Hi!!!!! Sorry I didn't email yesterday (Monday, Dec 31) -- our P-day got changed to today (Tuesday, Jan 1) and they told us to deep clean our apartments today. So that's what we're doing.
Last night (New Year's Eve) we had to be in early because the Napoli district -- I'm not in the Napoli district, I'm in the Napoli zone -- Napoli is super dangerous on New Year's Eve. Fireworks in Italy are the craziest. Everyone goes on their balconies and shoots off so many fireworks, and then at midnight they drop beer bottles from the roofs and shoot guns into the air. So obviously it won't be as much like that where we are but that stuff still exists because people are still from Napoli here, they still claim Napoli.
This week was good. it's still weird because it's in the festa (holidays) and I just want the festa to be over because we can't really get appointments because everyone is out of town. We can with certain people, but a lot of people are like, "after the holidays, after the festa". And the festa doesn't end until January 6 because they also have what's called Bufona on the 6th which is...Bufona is a witch who brings the Christmas stockings. Everyone's like out of town. We've gotten so many meal appointments. Starting last Sunday we had eight meal appointments in seven days. And the thing about Italian meal appointments is they're not like American -- you don't dish yourself. They dish for you. And also even if you were to dish for yourself, there's like six courses at every meal. So basically you have a pasta, a meat, sometimes you'll have a salad, sometimes you'll have another meat, sometimes you'll have a vegetable or two or three, and then they do like a fruit, and then the dessert. So it's a lot. I love it, like I seriously love it, but just having that many in such a short time...my stomach was so, so bloated the entire week. We joke about the paunch, which is just how your belly is inflated because we're in Italy (so much good food!), but the paunch was like the most I've ever eaten belly -- like that big, I literally looked pregnant. Then it would go down to 3/4 size and then we would have another meal appointment. It was so bad, but also SOOOOO good!
On Sunday we had a meal appointment with a family I really love, the Carforas. They're super awesome. After we did our video calls with our families the Sutzmans fed us a lasagne. It wasn't like an Italian lasagne, but it was still super, super good, and salad. I didn't actually eat a lot, but still -- if someone's going to put a lasagne in front of me I'm going to eat it because it's so good. On Wednesday, there is a person they used to teach here and she's our neighbor. So we see her pretty often but she works so much. The whole family is from Armenia and on the 24th we went and dropped gifts off to everyone. After the volunteer project with the Trimbles they had a ton of extra food that had been donated to them from the commissary on base -- Vanilla Wafers, Cinnamon Roll Oreos, and Twizzlers. So we dropped those off as gifts to people we teach, people we used to teach, and to our favorite bar. So we got two meal appointments off of those. One was to our neighbor from Armenia and she wasn't there when we dropped off the gift so she called us and said "Come over for pranzo on this date..." and she had a bunch of little appetizer type foods and she made this really cool Armenian dish, kind of like an egg roll but it was only meat inside and it was SO, so, so good and some people had an argument about whether Jesus drank wine and we sat out that one. LOL They sent us home with a whole plate of handmade Armenian desserts. I like trying new things from other places.
The next day we had pranzo with another lady. We asked her if she wanted to take the lessons and she completely ignored the question and started bearing her testimony about the Madonna, so that's was a no. We had a ragu. You asked if a ragu was like a marinara. It's not. I'm not really a marinara person, I don't really love red sauce. This is how Maria told me to make it -- and apparently it turns out really well but I don't know the difference -- you [ut carrots, celery, onions, really good meat (it's so fresh it's scary), and you cook that down and then you can put basil and other herbs in it. She put cilantro in hers, I think, but maybe not because I'm not sure what the word is for cilantro... And then you cook all that down a lot and then you put in pomodoro which is tomato sauce but it's not like a tomato pasta or the same as tomato sauce that you get in the US. It's just straight tomato, very liquidy. Look up a recipe for ragu and see if you can find anything. I'm really curious. Then you put the tomato sauce in the pan and it's supposed to cook for a minimum of three hours, but the best ragus take forever. mine was only on for three hours. So she made a ragu and some chicken. She sent us home with some food. Everyone is sending us home with food and we can't eat it all, so there's this homeless man on our way to our main finding location so we share it with him. I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing but that's what we do. I think it's a good thing.
Our next meal appointment was with some people from our English group. The girl is named P. and she's super good at English but her husband has been coming the whole time with her. Anytime I speak Italian or do anything he's in the back smiling and nodding at me. It's cute. So we had dinner with then and their son who works in Finland was there. They both speak English (P and her son) both speak English pretty well and she wants to speak English all the time because she wants to learn. A lot of the conversations were in English. The son is used to speaking English because he works in Finland with computers an he speaks English at work. It was fun because it was English. The food was so good. It was clams or mussels and pasta, such good food all the time. They had a spinach thing and I like that. It's like a Napolitano thing. And a bacon wrapped mushroom and that was good. It was fun.
Then our last meal appointment, to top them all off, was with another sister who is an elderly lady in our ward who only speaks Napolitan and it's hard for me to understand what anyone says in Napolitano. It's a lot to take in and I have to think about what's being said and really concentrate.
