 13 cats) so they asked if we would help get this water out of their drive way. So using dust pans, we scooped the water into buckets, then walked the buckets around the side of the house and dumped them down the hill. It was a strange strange project that took a long time, but it was fun. The I out problem is that it's rained again, which means we'll be back at it on Tuesday. Hopefully we can think of a more permanent fix.
Food - I have to talk about food, this is Italy! I love the food culture here, it's always always about sharing. For example, we were out finding and we stopped this random lady and while we were talking with her, she just offered us her fresh homemade zeppole. A complete stranger. Also every time we visit people they give us food. Its amazing.
Spiritual thought- we had a lot of interesting conversations this week about why we need a church organization. This was something that I've never really had a clear explanation about, but I found this great scripture in Ephesians 4 that says
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
I just love that this church gives us clarity of doctrine and a unity of faith. We don't rely on the church for personal revelation, but with it, we can all build each other up and practice and understand the true doctrine of Christ.
I love you all so much!
Sorella Maxfield
Monday, December 4, 2017
Week 7 - A is for Alice and Anchovies
BONGIORNO FROM BATTIPAGLIA !!
la mia prima citÃ
This week has been so crazy, so I'll catch you up quickly as far as how I got to Battipaglia:
We took a 10 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Rome, where we met a nun, a crazy italian mom who fought with the flight attendants for the the whole flight, and a man who served in the Rome mission with my mom.
Day one in Rome, we went on a "walking tour" of the city, which turned out to be a very sneaky way of making us talk to people and pass out biglitini. So we saw some cool sights, talked to some cool people, and survived our first day. But here's the best part of day one: dinner. We got back from our tour and Sorella Pickerd said we were having pizza. I was so pumped. I get excited to eat Little Ceasar's, so you can only imagine how excited I was to eat some pieces of a real Italian pizza. So we were eating our salad, when Sister Knies tells us that they're back with the pizza. AND THEN PROCEEDS TO GIVE EVERYONE A BOX OF PIZZA. SO I GOT A WHOLE BOX OF PIZZA. It was beautiful. I love Italy.
So anyway, then I got my first city, and headed down to Battipaglia.The Napoli zone is cool, there are three other missionaries from Olympus in this zone, and all of the 2nd ward Rome missionaries. I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm happy it did. Guess what else? Battipaglia is in the Napoli Zone, which means Napoli pizza. I was feeling like the food part of this mission was really treating me well.
Then I had my first meal appointment...it was my companions birthday on Friday, and a family we do service for wanted to make us lunch to celebrate her birthday. So I was super excited, thinking we would have this awesome, authentic, Italian birthday meal. Then on the way over, Sorella Oveson told me this family wanted to honor her birthday by giving her a greater understanding of her first name, Alice. Well apparently in Italian alice means anchovy. This family served us a meal that was 100% anchovies. We had them battered and fried, baked in a casserole, fried whole and salted, and baked in a pastry. And that was the whole meal. It was not very pleasant, but we made it through. I definitely learned some more about the word alice, namely, they're still disgusting, and even though you can do something (i.e. make an anchovy pastry) it doesn't always mean you should.
Besides our anchovy experience, everything else had been awesome. Battipaglia is great and my companion is the best. She's super motivated and hard working and her Italian is so good. She's from Colorado, majoring in physics and applied mathematics, she did debate in high school, loves to run, and is so caring. She's got a cool inner hippy, so we eat super clean in the apartment and do yoga at night. It's great.
Anyway, spiritual thought this week would probably be the importance of charity. Something I've learned so far is that charity is one of the only things that really matter in this world. Out is so important to love everyone as Heavenly Father's children, and express that love to them. One thing I've found being here is that people really open up if you just show love for them. Even though we don't speak the language well, we can do muncher love to people and that's what opens their hearts to Jesus Christ.
Love you all so so much,
Sorella Maxfield
la mia prima citÃ
This week has been so crazy, so I'll catch you up quickly as far as how I got to Battipaglia:
We took a 10 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Rome, where we met a nun, a crazy italian mom who fought with the flight attendants for the the whole flight, and a man who served in the Rome mission with my mom.
Day one in Rome, we went on a "walking tour" of the city, which turned out to be a very sneaky way of making us talk to people and pass out biglitini. So we saw some cool sights, talked to some cool people, and survived our first day. But here's the best part of day one: dinner. We got back from our tour and Sorella Pickerd said we were having pizza. I was so pumped. I get excited to eat Little Ceasar's, so you can only imagine how excited I was to eat some pieces of a real Italian pizza. So we were eating our salad, when Sister Knies tells us that they're back with the pizza. AND THEN PROCEEDS TO GIVE EVERYONE A BOX OF PIZZA. SO I GOT A WHOLE BOX OF PIZZA. It was beautiful. I love Italy.
So anyway, then I got my first city, and headed down to Battipaglia.The Napoli zone is cool, there are three other missionaries from Olympus in this zone, and all of the 2nd ward Rome missionaries. I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm happy it did. Guess what else? Battipaglia is in the Napoli Zone, which means Napoli pizza. I was feeling like the food part of this mission was really treating me well.
Then I had my first meal appointment...it was my companions birthday on Friday, and a family we do service for wanted to make us lunch to celebrate her birthday. So I was super excited, thinking we would have this awesome, authentic, Italian birthday meal. Then on the way over, Sorella Oveson told me this family wanted to honor her birthday by giving her a greater understanding of her first name, Alice. Well apparently in Italian alice means anchovy. This family served us a meal that was 100% anchovies. We had them battered and fried, baked in a casserole, fried whole and salted, and baked in a pastry. And that was the whole meal. It was not very pleasant, but we made it through. I definitely learned some more about the word alice, namely, they're still disgusting, and even though you can do something (i.e. make an anchovy pastry) it doesn't always mean you should.
Besides our anchovy experience, everything else had been awesome. Battipaglia is great and my companion is the best. She's super motivated and hard working and her Italian is so good. She's from Colorado, majoring in physics and applied mathematics, she did debate in high school, loves to run, and is so caring. She's got a cool inner hippy, so we eat super clean in the apartment and do yoga at night. It's great.
Anyway, spiritual thought this week would probably be the importance of charity. Something I've learned so far is that charity is one of the only things that really matter in this world. Out is so important to love everyone as Heavenly Father's children, and express that love to them. One thing I've found being here is that people really open up if you just show love for them. Even though we don't speak the language well, we can do muncher love to people and that's what opens their hearts to Jesus Christ.
Love you all so so much,
Sorella Maxfield
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