December 29, 2014

Carissimi Miei,

Yay it was so great to see all of you on christmas day! thanks so much for changing all your schedules around last minute so that we could make that work. Best christmas present of them all :) love you guys so much!

We had a wonderful christmas week over here in rome! It was definitely different with all the holidays, but it was a great week nonetheless! On christmas eve we had a party at the office with some of the other rome missionaries which was a lot of fun. the office sorelle fed us breakfast and then each of the districts performed a musical number. my district represented our spanish pride and rocked feliz navidad - shout out to sonn :) after the party we headed back to the church to watch one of our movies. We decided on hercules and I have no regrets. That night we had a meal appointment with one of the families in our ward, the silvas. They are the most fantastic filipino's that you will ever meet. They made us all sorts of food and we sang carols all night long. It was a really great time.

Then it was christmas day! the highlight of course was talking to all of you, but it was such a wonderful day. We got to sleep in an hour, then we opened up our christmas presents. Then we headed to the church to watch our second movie, how to train your dragon 2. again, no regrets. After that the burnetts invited us over for dinner. They have the cutest little boy who is 4 years old and the whole time we were there he has us play avengers with him, so i was right at home. They were so kind to us though. Brother burnett drove us to and from his house so we could still have time to skype, not to mention all the food they made for us. It definitely made christmas a very special day for us. We have such wonderful members here.

On the day after christmas we had another meal appointment, this time with the scotchi's. They are the most incredible family. They had about 10 people cramed into their appartment, each of us being someone who didnt have a family to spend christmas with. There was a mix of less actives from the ward, members, and missionaries. And leonardo was there too :) it was such a neat experience. and again, SO much food. i cant even walk anymore, sorella jones just has to roll me everywhere that we need to go. So it was a bit of a different week, but such a great one. It was such a neat experience to spend so much time with the members and to do what we could to serve them. We've got some pretty incredible people over here.

Because of the holiday we didn't get to see very many of our investigators this week, but everyone is doing well! we got to talk to leonardo a bit at church yesterday and he told us that he has been reading in the book of mormon everyday! he said he doesnt understand very much, but we told him we would take more time to read together in our lessons. so we are thrilled about that. We also have been in touch with Luca. Unfortunately his mom had to have surgery this past week so it has been a bit of a crazy one for him. He said everything should be fine with his mom though so hopefully we will get to see him once things calm down a bit. 

We were able to see a few of our less actives though, so that was great! We met with la coppia navarro and talked to them about how great of a blessing the temple is and how important it is that we prepare ourselves to go. We really wanted to emphasize the importance of covenants and how we have to keep our baptismal covenants before we can enter the temple and make even greater covenants. The lesson went really well! The spirit was so strong and they took everything we said so well. And the next day they came to church! So we are excited about the progress they are making. We were also able to contact Mila hernandez this week, which was a huge miracle! she has a crqazy work schedule and hardly ever answers her phone, but last night when we stopped by she was finally there! We set up an appoitment for this week and wrote down her work schedule so we can know when are good times to stop by. It had been so long since we first met her, but just goes to show that persistance pays off as a missionary!

Okay quick miracle story. Yesterday we were in church and I was talking to leonardo, when one of the members came up to me and said that there was a woman in the back who was looking for me. We weren't expecting anyone to be there so i had no idea who it could be. I walked back and saw this lady that we had met on the street literally over a month ago. She was with her granddaughter and i talked to them briefly, but then our bus came so i had to go. Then we ran into her again a few days ago on the street. She is from romania and doesn't speak italian very well, but i gave her a card and pointed to the address on the church on the back. Then she came! She is the sweetest lady! It's pretty impossible for us to speak to each other, but every time she sees us she just grabs our hands and smiles. And miraculously enough there are people in our ward who speak her language, so we were able to exchange information and we will be seeing her again :) so incredible to see how God looks after us. It strengthened my testimony so much that God really does know and love us individually.

So we've got a lot of great things going on over here! I love being a missionary. It is such a great work and I am so grateful that i get to be a part of it. I love you all so much and I am so grateful for each of you. Have a great week!

sorella marsh

christmas eve at the silva's

 christmas morning!

 day after christmas at the scotchi's

Pictures from our family Google Hangout!  LOVE!!!

