Week 23 - Happy Easter Week

I hope you're all having a wonderful Easter Week. I've heard that the Italians get really into the celebrations, so I'll document well and report on that next week. All we've seen thus far is people selling huge olive branches to give to one and another as a sign of peace. 

There's not too much to report on this week. I was out of Battipaglia for 3 days on a double scambio. Lugging around three days of clothes in a huge backpack was not my favorite, but  Caserta and Pozzuoli were beautiful. We had an interesting discussion in Caserta English course about how the older generation of italians are better adapt to the cold because they grew up without heaters. It quickly turned into all the older Italians sharing their various "my walk to school was uphill both ways in the snow" stories. From there, it became Americans versus Italians in a debate as to whether or not colpa d'aria exists or not. (Italians have this strange made up disease where if you got from too cold to too hot too quickly, you die.)

Sorella Barnes and I were able to meet with two cute new referrals this week. One was a referral from the Spain Madrid sisters, a girl from Kenya who's doing an internship program in Italy. We talked a bit over Facebook before we were able to meet, and the second she saw us in Salerno, she ran up and gave us both hugs. She's an amazing person with a huge heart. The only problem is that she lives an hour and a half away from the church in Battipaglia. But. We think she might be able to make it work! 

The following Sunday, one of our members brought a friend to church! For those of you wondering how we could have possibly noticed on new person, the batti branch has roughly 25 people, on a good day. So anyway, this friend told us that she was looking for a church focused on family and service... interesting, we missionaries might have just the thing for you. We're hoping that we will get the opportunity to see her again before transfer calls. 

For a spiritual thought this week, I wanted to shared the Easter campaign! In Italian it's called Ci sarà sempre,  or He Will be there always. I can't begin to express how true that is. Jesus Christ has been my support when I felt alone, inadequate, and useless. But it's rarely in the moment that I'm able to acknowledge it. When I look back at the most difficult times in my mission, and in my life, I can see exactly how I was prepared for them, and guided through them. For those of you who feel like God has forgotten you, I promise you he hasn't. Christ suffered to support us through our trials, not take them away from us. I wish I could express that to you all individually, not just via email, but I want you all to know that I know that it's true. I can't begin to express my gratitude for my Savior.

I love and miss you all!!

Sorella Maxfield 

Week 22 - Merit, Mercy, and Grace

How many Italians does it take to fix a leaky roof?
None. Just one phone call to the four American missionaries. 

Let me back up a bit.

We've been having some very sunny days, followed by periods of intense rain, a classic italian spring. Yesterday, during one of these rain storms, at around 2:45 we got a call from our branch presidents wife. She told us that there was this small problem with the church attic where the rain water would leak in. Not a big deal at all, just if we had time, would we just quickly stop by the church to dry off the floor a bit? We answered that of course we could do that, we're all for serving the branch! So after our studies we decided to head over to the church. As we're walking up the stairs to the attic, a wet sock comes flying out of the door followed by a bare foot Anziano Allen just shaking his head. Turns out this "small leak" wasn't so small after all. The whole attic was filled with water as well as the balcony outside. Anziano Bell finally figured out that the balcony drain had been plugged up with a rag, thus trapping all the water inside. We're still trying to figure out which Italian thought that was a good idea. We spent the next two hours filling buckets and attempting to dry the attic. My biggest question is how we made it through the whole, rainy winter, without A) anyone plugging up the leak, and B) without ever hearing about the fact that our attic was a part time swimming pool... 

Despite the crazy end to our week, we saw so many miracles. President Uchtdorf said "Man makes plans, and God laughs." And that is so true! Our best day this week was when NOTHING we had planned actually happened. Our scambio, lessons, and service, all fell through and we were left with a day filled with finding. After trying to talk with everyone in the piazza, we moved on to trying to show people on the streets Because of Him, the Easter video. We showed it to a woman on her way to work, and half way through the video, she started crying. When it was over, she thanked us over and over again, told us how beautiful it was, and asked when we could meet to talk again. I was so shocked I just stood there while Sorella Barnes wrote down her phone number. I have never had an experience like that. Ever. Soemtimes I forget that Heavenly Father is preparing people to put in our paths who are ready to listen. He knows so much better than we do the way things need to be done. 

