Tanti Auguri, Cade!!

Happy birthday, Cade!
Sending love from the most beautiful island in the world....Sicily 😎.

Siracusa is definitely growing on me! It's been a long, hard couple of weeks trying to learn our way around, meet the members, and figure out where to do our finding. This week was full of casa in casa and nothing less. Sorella Hope and I are really giving our all to this city and we have faith that we will see the fruits of it....preferably sooner than later but hey, all in the Lord's timing.

Not too much to recount from this week but last Monday we had a really good FHE with the Conforto family, in the ward. The parents are super active but their 3 kids aren't. (One is 25 and the other 2 are like 18 year old twins). One of the twins, Riccardo, we have become really good friends with he and his girlfriend, Lucia (not a member). They come to English course and they've come to church the past 2 Sundays! It took me a minute to realize that Lucia wasn't a member because one of the first things she said to me was that she wants to serve a mission, so we just assumed that she was a member. But eventually we connected the dots and have made plans to start teaching her! Tonight we are going to meet with both Lucia and Riccardo and we'll see how it goes. It's been fun becoming friends with them and working with people our age! And Riccardo speaks pretty good English so that's been nice for Sorella Hope.

I don't know if I mentioned it before... But a couple weeks ago at a gesso I talked with a cute couple that owns a store here in Siracusa called BiDieci and gave them a copy of The Book of Mormon! Well, we were out in giro one day and happened to pass by the store without even realizing! The only way we did know that was the store was because the girl came running out to salute us! It was so sweet! We have passed by there a few times this week to get to know them, they haven't read anything out of The Book of Mormon yet, but she promised me when she took it that night that she wouldn't take it if she wasn't going to read it. We are hoping to pass by their store again this week.... trying to figure out when they are less busy so we can actually talk, and set up a time to meet with them and talk more! They have just been so friendly to us it's refreshing and wow I'm smiling right now just thinking about them.

I might have talked a little last week about Sorella Battaglia, a member in the ward, she invited us to come every week to her crocheting group at the church! It's been great getting to talk to all the ladies that come, they love teaching us how to crochet and then they are curious about why we are here, what we are doing, and want to know more about our beliefs and the differences between it and Catholicism, it is cool to have Sorella Battaglia there testifying and explaining things to her friends. This last week she explained about the temple opening up and Rome and we got to talk more about how that church is different from typical Catholic churches and it's only open to the public until it's dedicated. Anyways really cool to create friendships with these ladies and crochet and, of course, do missionary work :)

We have been breaking up our finding with some less active visits! This week we met Sorella Turrisi and her mom. They are both less active, the mom is bed ridden and pretty immobile and Sorella Turrisi has such a strong testimony but doesn't come to church because she doesn't want to leave her mom. They have a beautiful spirit in their home and so we are excited to continue adding to that and sharing our testimonies all together.

The Ragusa sorelle came for a scambio this week (we don't do an actual exchange of companions because that would take up way too much travel time) so instead we just had a siracusa blitz and went really hard on the casa in casa with a few people who told us we can return! Whether they meant it or not, we'll find out ;) Sorella Manning and I went to visit Sorella Sarcià, another less active in the ward, oh my she is so cute and has such a big personality! We loved getting to read the scriptures with her and her son lives in Australia so Sorella Hope and I will definitely be going back to help her rekindle her fire in the gospel.

We have also been trying to meet with ward members and getting to know them.... yesterday we had pranzo with a cute couple from Castellammare. She met the missionaries because they were doing casa in casa at her apartment building! So yeah I guess you could say that's giving us some hope to hang on to for sure :)

I'll quickly mention a really cool experience we had the other day in our finding. We got talking to a lady, told her we were doing a survey, and showed her the "Always There" video, then after asked how Christ had been there for her. Well, she was brutally honest with us and said that she thought He hadn't. Her daughter has been doing chemo for like 10 years and she had lots of other things to get off her chest (I guess something about us being missionaries makes random people comfortable and willing to open up and tell their life story) but we got to testify to her that God has a plan for us and that sometimes he gives the toughest battles to His strongest soldiers. He gives us difficulty because He knows we can overcome. And that's something that I too have been learning this week. It's not always easy but it's worth it! Reminds me of one of my favorite Book of Mormon scriptures 1 Nephi 3:7 "He shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them". I know that as we GO and DO the things He commands us He will provide a way for us to accomplish those things!