December 22, 2014

Carissimi Miei,

BUON NATALE! Can you even believe that christmas is here?! When in the world did that happen! We are so excited over here. It has been such a wonderful time of the year where we get to focus even more on the savior and sharing His message. Plus as missionaries we get a few christmas perks like watching movies, sleeping in, and of course making our skype calls! hooray! so excited to see all of you guys in a few days :)

Get ready everyone, I have so much to tell you about this week. People must be feeling the christmas spirit in the air over here because this week was just incredible! We'll start at the beginning :) Thanks for everyone for all your support about the specialized training. I'm happy to report that it went well! we decided to give a training about how we can magnify our callings as missionaries and focus more on bearing testimony of the savior, specifically in finding and in our first lessons with investigators. It was message we felt very strongly that the missionaries in our zone needed to hear, so i hope they were able to get something out of it. 

Our work here is going really well. We were able to meet with Leonardo this week and we decided that we really just needed to take a step back in our lessons with him. In this lesson we just really wanted to focus on the idea of gods love. God loves us so he sent his son, god loves us so he restored the church, god loves us so he will answer our prayers. It went really well. And at the end of the lesson he FINALLY said a prayer! we have been pushing for him to pray with us for about a few weeks now, and he finally did it! it was such a beautiful prayer. His progress is very slow, but it is progress, and thats what is important :)

Also this week we were finally able to meet with luca again! He is still doing really well. Still reading in the book of mormon and saying his prayers, so you cant ask for much more! We taught him the plan of salvation and it went so well. It is a really neat experience to teach him - the doctrines just make sense to him and he really enjoys it. But greatest miracle of all - yesterday he came to church for the first time! he was finally in town during the weekend so he was able to make it for sacrament meeting. the members were so great. They all introduced themselves to him and he said he really enjoyed it. Quick story - our ward mission leader went up and introduced himself to luca saying that he was the leader of the missionaries. after luca turned to me and said so he's like the captain of the armies in the book of mormon? haha already crackin book of mormon jokes. who is this guy! Also while we are talking about church - quick shoutout to my awesome companion who gave a talk! can you believe that? second week in the mission field and she is already up there speakin in front of people. she's the coolest. 

This week we also had great progress with our less actives, and i wanted to mention one in particular. Her name is Thelma and she is 17 years old. She is less active just because she has kind of lost sight of what is important. So we had a lesson with her about the sacrament and the atonement and told her about how she can feel the way she did on the day she was baptized. It went so well, and she was so touched by it. On sunday morning we got a text from her saying that she had woken up to come to church, but woke up with a fever so she wouldnt be able to come. Which is too bad, but she had intentions of coming! So we are thrilled about that. 

Okay best news - remember that story i told you a few weeks ago about the boyfriend of the girl we met on the street who only spoke spanish?! We FINALLY got to meet him! His name is carlos and he is absolutely fantastic! His story is so incredible. So he knew the missionaries in peru. He lived right by the church there so he would see the missionaries all the time. They would always say hi to each other, but he never actually talked to them or knew what they were doing there. Now he is in Italy for school, but he cant go to school until he learns italian. so right now he isnt working or studying and has a lot of free time on his hands, which has left him with a lot of time to think about and pray to god. Right during this time is when we started calling to get ahold of francesca :) we taught him the restoration and he absolutely loved it. He wants so badly to be closer to God and was so eager and excited about reading in the book of mormon. So incredible! not to mention how amazing it is that we can actually talk to him. Haha when we were trying to set up the appointment he was speaking to me in 100% spanish. But somehow we understood eachother! gift of tongues is real. 

We also got another new investigator this week! Her name is veronica. We actually met her a few weeks ago as well. We were at the train station and she needed help buying a ticket. We helped her figure it out, then as she was running to catch her train she gave us her phone numbers saying we could meet up again. We weren't 100% sure that she understood that we were missionaries...but we took the number anyway! haha we have been in touch with her over the past few weeks and then this week we were finally able to see her. sure enough, she had no idea that we were actually missionaries for our church. But when we got to sit down and talk to her about it for a little while she was really touched by our message. She has a lot of faith and believes in Christ, but not in the Catholic church. It was a really beautiful lesson. Not to mention we taught her on the spanish steps, so that was kinda cool. But more importantly she wants to see us again, and we are really excited to be meeting with her. God works in mysterious ways!

