Week 31 - Italy; First world or third world

   I've concluded that Italy would be categorized as a second world country. Let me explain what experiences led me to this conclusion this week;
First, for the past three weeks our water heater has been broken. Which means our options have been either to take a freezing cold shower, or to heat up four pots of water on the stove, and pour that over our head with a pitcher. I have it down to a science now; 4 ladle-fulls of near boiling water, then fill up the rest of pitcher with cold water from the sink, and you've got the perfect temperature! Until about five seconds later when you have to do the whole thing over again.
Second, when the man came to fix said water heater, he spent about five minutes pushing random buttons, then running into the kitchen to see if the water was hot yet. After nothing happened, he came to us and said "yep. It's broken. We'll call you when we can come back to fix it." Just as a cherry on top; they said they would come two weeks before this first appointment, on a Monday (pday) insisting they couldn't meet with us any other day. Then 30 minutes after this first scheduled appointment, they called to tell us that they weren't going to be able to come anymore...
Third, we waited 45 minutes for the bus that we're almost positive was just hanging out at the end of the line taking his own sweet time.  
    I was told this week that I always make comments about food in my emails,  which is absolutely true. If I'm being honest, I will probably continue to write about food for the rest of my mission. This week's food adventures included reheated peppa soup, home made pretzels, and soaking all the dried beans left over from other missionaries because it was the only food left in our house.
    This week we had an amazing lesson with our investigator from Nicaragua. She's amazing and she has the chubbiest baby I've ever met in my life. In this part lesson, we went in wanting to talk about the restoration, and after watching a video in Spanish, we started discussing it a little. Half way through the lesson, I felt prompted to give her an invite to read specific chapters from the Book of Mormon each day, and that if she did, she would find answers to the questions she still had. So the next day Sorella Nelson and I prayed to know what questions she would have, and what chapters she needed to read to answer them. We decided on Alma 32. When we asked her the next day if she had read, she said yes, and that she'd read all the way to chapter 42! It was the most reading she'd ever done in the whole time we'd been teaching her! We hope that as this challenge continues, she'll find the answers she's been looking for. 
    This week we also started a little challenge with another one of our investigators. She really wants to quit smoking, but is having a very difficult time. While we were talking with her about this, Sorella Nelson says that if she goes 14 days without a cigarette, we'll go 14 days without sugar and we'll encourage each other through the whole process. Sounds dumb, but let me tell you how hard it is to resist gelato when it's burning hot outside.  Anyway, it's been going really well thus far. She messaged us yesterday and said how grateful she was to have found people who are finally encouraging her to stay in the right path. She expressed how for the past couple years she's been trying to get herself away from people who encourage her to do things she knows are wrong and how she was so grateful to finally have people helping het live the life she wants. It was really special, and therefore, the basis of my spiritual thought this week. The environment in which we put ourselves is so important. I've noticed so many things chanted about myself as I start and end my day with prayer, focus on studying the scriptures, and fill my days with service. How we live and what we surround ourselves with changes the people we are. So if you want to become more like Christ, surround yourself with things and people who are Christlike. You'll change, and through your example,  Heavenly Father will help other people change. 
    I love you all so much! 
Sorella Maxfield

Week 30 - De Peppa Soop and other crazy stories

This week has been one of the busiest and craziest weeks of my mission. Without giving you the day by day run down, I'll try to explain just a little bit of the most memorable moments of the week.

The time we had two meal appointments in one day and they were AMAZING: First, a pasta with our bishop. His wife made these sliced eggplants, soaked in olive oil with little sliced tomatoes on top. They were so good. My opinion of eggplant has completely changed. (Which is saying a lot because the last time I ate eggplants was when my mom made "Eggplant Surprise" because her weird food co-op gave us a whole bunch of eggplants.) Then we ran straight from that appointment to our miracle lesson (more on that later) then to another meal appointment with my probably my favorite family ever. They made us lasagna, and the little son showed me all his legos. Then, after 20 minutes of eating, the mom looked up and said, "I have a bad feeling. I need to check my phone." So she checks her phone, and then informs us that there is a train coming in 5 minutes, or another train coming in an hour. Which would get us home late. Very late. So we ran straight to the train station, and somehow were able to catch our train and give our spiritual thought in the car. 

The time we had peppa soop and fried yam: AFRICAN FOOD. It was so much better than I thought it would be. The member explained to us that the only ingredients we needed were "the peppa (be careful though, it will burn your fingers when you cut it), the vegetable, the tomatoes, and [pulls out a whole fresh fish] the fish!" Basically all the meat from the fish boiled off in the soup, leaving just the skull and spine. So the eyeballs were just floating some where around in the soup... It was an adventure. 

