September 29. 2014

cari miei,

Thanks everyone for all your emails this week! It was so great to hear from you all. Thanks for all your input and updates. Its always great to hear whats going on in your lives but also great to get some help from you guys as well! Not to mention each of you always makes me laugh one way or another in all of your emails. Haha the people at the internet point think I'm nuts but what can ya do!

This week was a great one for us here in Pozzuoli! One highlight of the week was that I actually got to go up to Rome again! Sorella Anderson is STL right now so she had to go up for a meeting, and as her companion I got to tag along as well! I stayed with the Rome 1 sorelle for the day while she was at the meeting, which was great! Rachie actually served there so it was really fun to look through their area book and stuff and look at some of the work she did while she was there :) hooray for families! Also while I was there I got to see Sorella Vickers who was with me in the MTC, and Sorella Jackson who was with me in Palermo. So all and all that was a great experience.

That being said, it's nice to be back in Pozzuoli. Always feels good to get back to work in your own area and with your own people. We saw a lot of great progress this week! We'll start off with Massimo. He is doing really well. He is continuing to read the Book of Mormon and he loves all the lessons we teach. One neat little experience - this week we taught him the gospel of jesus christ and asked him to read some scriptures out of the book of mormon. He started to read then about halfway through he stopped and said I just realized something! I always have to wear glasses when I read...but I dont have to when I read this book! God must want me to know what is inside it! Haha he is fantastic. 

Antonio is doing great as well! He is also continuing to read the book of mormon. He understands everthing we teach him really well, and loves the clarity and simplicity of the gospel. He listens to everything we say with such real intent. It is absolutely incredible. But it is in those moments that I'm grateful that its the spirit who is the real teacher. So he is doing great and we are hoping to set a baptismal date with him this week!

We were also able to work with Rina a little bit this week, and she is doing great as well. Right now we are preparing her to start the no smoking program. We are hoping to get that started this coming week. This last week she invited us over for lunch and to our surprise her husband was there! So we were able to do a spiritual thought with both of them, which went really well. We're hoping to get in contact with her husband again too. 

We also met with Amalia this week and we had a really good lesson. She finally opened up to us about the things she is going through right now. It honestly was one of the first times I felt like she has shown real emotion since we have met with her. She is going through a pretty rough divorce and is really suffering from it. As we talked to her I was just overcome with this incredible amount of love for her - at that point all we could do was just bear testimony that we knew that god loved her and that he was aware of her and willing and wanting to help her. Unfortunately she is starting to not keep her commitments again. We are really hoping and praying that she will receive some sort of answer to her prayers at general conference. Please keep her in your prayers this week! 

Well happy general conference! I cannot believe it is already general conference again...that one snuck up on me so fast! I hope you all have a wonderful experience, can't wait to talk to you all about it next week! Thanks for all your love, support, and prayers. Love you all so much! Talk to you next week :)

sorella marsh

neat church i dont remember the name of...my bad.

 reunited with sorella jackson!

September 22, 2014

cari miei,

What in the world...i cant believe it is already p-day again. This last week just flew by! Thanks everyone for writing! Its always so great to hear from you. So glad to hear that everyone is doing well and that Sonn made it safe and sound to Madrid! You guys are the greatest. I'm so blessed to have you as my family :)

This week was another great one for us over here in Pozzuoli! I spent the first few days of the week with the Battipaglia sorelle, which was fun. I got to participate in a few of their lessons, go to english course, all sorts of great stuff. Fun fact - I helped out in the spiritual thought after English course and after the students came up to me and told me that I speak with a sicilian accent. Haha dont know if thats actually a good thing, but hey at least I know something  stuck after all that time in Palermo!

Anyway, on thursday we headed to the train station in Napoli so I could pick up my new companion! I havent seen her since I left Palermo 2 transfers ago so it was a great reunion :) we headed home from the station and got straight to work! We literally dragged the bags up the stairs, dropped everything off, then ran to our appointment with antonio before english course. Side note - came home to the best surprise EVER...mom's package! Words cant even describe my excitement. The cookies may or may not have brought tears to my eyes...haha and also i just ran out of my last tide to go pen! so that was much needed. mom you are an inspired woman. Anyway, back to the important stuff! We had a lesson with antonio before english course which went really well. We gave him an introduction to the book of mormon since we hadnt really explained it to him before. He really liked the idea of how the book of mormon can clarify and testify of the things written in the Bible. He said he would continue reading and pray to know if its true!

