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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