The time we got caught in a terrible rain storm and a bus strike: The workers of Italy are on strike so much, is basically normal to hear "yeah, the buses aren't running today, there's a strike." I'm pretty sure they don't even strike for anything specific, they just all want to take a break for a day, so that's exactly what they do. Which, by the way, is a beautiful metaphor for Italian culture. We ended up getting stuck on our way to a meal appointment, in the pouring rain, and by the time we finally managed to get to the meal appointment, we were completely soaked. To the point where the mother of the family brought down her hair dryers and started blow drying us in the living room. Not my most noble moment as a missionary. 

There are three spiritual thoughts I want to share for this email:

The first comes from our miracle appointment with our cute investigator from Nicaragua. There's a bit of a language barrier with her (she only speaks Spanish, and Spanish just kind of sounds like weird slurred Italian with a lot of s noises [sorry dad]) so we download the restoration video in Spanish. We were running to her house (again in the pouring rain) and when we got there, she showed us an anti mormon video she'd found online. BUT she said that she wanted to go to the source to see if the things that were said about Joseph Smith were true, so BY HERSELF she found the exact restoration video we were planning on showing her and had already started watching it. Heavenly Father truly knows exactly how to work with each individual person. It was so amazing to see how he had prompted and prepared our cute investigator spiritually to know that there was a better source of truth. He was able to help her find and have renewed interest in the restoration. So lesson one, Heavenly Father knows YOU and he knows exactly how to help you overcome the small temptations. 

The second is from our Music Night activity. [You all can find it on Facebook if you want to watch.] What I learned from this experience was that there is a reason that Heavenly Father has given us eachbunique talents. We can so easily express our testimonies through our talents, and we should! We are all so blessed with all sorts of unique qualities, and you never know who you can touch through your individuality. So lesson two, we are all unique for a reason, and we're meant to use our individual abilities to touch other people's lives. 

The third lesson I learned this week was from stake conference. We had a member of the area seventy speak, and he shared his story of how he found the gospel. Basically, he was an exchange student from Denmark in California with a Mormon family. They tried sharing the gospel with him, but he was 100% uninterested. It was until several years later when he came back to visit that he actually was curious about the religion, and decided to learn more. So lesson three, we don't know who will or won't be open to gospel. Our job is to share it with everyone and give them the opportunity to accept.  Maybe they won't then. But maybe. One day they will be open to learning more. 

I love you guys so much!!

Sorella Maxfield

Week 29 - We didn't come from a tree

We can all thank Sorella Nelson for the title of this week's email.

A brief biography of Sorella Nelson: from Provo, most charitable person I've ever met, likes to make sweets during pranzo time, and sometimes says strange things when her emotions become really intense during lessons. This week, we hssd a lesson with our sweet 16 year old investigator, who is truly like all of our little sister. She started the lesson by saying that she tried praying and reading, and while she liked the idea of God, she felt that she was just fooling herself into faith. She followed that by saying how she believed in the Big Bang Theory and that all living things were connected by an energy that she could find just as easily through meditation as through prayer. I was so shocked, it hurt hearing her giving up on faith. We tried to help her understand the importance and reality of faith and God, and in doing so, Sorella Nelson started saying that this life can't just be a coincidence. She started getting flustered in how to help this girl see that God gave her this beautiful life, and ended up saying something to the effect of "God's our father... How can this all be a coincidence.. I just.. I can't see how... I didn't just come from a tree, you know??" Definitely one of the funnier things I've heard said in a lesson.

We had an excellent lesson with our new investigator from the Anziani! We taught her the gospel of Christ, and spent our whole time in the scriptures answering her questions. She's so prepared. We could tell how ready she is by how much Satan tried to deter us from going over. There were so many things that day that could have kept us from getting there, but when we made it the spirit was so strong. She also promised us she would come to church, so we're excited to see her there!

As you all know, May the fourth was this week! So naturally, we gave ourselves Jedi braids, and then princess Leia buns that evening with red face masks and star gazing on the balcony. We tried to explain to our English course students why we celebrate May 4th, but the translation and play words went straight over their heads, so we basically just told them it's a national holiday in america... which. Basically it is.

My spiritual thought this week comes from an idea about sharing the gospel from Clayton Christensen. He talks about how the most effective way to help people feel the spirit of the gospel and strike their interest is through inviting them to serve the church. This sounds really paradoxical, but let me explain. He says that by inviting people to help us, they will feel the spirit of service and naturally ask questions. He gives the example of a man who was called as sacrament bread coordinator (apparently that's a real calling) and he decided that to exemplify his calling, he would ask the older women in the neighborhood to help him learn how to bake bread for the sacrament. By giving them an opportunity to serve him and the church, they felt the peace and joy in service and it lead naturally to conversations about the gospel.

So that's my invite this week!! Find someone to invite to help with some service, or give some one the opportunity to serve you or the church. I've seen what a blessing member missionary work can be. We all have the opportunity to grow this work!! There are So many people who need to hear this message!

I love and miss you guys!
Sorella Maxfield