Love y'all! Buona settimana a tutti!
XOXO

cute Sorella Sarcia

Church yesterday with the YSA's

Venezuela?

Ciao a tutti! Wow so many things to write about and so little time, so bear with me!!

I guess I'll start with our investigator, Rita! She's in her 20s. The sorelle that got blown out left us with her, we met her very briefly but she works out of town and is there all the time. Apparently she was very close to baptism but her parents are against the church. This week we've seen the blessing of being able to use facebook messenger, because she never answers her phone or responds to text messages but we have had several good conversations with her on messenger! She is reading the Book of Mormon and has read all the way to Jacob by herself!!!! Unbelievable. We keep asking when we can meet up, so hopefully it will be soon!

 

Siracusa, Sicily

Ravioli with sugo nero (squid ink)

Miracle day: Tuesday. We spent our whole morning street contacting in Ortigia without much success and then got terribly lost on the way back home (love being white washed) and were getting home for lunch so late. There was no one on the streets (Italians take pranzo very seriously and the whole city shuts down for a few hours) but we heard someone yelling behind us. We didn't think much of it until we heard distinctly "Sorelle!!" We turned around to find a cute couple from Arizona on vacation, he served here like 15 years ago or something. They invited us to crash their dinner reservation in Ortigia so of course we were down. Such a miracle in a city where we barely know anyone! And the fact that if we wouldn't have been late coming home we never would've met them! That night we went back to Ortigia (not our original plans) for more street contacting before dinner. Within a span of 5 minutes I kid you not, we met two really great new contacts! The first was Sandra who said she will be at english course on Tuesday (tomorrow!), we exchanged numbers, she was so excited to meet us and gave us huge hugs, we were so happy and surprised we didn't know what to do with ourselves! And while we were continuing to celebrate and still find, we met Carolina a cute mom from Venezuela! She called us on Friday to set up a pranzo appointment for this coming Saturday! We are so excited to meet with her again and teach her more. :) It was beautiful meeting these 2 women that night. It's as if Heavenly Father was rewarding our efforts from that morning but we appreciated it so much more after not having tons of success! Dinner with the americans was a blast to say the least, we learned a lot about the area, the members, and had ravioli with sugo nero (the sauce is black because it's made with squid ink sacks! SO good), and gelato + brioche for dessert. Basically what I'm trying to say is that this week I gained a testimony that Heavenly Father is aware of each of us individually. I know that He loves us and cares about us!

The streets of Siracusa

Along with lots of street contacting we also switched it up a little during the week with some casa in casa (house to house!). We saw a huge house to house miracle last night, Patrizia. We got into this HUGE building with 4 separate staircases (like 4 sections to the apartment building) we knocked all of A, B, C, and D. We got to the last door of D and it was a nursing home type thing whoops. Well the girl working was named Patrizia and she told us she couldn't lose any time, she had to work. We told her the video we are showing is only 3 minutes! So she said "dai". YES. The spirit was so strong afterwards that she agreed to exchange phone numbers and meet again!!!!! Oh my the second she closed the door we were hugging and silently yelling and cheering. Come ho detto prima, Heavenly Father is aware of us and sometimes just decides to rain down little miracles :)

In other news.. I tried Granita this week. It changed my life. 

If you don't know what granita is..... mi dispiace tanto.

Another highlight of Siracusa: english course! The english course here is going to be so much fun, I just love doing english group. I tried really extra hard to learn everyone names right off the bat so hopefully I remember them all tomorrow! We also have some super en gamba members that support english group which is really cool. 