On friday we met with a lot of our recent converts and rina our less active. They are all doing really well! We got to go see Roselyn, which is honestly one of my favorite things. She is just the greatest person. Before sorella baker left she gave roselyn her ipod so she could listen to the book of mormon while she works and she absolutely loves it. She has such a strong testimony of the gospel, I feel so blessed to be working with her. Rina is also doing well. We are continuing to work with her to help her to quit smoking, which is going well. We had a good lesson this week about her desires, and how her motivation to quit smoking should be out of love for God and to keep his commandments. With time we will get her there :) Then that night we did a lesson with Peppe and he took us out for pizza. Gotta love that man.

Saturday was a pretty incredible day for us. We were able to have 2 lessons in the presence of a member! In the morning we met with Massimo at the home of one of our members. Her name is Sorella Banchini. They got along really well and she was a huge help in our lesson. They have very similar stories in how they met the missionaries and were first introduced to the church, so that was really cool. We taught Massimo the Plan of Salvation and it went so well! He loved all the doctrine in there and the spirit was so strong. At the end we talked about how in order to make it to the celestial kingdom we need to be baptized and in response he says "oh yes baptism. how long do i have to wait to get baptized?" So great. So we talked about it and set a baptismal date of november 1st!

After that we were able to meet with Amalia, which was a much needed lesson. Sorella Trimble came with us and we decided that we wanted to take the time just to talk to her about where she was at and how she was feeling about everything. What it came down to was that she wants to get baptized, but she is just a little afraid. She is afraid of the commitment and not being able to follow through with it. So we talked for a long time about replacing fear with faith, and how sometimes God asks us to act in faith so that we can learn and grow. It was a really great lesson. We suggested a new baptismal date of october 11 and invited her to pray about it. 

To finish off the day we got to meet with another one of our recent converts. Her name is Janet. We read the story of Enos with her and talked about the commandments to read and pray everyday. The lesson went really well! We all got to share stories of a time when reading the scriptures blessed our lives, so that was a really neat experience.

Yesterday was a typical hectic day at church! Believe it or not I gave another talk. Haha God sure does have a way of getting us out of our comfort zones as missionaries. Unfortunately none of our investigators came to church. But you guy are never going to believe this....TOFIK CAME! Roselyns husband! Remember when I first got to pozzuoli and we had to go to the hospital because that guy broke his leg? that was him! It has been the most incredible experience. Little by little he has been opening to the church and yesterday he just surprised everyone and showed up! I was just about screaming when I saw him I was so excited. Haha so we are excited to follow up with roselyn about that one this week :)

Well I think that about sums it up for me! I hope you all have the greatest week and I cant wait to hear from you soon! Thanks for all your love, support and prayers. Love you!

sorella marsh

this is an american family in our branch!

 saying goodbye to sorella baker!

 sorella Anderson :)

September 15, 2014

Cari Miei,

OH MY GOSH SONN IS A MISSIONARY! I am literally in tears over here in this random internet point just at the thought of it. Haha these people probably think I'm crazy. But I can't help it, I am just too excited! Yay sonn! Can't wait until you are on this side of the pond with me :) love you so much and I am so proud of you! 

Well as for life over here in Pozzuoli things are about to be switched up again! For starters I am actually writing you guys from Battipaglia! Don't worry, I didn't get transfered or anything. I will just be staying here for the next few days until my new companion arrives. I said goodbye to sorella baker this morning as we sent her off on the train up to Rome. Sorella Baker has been an awesome companion and such a strong missionary and I have loved serving with her. As for my new companion...you guys may know her...I will be serving with Sorella Anderson! She was down in Palermo with me for my last transfer! She was the cute blonde one if you remember any of the pictures. So she will be following me up here! She is such a sweet girl and an awesome missionary, I am really excited to serve with her.

As for our week in Pozzuoli it was a pretty crazy one! We had pretty full-filled days getting everything taken care of before Sorella Baker had to leave. We got to see a lot of the members, which means lots of meal appointments, which is just fine by me :) haha but we also saw a lot of our investigators, new converts, and less actives as well. It was a crazy week but a great one as well!

