Monday, June 25, 2018

"siete mormone?"

Sorry in advance because this email is going to be really short! Not tons of time because we had a jam-packed pday full of fun in Ortigia!! We are just loving this city. Today we toured the huge, famous duomo (cathedral) in Ortigia! It was beautiful. Jaw dropping on the outside but the inside was awesome too!!
The Duomo of Ortigia square
Apologizing again because I left you all in suspense this last week regarding the baptism of Happy and Marvelous. We are learning tons about trusting in the Lord and His plan because unfortunately the baptism didn't happen this week. It was super heartbreaking! We met with them a couple times with the goal of having super testimony building lessons centered on faith. The Anziani also visited them a couple times this week to give things a shot with pretty good success! Turns out the reason they came up with excuses to avoid baptism was because they hadn't received an answer on whether it was the right thing for them. So we have been working with them on how to recognize answers to prayers and how to feel answers from God! So please keep them in your prayers because they are truly an elect family and we are ready for them to just take this leap of faith. Oh and they didn't make it to church yesterday so that was heartbreaking too.

The biggest highlight of the week was when Eveline came to church!! Eveline is one of the YSA in the ward she is so cute and fun but she's been less active recently because of work. We have been making really good friends with her and we go visit her at her work pretty often! She recently really opened up to us and we have become so close since. Yesterday we even started talking with her about serving a mission!!!

We met with Ivanna a couple of times this week....one of those times her daughter was visiting and turns out her daughter knows some members of the ward! She even said that her husband has been to our church a couple times!! We spent some time reading the introduction to The Book of Mormon with Ivanna because she has a hard time seeing, so we read it to her and explained it! She asked about the things that are different from our church, then said she would like to come to our church when she gets feeling better! Can't wait!!

with Mariangela at crochet course
Thursday was the last day of crochet course, they meet at our church building and only 1 of the ladies is a member. We've made great friends with several of the ladies so we are keeping in close contact with them on Facebook messenger and 1 lady, Marica, even asked us when we could meet up again! Hopefully this week!!

We've spent the majority of our week just going hard and doing some legit tracting. Street contacting and tons of casa in casa which led us to find what I want to call the miracle zone! It's a zone in Siracusa that we both just felt really good about going to.... when we got there it was like all the people who lived there had never seen missionaries or Jehovah's witnesses before! We couldn't believe it! Usually they've seen too much of us and send us away without even opening the door. Well in the miracle zone everyone at least opened their door. At least. And everyone was nice, a few people even told us we could come back at a different time! We also met Lina, got to show her a video and she invited us back so we will hopefully meet up with her on Wednesday!

Okay now I'm going to attempt to tell a story that probably won't make sense if you don't know Italian. Oh well. We were walking by this shop the other day, it was thundering, the shop owner was standing outside and said to us "siete mormone?" (Are you mormons?) And I said "wow how did you know?" And then he kind of mumbled something. Then I asked if he was believing to which he said si!! We got to give him a restoration pamphlet. Sorella Hope and I both walked away like "wow that was really cool!" Well, you know how sometimes after conversations are over you replay them in your mind? Maybe that's just me that does that..... anyways. I realized that he actually said "sentite rumore?" (Do you hear the noise? He was referring to the thunder) and then I asked "wow how did you know?" The part he mumbled I realized he said "I was in my shop and I heard something so I came outside!" To which I responded: are you believing??  Hahahahahaha sometimes you just gotta laugh. Still a really cool contact experience and he was really nice even though we probably seemed crazy! Eh, we always seem crazy who am I kidding.
at the tempio d'apollo

We had a really cool experience at English course this week that I'm really excited to share with y'all! After every English course we share a spiritual thought with the students. Well, Tuesday we really felt like we should talk about The Family: A Proclamation to the World, read a little part of it, and give everyone their own copy of the pamphlet. After it was over, the anziani told us that the family proclamation came up during their English course (they teach advanced group while we teach basic) and that they had explained it to some of their students but that it was so perfect we had chosen to do that for our spiritual thought. And now I want to share with you the part of the proclamation that we read at English course: "Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." I know that we can have real happiness and joy in our family when we put Jesus Christ at the first place!

Vi voglio un mondo di bene
PS the temple scaffolding came off this week!!!!! Getting closer.
XOXO






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

Monday, June 18, 2018

Roller Coaster

Roller Coaster of emotions. 

That's an accurate description of this week in 4 words.
Not sure where to start but I guess I'll get the big stuff over with first! 

So we met with Happy and Marvelous this week, finishing up the lessons with them! She even cooked us legit African fufu!!! I've only heard about the stuff and wow it was an experience! Basically it's this soupy mixture stuff with vegetables (in our case tons of spinach), meat that was supposedly beef and other random unidentifiable foods. And you eat it not with a fork....or a spoon.........but with this like raw dough? I don't even know. Luckily I took pictures so you can attempt to understand. 