After english group on Thursday we had a little FHE with some of the GANS (Giovani Adulti Non Sposati) or YSA as we say in english. That was so much fun, this ward is unbelievable and we've got a great work to start with them too. One of the members, Martina (Amanda's sister from the milan mission.....woah small world.) was trying to help me, she had white washed a couple times in her mission so she's helping us learn names and who belongs to who, etc. etc. but it seems like there are lots of part active or part member families in the ward which we are really excited to start working with and just really getting to know everyone.

Okay I'll stop boring you but just one more little miracle we saw last night while doing finding.... we met another lady from Venezuela, Maria!!!!!! We got to exchange numbers with her too! Lots of potentials in the making and so much to be excited about and thankful for here in Siracusa. Funny moment was when she was telling us about how her brother had been murdered and his body burned back in Venezuela and Sorella Hope (not really understanding anything, bless her heart) said "Forte!" meaning "cool!" hahahaha luckily she didn't say it too loudly. Mamma mia I love being a missionary and I love this work. 

I want yall to know that I am truly loving my mission. I was reading a talk by Elder Bednar and he said, "Sometimes we try to run so fast that we may forget where we are going and why we are running." This week I learned that in the slower times, or when we stop to remember our purpose, the Lord will bless us and we will better recognize His hand in every moment of our lives. So che la chiesa e vera e vi vogliamo tantissimo bene.

Enjoying Sicilian food

Sorella Hope icing her legs down
after a day with a lot of walking

Kids from church

p-day

XOXO

Sorella Carley Neuberger
Le Sorelle Missionarie
Via Polibio, 17
Siracusa, SR 96100
Italia

welcome to Siracusa

Mamma mia it's been the craziest week of my mission, hands down.

Sorella Hope and Carley in front of
the church building in Siracusa.

Let's start with the fact that transfer calls last week brought a huge plot twist: instead of staying with Sorella Geertsen, she got a brand new missionary and I got sent to Siracusa (in Sicily) with a brand new missionary, her name is Sorella Hope and she is from Melbourne, Australia she is just the cutest ever and such a good missionary. It's been quite the adventure because neither of us had ever been to the city before so we are trying to learn our way around the best we can!

So we got transfer calls Monday night, I left Statte Wednesday afternoon, took a train from Taranto to Bari and spent the night in Bari! The zone leaders picked me up at the Bari train station and we went straight to the church for a baptism they were having! That was really cool to witness and see the convert bear testimony after his baptism, it was really special. Then Thursday morning we left at 5:40 am for the airport, I flew down to Catania and we cleaned their house a little waiting for our companions to get in on their train from Rome! That's the fun thing about receiving a new missionary is that you have no idea who they are until they step off the train, but they know who you are because they get a piece of paper with your name and picture on it. Sorella Hope came running off the train and we had the biggest hug ever, I felt like crying because it was like a spiritual confirmation after all of the craziness during the past coupe days, that she is the companion I need to learn from right now and we are ready to light it up here in Siracusa! (not to mention that this is my 3rd of 4 cities to start with the letter "S"...?). Then that night we went to the Catania english course and got bombe, these amazing dolce in Sicily! I'll have to take a picture next time I eat one....basically these sugar donut things exploding with Nutella. Best thing I've eaten? Probably.

AND THEN.... the next morning, Sorella Batres, the zone leaders, and I flew up to Rome for MLC! We all stayed in the villa (mission home) and had a conference for 2 days. It was a blast getting to see everyone (everyone as in Sorella Johnson, the 1 & the only.) and be very spiritually uplifted. 

Rome Temple

Another big part of MLC was getting smartphones! So now I have a smartphone, the rest of our zone will be getting smartphones at zone conference! I'll keep my tablet but my new companion doesn't even have a tablet, just a smartphone! It'll be an adjustment for sure. Makes me feel like a normal person but it'll be nice when asking for people's phone numbers, they'll take us more seriously when we whip out a phone from this century haha. 