We had one appointment with Amalia this week, which went really well. We got one of our members, sorella romano, to come with us and we did a lesson about fasting. Sorella Romano bore such a strong testimony about the power of fasting, it was incredible. In the end she agreed to do a fast with us so she could receive the strength to live the word of wisdom, help with her kids, and to recognize her testimony. Unfortunately a few days later she called and cancelled our appointment, and because I am in Battipaglia this week that means that we wont have time to teach her all the lessons before her baptismal date. So we are going to have to talk with her about setting a new date and what we can do to get her there. I'll be honest it was a pretty heartbreaking experience. Having to accept other people's free agency is a pretty hard lesson to learn as a missionary. Please keep her in your prayers this week. She knows the church is true, she just needs a little help getting the courage to make a commitment to change. 

Massimo is doing well! We were only able to meet with him once this week as well, but it was a really great lesson. We were able to have a member at that lesson as well, which really makes such a huge difference. He had A TON of questions, which made it a little bit hard at the beginning to try to take direction in the lesson, but eventually we were able to tell him that we wanted to explain the beginning of our church to him and we were able to teach the restoration. It went so well! He agreed with everything we taught, and loved the idea of Joseph Smith recieving an answer to his prayer. He is already reading in the Book of Mormon and in the Ensign so we are thrilled about that. He got sick towards the end of the week so we had to cancel our other appointment, but we should be seeing him at the end of this week when I get back to Pozzuoli.

Antonio became an official investigator this week! We were able to sit down and talk with him about our purpose as missionaries, explained that there are certain lessons we teach, and stuff like that. He said he would be interested in taking the lessons so there you have it! We told him that our purpose as missionaries was to help people come unto christ and in the end to prepare to be baptized. So we gave him a baptismal invite and he accepted! So we are really excited to continue working with him as well.

We also got to she Shirley this week! Which was great because we dont get to see her very often. I dont remember if i told you about her last week....so we'll do a quick sum up. Shirley is from the philipeans. She lives in pozzuoli but was working up in rome for the summer. But now she is back! we met with her this week and her daughter melody. They are so great. Shirley was feeling pretty sick so we just decided to watch the restoration film with her, but she and melody absolutely loved it. At the end they both agreed to read the book of mormon and pray to know if it was true! Lots of exciting stuff happening over here :)

We are also seeing great progress with our less active Rina. You guys....for the first time in 20ish years she came to church! she actually did it! she couldnt stay the whole time but she came! So incredible. We also taught her the word of wisdom this week and she is starting to make some huge changes. She has decreased how much she smokes and is starting to drink orzo in the morning instead of coffee. Can you believe that?! It is such an incredible thing to see how much of a change is happening in her life. I absolutely love it.

Okay one more highlight from the week. One of the members we got to go see was Lucia, she is diagnosed with cancer. She leaves this week for Genova to get a bone marrow transplant and her daughter will be the doner. So we went over to their house this week so the anziani could give each of them a blessing. First of all it was just incredible because she is a rock. Seriously the most amazing woman. She is the only member in her family and before she got the blessing she bore her testimony to her kids about how the most precious thing they could ever receive in life is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was such a powerful moment. Then the spirit was so strong during the blessings, it was an incredible experience to be a part of. It made me think back to all the blessings I have recieved from dad, and also my blessing from grandfather when I was set apart. It was such a tender mercy to have that experiece to be reminded of all the people who love and support me back home. I am so grateful for the power of the priesthood and the blessing it is in my life.

Well I think its just about time to wrap this one up! I love you guys so much and I am so grateful for all that you do for me. Thank you for all the love, support, and prayers. Just think - pretty soon we are going to have to marsh missionaries out in the field! what could be greater. love you all so much. thanks for everything!

sorella marsh

September 8, 2014

cari miei,

so great to hear from you all this week! thanks so much for writing, i can never say it enough but you guys are the greatest. I have so much to tell you about this week! Get ready for it.

This week was such a great one! We saw so many incredible miracles. It got a little crazy because the days got switched up with zone conference, and we also traveled down to Battipaglia for a scambio. Which was awesome, by the way. Such a cute little city and my old companion Sorella Mitsvotai actually served there! It was so fun to be there for a day and talk to all the people who love her as much as I do. So that was a great highlight and tender mercy for me. 