So needless to say we are seeing quite a few miracles over here! I feel so blessed to be over here doing this work, especially during this time of christmas! I feel so blessed to have a knowledge of our savior and the gift our heavenly father gave to us. And I am so grateful for the opportunity i have to share with these italian people who have stolen my heart. I love you all so much and I am so excited to see you this week!

Spero che abbiate un buon natale, e ci vediamo presto!

sorella marsh

2 emails from Pres. Waddoups

Today, December 19, I received these 2 emails from Steph's mission president.  Steph is amazing!
19 December 2014

To the Family of Sorella Marsh ,

We are pleased to inform you that  Sister Marsh has been called as a Sister Training Leader here in the Italy Rome Mission.  As a Sister Training Leader she will be responsible for all of the sister missionaries in her zone.  She will conduct exchanges with each companionship assigned to her.  She will also encourage them in their own areas, supervise their service, and be a mentor to them.  She will also assist the mission president, zone leaders and district leaders in training meetings and zone conferences.

She has been called to this new assignment based on her outstanding service and dedication as a missionary.

Sister Waddoups and I thank you for your faith and prayers on behalf of our mission and for all you have done to prepare such an outstanding missionary.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Waddoups

President

Italy Rome Mission

19 December 2014

To the Family of Sorella Marsh

Your missionary, Sister Marsh,  has recently been assigned to be a "New Missionary Trainer".  In this assignment she will be the companion of a newly arrived missionary.  This is a very important responsibility.  Trainers have a profound and lasting influence on the development of a new missionary's attitude and habits.

I am confident that Sister Marsh will do an excellent job in this new assignment.

Sister Waddoups and I thank you for your faith and prayers on behalf of our mission and for all you have done to prepare such an outstanding missionary.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Waddoups

President

Italy Rome Mission

Rome East / Malta Specialized Training - December 2014

I just LOVE it when I check the Waddoup's blog and see my Sorella Marsh!  These pictures were taken at the Specialized Training meeting.  They obviously acted out the Nativity.  We will have to get Steph to fill us in on the details, but for now, if Steph was in the picture, this creeper mom grabbed it!  Oh how I love our wonderful Sorella!  Enjoy!

December 15, 2014

Carissimi Miei,

 

Merry Christmas!! Okay okay not quite yet, but we are just so thrilled for it over here! It is such a wonderful time of year, and I am so grateful for the time I have to talk to others about Christ during this season. We are feeling the christmas spirit in full swing, that is for sure. Also it might have something to do with the fact that I got all of my christmas packages when i went to capi conference this week! Thank you all SO SO much! I got the two from mom, one from ricky, one from doug, and one from dantzel. So all is accounted for! I honestly can't express how grateful I am for all of you. Thank you for making me feel like such a loved and cared about missionary! I haven't opened any of the packages yet, I am being good and waiting until christmas. So they are tucked safely away in my room :) GRAZIE MILLE! 

 

Well things are just chugging away here a Roma 1! I couldn't be more thrilled to tell you that I have my new companion! Her name is Sorella Jones and she is from Elkridge, Utah. She graduated from SUU in outdoor recreation in parks and tourism with an emphasis in education. Basically means she's super laid back, loves to be outside, and loves to work hard. So she is a fantastic companion :) she is filled with so much energy and so much desire to do the work, i absolutely love it. Its also a lot of fun to be with a new missionary. You just notice lots of little things that to you have become normal, but really are actually pretty cool.

 

Anyway I picked her up on Thursday from the villa and we got straight to work! Remember when President Eyring came to our ward and I told you about the member who brought her mom, Anna? Well we have been working with her little by little ever since she came to church, but finally last week Barbara (the member) came up to us and said you need to just go stop by my mom. Its been to long since the meeting and she will forget what she felt. So just go stop by. So that's what we did! We took her a little popcorn ball (classic Christmas tradition) and went to go stop by. We rang the citofono and got buzzed in! Then when we actually got to her door and rang the doorbell no one answered. We were super confused, and we were about to leave when Sorella Jones suggested that we leave her a note. We were just going to leave it there with the popcorn ball when we got the idea to ring the nextdoor neighbor's doorbell and ask if we could leave it with them. Turns out thats where Anna was! She let us in her home and we talked to her a little about her thoughts and feelings about the church. Her daughter was baptized years ago so she is pretty familiar with the church, but agreed to let us come back and talk to her about it more another day! So we are thrilled about that. First day in the field with Sorella Jones and we get a new investigator! how about that for new missionary magic :)