While in Rome we also got to stop by the temple site to see the progression! AH it is the most beautiful temple I have ever seen. We also got to go into the temporary visitor's center trailer and hear about the progress and the super interesting constructional information about the temple. For example, since it's got a round, oval shape, they've had to individually carve/cut each piece of stone and piece them all together. So each piece of stone on the temple had a number and that's the only place it could go. Crazy!!

Forgot to mention that I said the hardest goodbye of my mission this week: Giuseppe and Elvira. But, on the bright side of things, Sorella Geertsen emailed today and said this about Giuseppe: 

(This is an excerpt from Sorella Geersten's email) "Update on Giuseppe!!! Oh how I love that Sicilian man! We went over Friday night and saw him in his bakery as always. And we read with him a chapter from the Book of Mormon. He is so cute! We also went and saw Giuseppe yesterday (Sunday) like we do every week! We have taught him all of the first basic lessons and now are working our way through the commandments. So last night we taught Giuseppe about following the prophet and who the prophet is and why we have a prophet! It went so good! Giuseppe was so excited to learn more, and it was so cool as always to watch him just understand everything that we were explaining to him. At the end of the lesson I had the strongest feeling to talk to Giuseppe about baptism again... I wasn't planning on talking with him about it, but just had the strongest feeling that I needed to again. We have talked with him about it many times and have invited him to be baptized and pick a day, but he would always respond with... Oh I need to feel more ready and I have a few more things that I need to ask God for forgiveness for. We have been very patient with him, and always just keep asking him to keep praying to Heavenly Father for revelation and guidance! Well this time I asked him if he has been praying to Heavenly Father about baptism. He looked at me square in the face and said... ''Si! SONO PRONTO!'' (''YES! I AM READY!'') Immediatly I had a rush of goosebumps, and I had this warm feeling in my heart! I asked him if we could pick a day to do his baptism so that we can work to get him ready. He said that he wanted to choose the 13th of May in honor of Sorella Neuberger because that was the day that she had asked him before to do. SO I am pumped!!! His only request was that Sorella Neuberger and Sorella Johnson(The sister that was here before I came) get to skype into his baptism to watch him be baptized. DONE!!! :) Also... ANOTHER MIRACLE!!! When Giuseppe came to church yesterday he walked in and told me that he had started another fast. He said that he was fasting in honor of Sorella Neuberger and to thank Heavenly Father for all that Sorella Neuberger did for him to help him grow his testimony and find this pathway in his life. He also said that he was fasting to ask for strength to quit smoking from his cigars. We got him to completely quit smoking his ciggarettes, but he has still been smoking some cigars. It was hard in the beginning because everytime that we would ask him to quit smoking cigars he would justify himself as to why he was smoking them. And we have been praying for him to have a change of heart and a desire to also quit smoking Cigars. He said that he started his fast, and that once he started his fast he will not be buying anymore cigars! He told me yesterday in church that he has seen that the cigars are now starting to become an addiction and dependency and he doesn't want to have that in his life again! MIRACLES MIRACLES!!!! GOD IS IN EVERYTHING!!!"

So yeah, I'd be lying if I said I'm not missing Statte. I miss it!

Lunch with the Corso family

Anyways, not tons to report this week, I don't have a lot of time, but also because we got to Siracusa for the first time late Saturday night so yesterday was our first full day in our city hahaah wow it's been a whirlwind. The ward seems great and it is HUGE! I haven't been in a ward like this ever. I'm excited to get to know all of the members! We had pranzo with the Corso family yesterday, it was a miracle because we got left with ZERO food in our whole house and couldn't go to the store because it was Sunday. Yep, this morning I did the biggest grocery shopping of my mission.......still hurts to talk about haha. 

