Gesù & Gelato: Back to December

Gold star to whoever gets the reference of that subject

Happy December! What the heck how is already December?! Time seriously needs to slow down.

One of the best kept secrets of missionaries across the globe is how daunting and overwhelming the task of creating weekly emails is. Last week my email was pretty lacking so hopefully this one semi makes up for it! (Sorry for the novel.)

Carley, Anna Isernia, and Sorella Hess

I'll start with one of the many miracles we saw this week. On Wednesday night, we were walking home after a long day and for some reason Sorella Hess was explaining to me what street we were on. The name of the street sounded super familiar and I was trying to remember where I had heard that before.... then it clicked- I had gotten an email from Fratello Hatch (my MTC teacher who happened to serve in Caserta) that said we could visit some of his friends on that same street! I pulled up the email and we tracked down Maurizio and Anna Isernia at a Salumeria they own. They have 2 kids around our age, maybe younger, they're not members of the church, and we just spent a good 30 minutes talking with them and getting to know them!! They were the sweetest people, we shared the new Christmas mormon.org video with them, "Sii Una Luce", and swapped phone numbers!! Thanks for the referral, Fratello Hatch.

We walk just about everywhere we go! This mission is mainly a walking mission, some areas have bikes and there's 1 area with a car. I love walking though! Not only is it good exercise, it's the perfect opportunity to meet people, smile at everyone you see, and be a missionary!! Sorella Hess and I usually walk 6-10 miles a day. There are some instances where we take a bus or train to travel. We just got our passes for the month of December, so we can take a train or bus or the metro in Napoli (basically any public transportation) whenever we want! We have met several awesome people via public transportation as well. It's funny because there's an Italian standard time and the trains are always in ritardo (late) and then there's the occasional sciopero (strike) when the workers just take a day off hahaha. Crazy Italians!

The tap water in Caserta isn't the best to drink, I think it's fine up in Rome, but not here. So we buy huge cases of bottled water for like a euro and it lasts a surprisingly long time! Apparently Italians don't drink water like Americans do.....in the U.S. it's perfectly normal to carry around a water bottle, so naturally, I carry my hydroflask everywhere I go! I've gotten some pretty funny comments on it here. The majority of people want to know what in the world is in this pink thing I'm carrying...."solo acqua!" One woman thought my water bottle was a fire extinguisher. Enough said.

Italy has the best fruit I've ever tasted, mamma mia. There's cute little fruit stores on just about every block. Kiwi, oranges, apples, everything. It's so fresh and so delish. After district meeting this week, our district discovered a bar that has the BEST hot chocolate ever. Like they have a hot chocolate menu with multiple flavors. And hot chocolate here is way different because it's more like pudding and so delicious. That place is going to be dangerous. I'm still in awe of how this country never fails to be perfect.

Small world moment: Anziano Velardi (my district leader from the MTC who has citizenship in Italy) has an aunt that's the stake relief society president in Caserta. Turns out she's in our ward!!!!!! I showed her lots of pictures of our MTC district and she invited us to come over during the week.

Lemme tell ya bout Veronica. If I had to describe her in 2 words it would be: Straight. Fire. Veronica is 27 and a new convert- she was baptized the Saturday before I got to Caserta. None of the missionaries knocked into her, she just showed up one Sunday during church and was baptized a few weeks later! Recently, she's been bringing her parents and younger sister to church so Sorella Hess and I are really excited to see where this goes! Veronica is a super inspirational example to me- her testimony is rock solid. On Tuesday, we invited her to come to a lesson with one of our investigators, Stefania. Stefania is like 18 years old and an investigator from english course. During the lesson, Stefania opened up about some struggles she's facing and we were able to teach about how we can overcome through the atonement. I was in complete tears by the end- every missionary dreams of having a lesson like this one. It was awesome, I can't put it into words!!

Zone Conference - Nativity Pageant

I had my first zone conference on Saturday! It was a lot of fun and I got to meet all the missionaries in the zone!! Everyone seems super nice and I can't wait to get to know them better :) I gave my "birth testimony" at zone conference, in Italian! As tradition, we reenacted the nativity... this year with our zone family! All the Sorelle were angels hahaha oh my goodness it was so much fun. Pics on my blog sorellacarleyneuberger.blogspot.com !

Our zone decided to do a secret Santa for Christmas this year. The zone leaders "randomly" assigned each person in the zone another person to buy a gift for. I got assigned to shop for one of the zone leaders, Anziano Berger. Funny huh? It's like we have the same last name or something!!!!! Maybe I'll buy him a burger.

The Sorella's (Sisters) of the the Napoli Zone

The language: uhhhh I guess it's coming? It's hard when you have so many things you want to say but all you know how to say is "I know that God loves us". The gift of tongues is real and I'm so thankful for the atonement and the knowledge that I'm not alone in this. We had a lesson with one of our investigators, Lina, this week. She lives pretty far outside of Caserta but it was well worth the travel! I loved the lesson we had with her because she actually made eye contact with me and would say things to me!! This was a major plot twist because in most lessons the people just look at Sorella Hess (after all, she is the one that's fluent...). And some people we visit will wait for her to translate for me! Hey, I might not have been here for that long but I can understand a lot more than you think! Or maybe not. But anyways, it was awesome meeting with Lina and talking with someone who at least pretended like we could understand each other hahaha.

I spent some time this week studying one of my favorite general conference talks from October 2015, "Yielding Our Hearts to God" by Neill F. Marriott. She mentions her family motto "It will all work out". Everything will happen on the Lord's timing, things won't happen exactly when we want them to, but Doctrine and Covenants 90:24 says, "Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good". I know that as we submit our will to the Lord's we will be blessed with true hapiness.

I also bore my testimony in church yesterday and since none of you were there.......
I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, that He lives and loves us. I know that through the Atonement of Christ, we can return to live with God and our families forever. I know that the Book of Mormon is true, contains the fulness of the gospel, and is the word of God. I'm thankful for prophets and the guidance they give us. I know that God answers our prayers.
I'm so thankful to be a missionary!!

Love you all and hope you have a fabulous week :)

XOXO,
Carley

P.S. Just thought I should mention that I've eaten 5 pizzas in the past 7 days #noregrets. It's casual.
And I thought pizza was my favorite food in America.....