Anyway! Our work here is going so well! We'll start with Rina. We met with her this week and just took some time to read with her in the Book of Mormon. She is doing so great. She loves the scriptures and has such a sincere desire to learn and to do the right things. She is definitely making some great progress. She was even going to come to a relief society activity this week! We gave her a call a few hours before the activity and she said she would come, but then it started to downpour rain. So that was a bummer. But she has been reading in the Book of Mormon on her own! Little by little we are heading in the right direction :)

Next we'll talk about Antonella. I can't remember if i have already told you guys about her before...so i'll do a quick sum up just in case. Antonella is an Ex investigator. The sisters taught her about a year ago. Then randomly one day she just showed up in church asking us to come visit her again! So we went to go see her and she told us about how she could feel a difference in her life when she wasnt meeting with the missionaries, and that she wanted to have that peace and happiness again. We told her that was definitely something we could do :) we were able to meet twice with her week and the lessons went really well! We taught her the restoration and at the end challenged her to baptism - and she accepted to prepare to be baptized on october 11th! So we are thrilled about that. She has such a strong desire to follow God, so we are really excited to be working with her.

Next Amalia. You guys she is doing SO WELL! It is the greatest thing to see and to feel this Christ like love and joy from her progress. This week we taught her the word of wisdom, which I was so stressed about. We have just had problems in the past with her keeping  commitments to read and pray, so we were a little nervous about moving on to more challenging things like giving up coffee and tea. The lesson went really well though. She understood everything and at the end when we asked her what she thought she said "well coffee and tea is a little surprising...but i dont think that will be a huge deal. i dont smoke, i dont drink wine, and i only drink a little coffee every once in a while." MIRACLES. Miracles all around. Haha unfortunately a few days later she got sick, so she drank a little coffe in the morning to help her feel better. So at our next lesson we talked about the importance of obedience so we could really emphasize that we keep commandments to show god that we love him. That lesson went really well. We had a member there helping us which makes all the difference in the world. She recommited to living the word of wisdom and so far has been doing great! We are still having problems with getting her to church...but one battle at a time. 

Okay on to our new investigators! First I want to tell you guys about Antonio. So this is a guy we met about a month ago. We were just walking by a bar when he stopped us and literally said "hey! you are american! i have granddaughters in america! you are like my granddaughters! come by anytime and i will by you guys something." So we stopped and talked to him for a minute and got his number, not really thinking much of it. Then he went out of town for a few weeks so we werent really able to see him, but we called him a few times to follow up a bit. When we talked to him on the phone he told us he had been informing himself on the mormons for when we met. Which made us a little nervous...i mean you can never trust whats out there on the internet. Heavenly Father must have really helped out with that one because he found all good stuff! We were finally able to meet with him this week and he told us all about how we had a prophet who restored the church, but was then killed, now we have another book of scripture, all stuff like that. So we gave him a copy of the book of mormon and next thing you know hes talking to us about how he is going to get to church on sunday. Haha long story short, we made plans to meet up at the metro stop to walk together up the hill to church (pozzuoli is a little city on a hill - no matter where you are walking it is always up.) best part of the story - this man is 75 years old! can you believe that?! 75 years old and walking up the hill to church. So incredible. We have an appointment this week to introduce him to Peppe, so we are thrilled about that :)

Okay one more! we got one other new investigator this week and his name is Massimo. Backround for him - one day we were down near the port in pozzuoli. We at the bus stop waiting for a bus when i saw a man staring at my name tag. So I walked up to him and ask him if he had any questions. We talked to him a bit, got his number, and said we would be in contact to set up an appointment. Later this week we were able to meet with him. We invited him to come to the church so we could teach him there and give him a tour. Luckily for us there was a relief society activity going on, so one of the husbands was able to join us to make it a member present lesson! Anyway - the church tour went really. We stopped in sat down in one of the rooms for a while to talk and get to know him a little better. Apparently he left the catholic church years ago and has spent years searching for the truth. He has studied with all sorts of religions trying to find a place in "set his anchor" in his words. So we asked him what he would expect from meeting with us and he said that he would like to meet twice a week to discuss the scriptures and learn more, and maybe in the end if it felt right he could get baptized. The man gave himself a bap invite! 

Haha the greatest part was what happened after though. We took him down to see the chapel and the baptismal font. As soon as we stepped into the room he said "you are going to think i am crazy...but i have seen this room before. I have seen all of this before. I remember that projector being right there. That is how vividly I remeber this. And that baptismal font too. I have seen all of this before" He then went on to talk about the feelings he had when he first met the missionaries (he met some anziani a few years ago before meeting us again) and how he got that same strong feeling the moment he entered the church. All we had to do at that point was testify that it was the Spirit he was feeling, testifying to him that all of these things were true. We have an appointment with him this week.