Siracusa is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It is incredible and so historical, over 2700 years old! Last night wandering around the streets Sorella Hope and I were oohing and ahhing at everything because it's so classic Italian. Just how you would picture Italian streets to be, I'll be sure to take some pictures this week.  We did a gesso last night and Sorella Hope was unbelievable, talking to everyone by herself and getting everyone to speak to her in english and even having some conversations in Italian, I was so impressed!!! She's troppo brava, no ci credo. We got to gift 3 copies of The Book of Mormon last night!

We spent pday today just wandering around Ortigia, a short walk down from the church, a cute city in our area. I am going to be living in a cute Italian beach town for the next 12 weeks as a missionary?!??! I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not on vacation because it feels like that! Missionary life truly is the best life. I am loving every single minute, y'all. 

 

Some p-day sight seeing and shopping

Oh and just a quick follow-up, since I'm a missionary and that's what we do... I asked a couple weeks ago for y'all to send me a Book of Mormon verse that's changed your life! Mom you were the only one that responded hahah. I'd love to hear them if you get a chance.

I LOVE YOU ALL un mondo di bene :) new address below for letters and more pictures below.

XOXO

Sorella Carley Neuberger
Le Sorelle Missionarie
Via Polibio, 17
Siracusa, SR 96100
Italia

with Sorella Batres and Cattani

Temporary visitor center for Rome Temple

Doing a gesso in the town center

more p-day pics

with Manning and Greer

with Sorella Johnson

a day at MLC training

Buona Pasqua!🐰

Happy Easter! 

Hope everyone had a beautiful Sabbath remembering the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ! 

Okay so starting with last Monday night..... we drove clear out to Laterza (like an hour drive) to visit a family of investigators, the Scarati family. I'd never met them before just because they're hard to coordinate with and always busy! The usual for a family of 5! But we decided to just buy them a couple loaves of bread and some chocolate eggs and deliver it to them. The whole family was home and we got to share the Easter video, Always There (Ci Sara Sempre). The mom was reading the words off the screen for everyone, but about 10 seconds in she gave up because she was in complete tears. It's amazing to see how quickly that video has brought the spirit to the people we've been in contact with! They loved the video, and once it was over, the 19 year old daughter turned to me and said "How has He been there for you??" I got to bear my testimony of the power of prayer and how we can always feel Christ near when we pray! She too was brought to tears. It was definitely a beautiful experience. They are really excited to start coming to church once they can afford to get their broken car repaired!

This week I got to go on a scambio to Taranto and be with Sorella Tenney for 24 hours oh wow she is an amazing missionary. It was humbling to learn from her. We had a great time and I learned a lot! Plus we saw some major miracles:

We went to lungomare to do some finding and stopped to talk to these really cute ragazze! One was 16, the other, Nuri, was 15 and they were really interested in english course, then we asked to show them the Ci Sara Sempre video and they loved it!! Then for some reason Sorella Tenney asked Nuri, "but you're not Italian are you?" She didn't look very italian. Nuri responded "I'm half Korean!" Mamma mia I about cried. Her mom is from.....SEOUL!!!!!! And Nuri speaks Korean! I told her my brother is in Seoul right now as a missionary like me and she couldn't believe it!!!! We were both flipping out and then we took a picture together (picture on right). So special. It's the little miracles and the cool people like that that God just drops in your path to remind you of His love. It's funny because just a couple weeks I told Chase I'd probably spend my whole mission looking for a Korean person because all the asians here are Chinese. And then what do you know... on a scambio not even in my own city. Too good to be coincidental.

Then it started raining, I'll state the obvious by saying it's really hard to do finding in the rain so we resorted to handing out all our english course cards and hoping we could start some conversations in that way. Well, we handed out all our english cards, I had 1 left which always creates this pressure of "I have to give this 1 card to the right person". After walking a ways, we stopped another pair of cute ragazze and they were both 18 and religious, kind of rare here, but it was cool hearing their testimonies and sharing ours along with the Ci Sara Sempre video! They were also really interested in learning english and have a friend living in California (a city in Maryland) hahahaha we had a good laugh about that one. That friend has all her italian friends fooled!