Another miracle was that our AMAZING investigator ASKED if she could be baptized in April. We had just read Mosiah 18 together, and were talking about how we do baptism in our church and what makes it different. Then BEFORE WE COULD EVEN ASK if she would pray about being baptized, she said "so when I get baptized in the next month, can I still wear makeup for my baptism?" Another moment where I just stood there with my mouth open. 

My spiritual thought this week has to do with the line from 2 Nephi 2 about the "the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah." I've studied a lot this week about Christ's merits, mercy, and grace, and why it is only thanks to all of these things that we can return to heavenly father. I would like to invite you all to read "His Grace is Sufficient" from a BYU devotional by Brad Wilcox. I think that devotional does an amazing job of explaining what grace really means, and why it is through grace and mercy that we are saved. The other word, "merits" has filled a lot of my study this past week. We know that Christ was perfect, and that alone merits Him to atone for our sins. But there are so many other attributes that show how He alone could have performed an eternal atonement. He was only half mortal, meaning that He gave up the ghost, willingly. He died for us, suffered for us, prayed for us, willingly. It's a gift that is absolutely incomprehensible. I want to leave you all with this quote that I found during my studies, regarding the merits of Christ: “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. … You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.” Lewis goes on, “Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means” - C.S. Lewis.

That spiritual thought is a bit all over the place, but if you have time this week, study about Christ's merits, mercy, and grace. I promise you that your testimony of Him and His atonement will grow. Mine absolutely has.

I love and miss you all!

Sorella Maxfield 

Week 21 - Spring, maybe

Italian weather has proved to be more bipolar than Utah weather. In these past weeks, we've experienced A Siberian snowstorm, four days of non-stop torrential rainstorm, and finally finishing out the week with a nice sunny and 75. Not only was it nice to leave my winter parka at home, but it was incredible to see all the Battipaglia citizens out in the streets! There were families! Women! Youth! It was insanity. This whole time I thought the only citizens in all of Battipaglia were the old men who wander the streets in herds and the women who only know the words "vado in fretta." But thanks to this weather, we were able to do some effective and fun finding right in Battipaglia.

This week we were blessed to find a new investigator! The first week of the transfer, Sorella Barnes and I met this cute woman on the street who asked us why we were always in giro. We talked for a bit, and in the end she gave us her address to come by and talk with her. We finally were able to figure out where the address was, but were slightly worried because we only had the street name and the name of the woman, Anna. (Fun fact. 80% of Italian women are named Anna or some variation, thus the reason for our worry.) So we rang the first Anna we saw on the doorbell, and nothing. So we started ringing the other doorbells, and the very next one we rang buzzed us in! So we walked inside, and out pops Anna out of the door. She had no idea we were the ones who rang, but she was so excited. We talked with her and her family for a bit and shared the first lesson with her after her family left. We're praying for the opportunity to start teaching her family as well, so we'll see what happens in the next couple weeks!

For church yesterday we watched a broadcast of our stake conference. We heard from President and Sister Pickerd, the stake president, and someone from the Area seventy. Each talk was amazing and uplifting, and I'll share what I learned further on. But first, for the last talk, we were faced with what we call a "double language barrier," which basically means the Area Seventy was from Portugal, but was trying to speak English so the Italian interpreter could translate from English to Italian. He started out by saying "Im going to try to use my most well english." I was very very impressed with the Italian interpreter, throughout the whole meeting he was able to keep up. Until one word. The area seventy kept repeating the word "Hahhms" which the translator understood as "homes." After realizing that this word made absolutely no sense in the context, the translator and Portuguese elder exchanged a brief conversation over the pulpit, which resembled a mini game of charades. The Portugese elder repeated the word over and over and the translator threw out random guesses. I've been learning English my whole life and couldn't understand, so I was very impressed when the interpreter finally guessed right with the word "alms".