 

We were also able to contact another less active this week, so that was an incredible miracle. Her name is Immacolata, and she is about 80 years old. she is such a sweetheart though. Someone we can definitely help to feel the love of the Savior more in her life. Unfortunately we had a bit of a tougher week with the rest of our less actives and our investigators. Between the craziness of transfers, poor scheduling, and a lot of people going out of town for the holidays we weren't able to see anyone this week. We talked to Luca over the phone though and he is doing well! Still reading in the book of mormon, so that is fantastic! Leonardo was sick this week so we haven't met with him, but we should see him soon this next week. So we had a bit of a rough one but we'll pick it up this next week! We're getting back into the swing of things and I cant wait to see the miracles that are going to happen.

 

One highlight from this week though was that we had our ward Christmas party! It was so great. I love the members here, they are such incredible people. Unfortunately none of our investigators were able to come, but we did have a few of our English course students show up! so that was really great. For the party the members put on a Christmas program, complete with a choir and little play of a christmas carol. It wasn't the muppets, but close enough :) It was such a great night though. It was so fun to be with all the members and celebrate this Christmas time. It is a pretty incredible experience to be a representative of Christ during this special season. 

 

So all is well in Rome :) we have specialized training coming up this week, so sorella clyde and I will be giving another training. I am a little nervous about it, but excited for the opportunity to help the other missionaries. We've got some appointments set up with new potentials for this week as well so we are excited to get to work! I love being a missionary, especially at Christmas time. I love the feeling of giving all that I have to serve the Lord, just as he gave all that he had for us. Can't wait to see you all next week! I love you!

 

sorella marsh

Merry Christmas from Rome :)

 Saying goodbye to la coppia wardel

 goodbye to sorella argyle! so sad to see her go - i love this sorella.

 SORELLA JONES

 christmas stocking :) i dont care to admit how much of the candy is already gone.

 sorella kennedy! she is a new misisonary here who went to london with madie! such a tender mercy to talk to her for a little bit.

Christmas arrived in Rome

HOORAY!  Today, I received an email from a sister that works in the Rome Mission office.  She sent me these pictures so we could see Steph AND see that she received her Christmas packages!  That made my day and my Christmas!

Rome East Zone Conference

I found some more pictures of our favorite Sorella on her mission's blog.  They had zone conference in November and posted these pictures of Steph.  Someday, we can get Stephanie to add commentary.  Enjoy!

She is just the cutest in all the land of Italy!

December 8, 2014

Carissimi Miei,

thank you all so much for all the great pictures and videos this week! What in the world everyone is HUGE. I guess time does that! So fun to see all those cute faces, and to hear what you guys are up to back home. Thanks for all the updates :) you guys are the best.

Man this week was nuts. haha i seriously don't even know where to begin! We'll start of by saying that I got to go out and do more exchanges this week, so that was exciting! Sorella Clyde and I went out to Pescara to spend a day with the sorelle there. It was absolutely beautiful out there! It was a really great experience. I spent most of the day doing finding with the sorelle, and it's always great to get new ideas and to see how other missionaries do things. Hopefully they were able to learn something from us too. We had a little bit of a slip up with the bus ride home...almost went to L'aquila instead of Rome, but other than that it was smooth sailings! When we got back to rome Sorella Clyde had to take off to Sardegna to pick up her permesso, but she forgot some of her papers so what was supposed to be just a quick 2 day trip has turned into a whole week of us being in a threesome here in Rome. So that has been exciting! We are now trying to squeeze all the work of two companionships into one, so we've got some pretty jam-packed days ahead of us!

Unfortunately because we have to squeeze everyone's work in we weren't able to see all of our people this week that we would have wanted to. But it was still a really great week! We were able to see Leonardo, and his lesson went so well! We just sat down and took some time to talk to him about the spirit. We read from President Uchtdorfs talk recieving a testimony of light and truth, and went through and walked him through the process he has to go through to recieve his testimony. What we are really trying to focus on right now is getting him to consistently pray and read the scriptures because that is how is testimony will come. I dont think he really understood that before. So little by little we are making progress! He is such a great man. 