On Sunday we went to church. We were super bummed because E wasn't there. We're super sad about it. We met with her another day last week and we didn't have time to get our real lesson in because we were talking about other things going on in her life. It was cool because I am able to communicate with her. not all the time, but I can communicate with her. It's helpful because she speaks a little bit of English so if I say an English word she'll help me figure it out in Italian. I love her. Anyway, I was able to say what I wanted, talk about the things I wanted to talk about in that lesson, like the before lesson which I usually don't participate in because I understand what's going on but I haven't practiced any of it, I don't have anything to say in regards to it because I don't know how to say it. So that was really good to be able to communicate with her. Anyway, after that discussion we handed her the law of chastity pamphlet and we're like, we're going to talk about this next time. But the word for chastity in Italian means complete abstinence, celibacy, like what nuns do, for your whole life. So we handed it to her and her eyes got sooooo big. It was funny. We told her not to worry about it, it's not that, you don't have to be a nun! It was funny. In our next lesson we taught the 10 commandments and emphasized keeping the Sabbath Day holy and the law of chastity. I appreciate her because I can communicate with her and I understand her. The lesson went really well. She acts like she's already baptized sometimes, which is awesome.
Then yesterday, New Year's Eve, we had to be home by 5 pm when it was dark. So we got in for pranzo at 1:00 so we had pranzo and then we had to do our studies and then we had to be inside because it was dark. That was this week. We didn't have a lot of lessons. We had the lessons with E but other than that we didn't have a lot of lessons because everyone is busy with festa and they don't have time to talk. But we love them anyway and will try to teach them anyway.
Answers to questions....
1. Tell me about the rest of your Christmas!!! Opening presents, being with the other sorelle, etc., etc., etc.
It was fun. I know that's not the purpose of Christmas, but it was nice to have something normal and we very much appreciated it because it feels normal and fun. It was fun to be with the other sorelle. They were only here for a little while so we did breakfast and then the gingerbread houses and then we had to book it out to... Oh my gosh, I forgot to tell the story of our second fire!!! OK, so we booked it out to our meal appointment that I mentioned above. So the ward gift, which was super cute, was stove top potpourri - an orange, cloves, cinnamon stick, rosemary. So cute and it worked really well. So when the Caserte sorelle came over we put that on the stove because it was cute and Christmasy. And then we booked it out to get to our appointment and oops, we forgot about it! So we get to our meal appointment -- it took us about an hour to get there -- and then my companion looked at me and asked if I turned off the stove, and I'm like no, did you turn off the stove? She said no, so oh no! Oh no -- this is our Christmas meal appointment, and we have to leave because we had to do something. We called the anziani and they weren't able to, so we literally sprinted to the train station and we make that train by like two minutes, thank goodness, and then we ran home. We were thinking about the embarrassment of having another fire in our apartment. So we ran home and by this time we've rationalized that there's no way that we can have a real fire, because there wasn't enough in the pan and there was nothing around it that could have caught on fire, the worst that's going to happen is our apartment is filled with smoke. And yeah, our apartment was filled with smoke. but luckily we hadn't plugged the fire extinguisher back in from our last fire so no one knew about it, so that's the good part of the story so we didn't have to be embarrassed about it! So that was Christmas.
2. How was church today? Are people there excited about changing to a two hour block instead of three hours?
It was good. They asked us to bear our testimonies in the beginning and one of our anziani gave a talk. He did a good job. I just basically reused my birth testimony. I think people are excited about the two hour block. They also changed the time of church back by two hours.
3. What was the spiritual highlight of your week?
Our lessons with E.
4. How have you seen the hand of the Lord in your life this week? What tender mercies have you experienced?
I think it was a tender mercy to have a lot of meal appointments for the holidays because not everyone gets that and Italian meal appointments are even better.
5. What stood out to you in your personal studies this week?
I've been studying the conference talks you sent me, trying not to go through them too fast. I've been studying one talk each day from the notebook you sent. I think it's a lot about the atonement in the sense of how the atonement is completely centered on love.
6. What was the funniest thing that happened this week?
Yesterday for exercise time it was so funny. I'm conflicted about exercise time because it's not like real exercise in my mind but it is, but I'm so out of shape that it's just a mess, you know? Anyway...Sorella has had some sisters dancing or doing zumba for exercise time so I said let's do it. So instead of just plain exercise, we exercised crazy. I don't even know how to explain. We put on music and did squats but then we'd do jumps and kicks and fun things in between them and I ran and skipped around the apartment for two minutes and it was so fun and it actually was kind of exercise.
7. Have you eaten anything new or unusual this week?
We ate eel on Christmas. That was really good. But that wasn't weird because I've eaten eel on sushi. And the bacon wrapped mushroom.
8. What have you learned about yourself so far on your mission? What have you learned about Heavenly Father or the Savior?
One thing we talked about a lot this week is me getting a picture of who I want to become. Sorelle was giving a lesson this week and that's one of the activities she had us do. I think it's crazy how with that bigger perspective it's so much easier to let the little things go and focus on the big things...like "I want to be this person when I get home, and in order to be that person I need to do this now" type of thing.
9. What are you doing for P-Day this week?
Cleaning.
10. What are you looking forward to this week?
Lessons with E.
11. Do you know how much I love you?
Yes.
12. Is there anything specific we can pray for for the people you're working with? Or for you and your companion?
E.
13. When are transfers?
I think the 24th of January.
Love you!!!!
Eel on Christmas Day.
Sorella Carfora had us put our Christmas card on her tree with other old missionary Christmas cards.
Sorella Carfora -- so cute.
The Stutzmans got a kitty for Christmas!
We did secret Santa white elephant gifts and this is what I gave my person...it was so funny.
An aquarium but it has our faces on the fishes.
I molded llamas...
The Hasmiks' puppy!
Pranzo with some sweet ladies...
With our English group students.
To my right is a classic Napolitano nativity (preciepe)
We went to the beach after we finished cleaning.
Going Christmas caroling last week....