Despite that brief, slightly humorous, exchange, the talk he gave was very powerful. He spoke about the importance of knowing the nature of God. This topic has been coming up in my personal study recently, and now I know that that wasn't by chance. He spoke about how important it is that we know the nature of God if we truly are expected to become like Him. I would love to invite you all to start studying more about the nature and attribute of Heavenly Father and of Jesus Christ, and work to start developing those characteristics.

I love and miss you all!
Sorella Maxfield

Week 20 - Moroni 9

People have a lot of strange thoughts about Mormons. The questions we most often get as missionaries are 1) so you guys are Jehovah's Witnesses? and 2) ‎You guys can have more than one wife, right? No and no. But this week, we had several questions that were so strange, I'm still trying to figure out how these people thought them up. Following is my personal favorite:

"Yes, I've heard of Mormons before. You guys have that special symbol, with the triangle and the eye, right?"
"siete illuminati?"
"Yes! That's another name for your organization, right?"
"Um no ma'am, we're not illuminati"

The questions weren't the only strange part of our week. We started out by getting snowed out of Battipaglia during Pday last monday. As in there was an inch of snow so Italy decided to cancel all trains going anywhere. So we had to emergency sleep over in Pozzuoli, which was awesome to spend some more time with the Sorelle there. Long story short, Italy was still freaking out about the snow, so we didn't end up getting back to Battipaglia until Tuesday evening at 6. BUT. There's a lesson to this story, besides just learning to never trust the Italian public transportation system. On our way back to Napoli, we were sitting on the metro, just chatting in English, when this man stopped us mid conversation and asked, in english, what we were doing here. I was so excited. I explained everything about why we're in Italy, who we are, and what makes us different from other religions. He listened patiently, asked me questions  about the Book of Mormon. He started to leave for his stop, and I offered him the Book of Mormon for him to start reading. He quickly mumbled about all these excuses about him traveling and not having much time, the usual, and then left. I was so bummed that nothing had come from the conversation and started putting the book away, when all of a sudden I felt a tap on my shoulder. The same man came back and said "actually, can I have it?" I think I might have scared him with how quickly I handed it over. I don't know what happened with him, but after it happened, Sorella Barnes said "I'm convinced that if the only reason we had to sleep over in pozzuoli was so we could take this train and talk to that man, Heavenly Father would send a Siberian snowstorm to make it happen."

That's what I'd like to hear testimony of this week. Heavenly Father always has a plan for us, even when we can't see it. He's working with people that will help us grow, and working with us to help other people grow. The best thing to remember is that he's always helping us steer our lives. Just as he did in biblical times, he's working miracles to help us come back to Him. I'd love to invite you all to read Moroni 9 sometime this week. It's an amazing chapter, and I can testify that it's true that God is still a God of miracles. I've seen some of the craziest things on my mission that can't be described in any other words than divine intervention.

For example. For the past transfer, a woman has been sitting on our Potentials board. I honestly don't even remember how she got up there, I think we found her in area book. We had no number for her, no address, and no information besides the fact that at one point the missionaries had met her. This past week, we put her on what we call the "dropping block" which basically means that if we can't find a way to contact them, they get put on the back burner for 6 months. We were out doing some house to house because it was raining, and we weren't having much luck. We knocked on one door, and finally they opened! The woman was having a big birthday party, and mistakenly thought we were guests. Right when she was going to shut the door, another woman came up the stairs. She was a guest, but immediately recognized our tags and told us to come up to her apartment for a minute. So she left the party, and we talked to her a bit and found out she was the woman who we'd been looking for for the past 6 weeks! It was amazing. We taught her a bit of the plan of salvation, and she asked if she could meet us again to talk some more. It was a huge testament to me that Heavenly Father is always putting things in line for our lives. He led us to that house at that time on that day so we could start teaching this woman.

I love this gospel so much, and I love the opportunity I have to be serving a mission!! I would recommend it to anyone who's even had the thought cross their mind. It's worth it.

I love and miss you all!
Sorella Maxfield 

Sorella Barnes