This week we also had more success with our less actives! I can't believe how many meno attivi are responding to us here in this area...it is absolutely incredible. It has strengthened my testimony so much that truly the Lord never forgets us. This week we met with two members of the Farias family, thelma and elena. The whole family are members, but we just met with thelma and elena before english course. We had a really good lesson with them about how the Lord doesnt ask us to be perfect, he just asks us to try our best. I am really excited to be working more with them. We also met another less active named rosa. She is SO cute, and her family is adorable. Her husband and kids aren't members, but they are really open to hearing about the gospel. They haven't been coming to church lately because the husband got busy with work, and the kids are sick and rosa feels overwhelmed bringing them to church on her own. But they said they would love to have us come visit them, so little by little we'll see what we can do to help them :)

The last family we met with is the navarro familiy, and they are still semi-active. They come to church pretty frequently, but usually only for sacrament meeting. But they asked us to come work with them so we could help them be ready to go to the temple. They want nothing more than to be ready for the temple when it is finished. They are from Peru but have been living in italy for over 25 years. Unfortunately a few years ago sorella navarro had a stroke, and had to do speech therapy to gain back her speaking. Because of that experience she forgot nearly all of her Italian, and is embarrassed to go to the regular temple preparation class. They are so sweet though, I am really excited to be here working with them. There is nothing greater than the temple and knowing you are helping people to be able to enter.

To add to the craziness of this week, it is also the end of the transfer. Which means that on saturday we recieved our transfer calls. Turns out I will be staying here in rome as the STL for a ROMAN CHRISTMAS! Which I am stoked about :) Sorella Argyle will be heading down to train down in Battipaglia - can you believe that? She is getting blown in training! She is so ready though. She is going to be so awesome. Plus she'll get to go to pozzuoli for exchanges, so naturally I have been talking her ear off about how wonderful it is down there. But because she is leaving that means I'm getting a new companion, and we don't know who it is yet because I am training too. So there you have it! Honestly I'm pretty nervous about it, but if the Lord trusts me then I will try my best to live up to the calling. But a few prayers our way every now and then probably couldn't hurt anything ;)

Well that about sums it up for the week! Its gonna be a few hectic days a head of us, but we are excited about it. A lot of change coming up, but that's never a bad thing! That's what these misisons are for, right? Speaking of change, quick crazy story for you. So yesterday one of the senior couples had us over for dinner, and once we got there they welcomed us in and sorella wardel said I hope you guys are hungry, we are having potatos and chicken! And deep inside me i felt...relief. complete relief. I couldn't have been more stoked to eat good 'ol american chicken. Haha i guess thats what happens when you have a week full of meat appointments eating sea food and all sorts of other questionable things. So there you have it, chicken has officially made it into the acceptable meats catagory. Miracles happen. Haha thanks so much for all of your love, support, and prayers. I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week!

Sorella Marsh

beaches in pescara

kind of bad pictures taken from the bus...but this was what the ride looked like up to pescara. i was dying! transported back into provo canyon.

 rainbows in rome :)

the first day i actually wore my rainboots while it was raining. tough luck with the weather here.

 sorella argyle and i in a pretty part of town

December 1, 2014

Carissimi miei,

 

Happy (late) Thanksgiving! Im so happy to hear that you all had such a wonderful holiday :) so crazy to think how spread out we were this year! But regardless of the distance I hope you know how thankful I am for each of you. I know I say it everyweek, but I honestly feel like such an incredibly blessed missionary. Thank you all so much for your love and support, and more importantly your examples. I am so grateful to have such incredible role models and examples in my life. I love each of you very very much :) thanksgiving in Italy was a bit different than in America, as i'm sure you can imagine. We celebrated the day by throwing a thanksgiving party for our english course. It was a hit! Everyone brought food, we sang some hymns, and talked about how important it is to have gratitude in our lives. A great way to spend the day :) and don't you fret, the next day we were able to eat our traditional thanksgiving meal. We are so blessed and have the best senior couples here in our ward, and they had us over for lunch so we could all have a thanksgiving meal together. Shout out to mom - i took the lionhouse rolls and they were a HIT. everyone says thank you :) so it was a wonderful holiday! Now we are on to december! WHAT THE DEVIL. Who ever said that could happen. I seriously can't believe it. 