All in all, great scambio. 

Carmella and Sara

Saturday morning started out with our normal trip out to Martina Franca to visit Carmella! (She called us during the week out of the blue to tell us she'd read 5 chapters of the Book of Mormon and wanted to know when were coming to read more together!) So we read together, and then her daughter Sara got there so we watched the Ci Sara Sempre video and talked about how Christ has been there for each of us! 

Sorella Geertsen and I got home very hangry and ready to eat....so we made lunch and were about to start eating when our doorbell rang. It was Ida (our neighbor) wanting us to help her hang a picture real quick. So, like always when we go to her house, we left our door ajar and walked across the hall. (Side note: it was EXTREMELY windy on Saturday). Right as Sorella Geertsen was hammering in the nail, a big gust of wind hit our apartment building and we look across the hall to see our door slam closed. We didn't bring the keys. All 3 sets of keys were inside our house. Ida called her brother, the proprietor, and for some odd reason he doesn't have keys to our apartment either.?. Meno male I had our phone in my pocket to call the Taranto anziani (they have keys to our house but just live really far away). So they arrived after like an hour and a half, after Ida had given us a very thorough tour of her house, closet, and trinkets (giving us some to take home). We were so relieved when the anziani showed up with our keys.... oh wait--- the locks had been changed!!! The keys they had didn't work. Mamma mia. So one of the aniziani kicked, and he kicked, and he knocked in our front door. It made for a great video, I'll tell ya that much. It was literally like something you'd see in a movie. Sorella Geertsen and I were ready to pay for a new door, but lucky for us, nothing broke. 

As for an update on our people!

Anna: Still working with her and visiting her frequently trying to help her progess towards baptism :)

Antonella: We dropped her as an investigator this week. It was probably the saddest thing of my mission and really hard to do. She stopped progressing and completely tuned us out when we went for lessons, kind of awkward. We will try again in a few months and maybe then it will be her time!

Giuseppe: Done smoking cigarettes. Still smoking cigars but hey it's progress! He has been reading the Book of Mormon and we got to read some together this week too! And we spent Easter Sunday with he and his family, our Italian family :) 

 

Easter with Giuseppe and Elvira

In other news...

Transfer calls are tonight, stay tuned. Praying to stay in this piccola citta I love so much.

The group of sisters I came into the mission with are going home, so that's really weird and sad for me. I'm going to miss them tons, but I'm excited to hear from them. And I'm excited to remain in Italy to see the progress of....

The Rome temple!! Officially has an open house and dedication date, as I'm sure you've all heard. March 10, 2019! Wow and to think that temple was announced in 2008. It's been a long time coming, but it's beautiful to see how excited all the members are about it!!!!!! We are really excited too and pumped to find people to fill it. Let's go.

General conference was nothing short of amazing! We watched both of the morning sessions live at 6pm! The other 2 sessions we've got to find time to watch this week! We got to watch them in english with the 1 african member, Sorella Moses, she's so cute :)))) And the best surprise was last night when our investigator Nunzia, her less-active husband, and 2 little sons came to watch conference! Loving all the miracles.  And wow the power and spirit that was felt while we sustained President Nelson as the new prophet as a worlwide church membership. I am so thankful for him and that we have living prophets to guide us! I know that he is a prophet called of God.

As for Easter in Italy, it's a lot like you'd expect: very Catholic, lots of processions in the streets, lots of dwelling on the death of Christ. I am so thankful that we concentrate ourselves on the fact that He LIVES! He's here today and will be here forever!! That's something that's brought me so much happiness every day. And that through Him and his atoning sacrifice we have the chance to return to live with Him again. I love my Savior and I know He lives and loves each of us. 

Love yall!

Buona settimana a tutti!

XOXO

Elvira

My adopted Italian parents

Sorella Carley Neuberger
Le Sorelle Missionarie
Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, 206
Statte, TA 74010
Italia