I love being a misisonary. I can't believe I am so lucky to be able to experience these things and take part in God's work. I love you all so much and cant thank you enough for all of your support. I am so grateful for all of you and hope you have a great week! Go get em sonn! love you bummie :)

sorella marsh

 battipaglia scambi!

the little girl is named kate katz. she is 13 years old and is already preparing to be a missionary!

 some of our american members! sorella trimble is the greatest and takes us out for pday once every transfer. today we went to sorrento.

Zone Conference in Napoli

September 1, 2014 was zone conference for Sorella Steph and the Napoli zone!  Being the mom I am, I jumped on Steph's mission president's blog to see any pictures of our favorite Sorella.  Thanks Sister Waddoups for taking pictures!  Basically, if Steph was in the picture, it will be in this post!  She looks so great!  So happy!  I am one grateful Mom!  I know Stephanie's companion, Sister Baker, is leaving, this was her last zone conference.  For the rest of the details on these pictures, we will have to wait for Steph to fill us in!  Enjoy!!

 Sorella Baker is in the black dress.  She and the other sister have completed their missions!

September 2, 2014

Cari Miei,

So great to hear from you all this week! First things first - shout out to sonn and her farewell! I am SO proud of you bummie! I have already heard so many great things about how well you did, and who is surprised :) hope you know I was praying for you over here on this side of the pond. Can't wait for you to get over here with me!

Things here are going well! First great highlight of the week - we had a baptism! His name is Joseph and he was a member referral from our new convert Roselyn. It was such an awesome experience. My favorite thing though was just seeing how excited he was and how much joy his baptism had already brought him. Best ever:)

This week was a bit of a slower one for us over here because Sorella Baker got pretty sick this week. She caught a really nasty cold so we had to spend some time inside for her to rest and heal. She was a fighter though! Just a few days and we got through it. Plus on the bright side - because we spent a few days inside I ended up doing things like updating the area book and making phone calls and now I'm not afraid to talk on the phone any more. Haha blessings in disguise.

The time we did have was really great though! Unfortunately we weren't able to see any of our investigators, but we did have an awesome FHE with Rina and Sorella D'Onofrio, the relief society president. It honestly couldn't have gone better. Sorella D'Onofrio is a gem. Get this - so for our spiritual message we decided to share the Mosiah 18:8-10. We wanted to talk about how when we are baptised we covenant to love, serve and help one another so that Rina would know she always has a support system in the church. As soon as we finished reading the scriptures sorella D'Onofrio started to smile and said "how funny you decided to share these scriptures with us. It was when I read these scriptures for the first time that I decided to be baptized. I always wanted to help and serve other people so when I read these verses I knew I had found the right church." I mean if that doesnt tell you how amazing of a person this woman is I dont know what will. Anyway the night went really well, and now rina has another friend in church! She still has to watch her mom so she isn't able to come on sundays, but we are working on it :)

We also spent a lot of time visiting with the members this week. Recently I have been studying in Alma, and at the beginning of this week I came across the story of Alma and Amulek. As I read it I remembered a talk that I heard at the MTC that related the story of Alma and Amulek to member missionary work. We decided to share this with our members, which went great. It was such an awesome experience to get to know them a little better and to work with them a little more closely.

And to finish it off we had zone conference yesterday! Which was absolutely fantastic. Seriously just the perfect spiritual reboost. We had trainings from all the district leaders and sorella baker (the sister training leader) about how we can improve in our teaching, and a training from the zone leaders on how we can work better with the members. Then president waddoups gave us a training about how we can have more faith in our work. I learned so much and it was such a great opportunity to feel the spirit and get motivated again in our work! We are really excited to get started with the month of september :)

Thank you everyone for all of your love, support, and prayers. I love this gospel and love that as a missionary I get to see how much joy it brings to peoples lives. There is nothing greater. I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you soon!

Sorella Marsh

not a super great picture...but this was the COOLEST thing we got to do for pday! it was called napoli undergroud. we got to go through all these tunnels and and passageways that have been here since the greeks and romans. pretty neat, huh?

 this my friends is what we call a BOMBA. Cookie cake with nutella made special for the birthday of the one and only sorella baker!

 SORELLA ANDERSON FROM PALERMO! I just about cried when i saw her I was so happy.

 meet my district!

 This is sorella wiltbank! she served in palermo before i got there, so it was super fun to talk with her about how much we both love the place :)

  colosseum in casserta