 

The rest of this week was a great one! Our investigators are doing well. We weren't able to get ahold of dyanne, so unfortunately we couldn't see her this week. We are really hoping to meet with her soon, but its looking like we might have to drop her. Which just breaks my heart. She has the greatest desire to be baptized, but until she starts acting on it there's not really much we can do to help her. Please keep her in your prayers this week. We also weren't able to see harrison and mabel because of their work schedules, but we have an appoitment with them tonight. So hopefully all goes well there! 

 

Our other investigators are doing great though! We met with Leonardo this week and taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. The lesson went really well, but his main struggle right now is that he can't recognize the spirit. He wants so badly to recieve a testimony and to be able to say that he knows that the things we are telling him are true. So we have decided that we need to take a step back in our lessons with him and just work on helping him to feel and recognize the spirit. we'll get him there :) he has so much desire to find the truth and i believe that he is acting with real intent. Just a matter of time. We also met with Luca this week! We did a little bit of follow up with the restoration, and watched the film together. It went really well! He has been reading in the book of mormon and says he really enjoys it. It is so incredible to watch his testimony grow. 

 

Great news - we also got 2 new investigators this week! Both are post-flush miracles! The first is Joy. Turn out he met the missionaries like 3 years ago, but somehow just lost contact. We met with him this week and he said he wants to learn more! We will probably pass him off to the anziani because it will be easier for them to meet with him, but we are really excited to see him progress. Our other new investigator is Annarita. So while we were flushing we called someone in our phone named guido. Annarita is guido's girlfriend and she is using his phone. She answered the phone and said she had no idea who we were, but that we were welcome to come over and talk to her about it. Haha so we agreed! She is so great. She has a lot of ideas and opinions about religion, but she also has a ton of faith. We explained a bit to her about who we were as missionaries, then at the end asked if we could leave her with a prayer. I said the prayer, and and the end of it looked up to see her crying. She asked us what she was feeling, and we quickly explained to her that it was the spirit. so incredible. we are really excited to see her again this week!

 

We have some great potential set up for this week as well. I wanted to share one story really quickly. So when we went to say goodbye to Marivel we met this woman at the train station, her name is francesca. we talked to her for a little bit about who we are and what we are here for, when she asked us how we can be so sure that god exists. we told her we would love to talk to her about it more another day. So we got her phone number and a few days later gave her a call. someone else answered the phone, and said that francesca was at school. I was about to hang up when he said wait wait! are you the sorellas? i said yes we are the sister missionaries. Then he started mumbling and all i could understand was i dont speak italian...only spanish....i dont know how to say...i dont speak italian....so i quickly said my companion speaks spanish! and passed the phone over to her. turns out i was talking to carlos, francesca's boyfriend. He met the missionaries in peru and was taking the lessons, but lost contact with the church when he came to italy. He has been wanting to get in contact with missionaries, but didnt know how to find them. So the lord sent us to him :) can you believe that?! looks like i better start studying up my spanish!

 

One more story :) So last week rachel sent me a list of people she worked with while she was here in Roma 1. I have been working my way through calling them and trying to see if we can meet with them. Unfortunately a lot of them have moved, but we were able to see one of the less actives she worked with named Rosita. Rosita left the church because she was offended by the way people treated her, but she wants to come back to church so badly. She just needs help having the courage to do it. We read 1 nephi 21:14-16 together and talked about how the lord never forgets us. In that moment I just felt the spirit testifying so strongly that I was here specifically for her. She loved rachel so much, and was thrilled when I told her that I am her cousin. I know that I am here specifically to help her - the Lord has designed it this way. It was such a strong testimony to her, and to me, that the lord knows each of us individually and answers each of our prayers.

 

I am so grateful to be here as a missionary in this place and at this time. I wouldn't have it any other way! I love you all so much and I am so grateful for this gospel that allows us to be together forever as a family. I hope you all have a great week and I will talk to you soon :)

 

 

sorella marsh

 apple pie for english course!

 corso party!

 traditional english course suckers :)

 thanksgiving with the memmots!

rosita! :)