- We taught them about families and temples and how important they are! We got to talk about how families can be together for eternity when they are sealed within God's holy temples. And we made a goal to see each other again in 1 year in the temple! I know they will make it!! 
- We reviewed with them the importance and the sanctity of baptism. We read 3 Nephi 11 together when Christ visits the Americas and teaches the people there about the importance of being baptized! Then watched the Bible video of Christ's baptism to show that even He who was sinless was baptized to fulfill the will of the Father and to set a perfect example for each of us to follow. 
- Then Friday came, the day of their baptismal interview! We made them a cake for afterward when we celebrated together. We walked to their house feeling so on top of the world and when we got there, they weren't home. We called them and they told us they were out and couldn't do the interview, they wanted to reschedule it for Saturday. So we did just that! We rescheduled it for Saturday. It was slightly frustrating and we might have cried some but we called President Pickerd and he reassured us, they've been in church the last 5 weeks so it's nothing to worry about. Let's just say that Satan's attacks on people before baptism are so real!! 
- Saturday came around, interview take 2. We got to their house a little before the interview started to do a practice interview with them but before we could even do that, Happy told us about a conversation she had with her mom. She called her mom because she was so excited to tell her about the baptism! Then her mom told her that in the bible it says you can't be baptized 3 times (Happy was baptized when she was an infant and then again when she was like 15). I have no idea where that is in the bible. Neither did President Pickerd, so that's saying something. Haha. So we talked about the importance of the priesthood authority! And how that authority was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. 
- The interview went great!! But they were somehow still really convinced they couldn't be baptized again, so we did what we always do: invited them to pray for themselves. To know God's will for them. Because, in all reality and no matter how frustrating all this may be for us, it's the Lord's timing!! 
S. Hope, Happy, Marvelous, and me
- They came to church yesterday and the bishopric gave their family a shout out and told everyone to go introduce themselves after sacrament meeting so all the members were huddled around this cute family when church was over yesterday, it was a beautiful sight. Then Happy and Marvelous asked where they could get more tithing envelopes so they could pay their tithing!!!!!!! 
- And now you're probably wondering if the baptism is still on for this Saturday. So am I. We will meet with them tonight to talk more about where they're at, but obviously we don't want to push them!! I know they will make it to the waters of baptism so soon, but if this weekend isn't their time then it's not the Lord's time. Sorella Hope is heartbroken she's going to miss it (transfers next week). 

My big accomplishment of the week was making an Italian Mormon message. Not from scratch haha. So lots of the Mormon messages that exist in English don't exist in Italian. It's really a bummer when you find one that would be perfect for a person or lesson and then it doesn't exist in Italian. Well, this week I found the perfect Mormon message for Lucia and Riccardo, "Blessed and Happy are Those Who Keep the Commandments of God", it's a great talk and video. And I got real creative and with a super complicated process, I won't bore you with the details, mission accomplished. Probably the biggest happy dance of my mission hahahahah. So we had a lesson with Lucia, Riccardo, and Salvo and decided to just low-key break boxes this time. We talked about prophets and why its important to follow them (with a cool object lesson), showed the video, read some scriptures- I've never spent so much time planning a lesson. We were more than prepared and just ready to kill it. Then Lucia was on her phone the whole time not listening and it wasn't received how we were hoping. Salvo got it and tried to help us but it was a lost cause. Hopefully something got through to them!! Then yesterday we texted Lucia to tell her we missed her at church and asked when we could see her again! She responded that she'd love to meet up and maybe get something to eat but asked "maybe this time we don't have to talk about God". Nice try, Lucia. We gave her a straight up response: we're here as missionaries because we love God and we love talking about Him! 
Advice on that situation anyone?????? 

Okay time for the good news!!!!!!!!

On Friday afternoon we left our house and ran into this lady with a super cute dog named Stellina. AHHH she was precious so we stopped to pet her for a second, talked to the owner, invited her to English course. Fast forward exactly 24 hours later we ran into the same lady with the same dog at the same spot!!! Her name is Alessandra and we talked to her for a little and she invited us over anytime we want to come! She gave us her address and everything dog finding works, people. 

We did "heaps" (as my Aussie comp says) of casa in casa this week. We had one lady who told us we should come back! So, we did :) . We went back to her house and she opened the door and asked "ciao! Do you girls remember me?" Hahahah yes of course we do! She invited us in and we got to talk about the restoration and left her with the invite to read the Book of Mormon! So keep Ivanna in your prayers!!

And recently we have been doing some family history finding! We have a nice family history center in our church building and lots of members who love doing genealogy so we took our family history bigliettini and hit the streets! It led to lots of cool conversations and was fun to switch it up some! One of my favorites was with a lady named Daniela who said she's always been interested in learning about her Egyptian ancestors! We exchanged numbers and hopefully will be meeting up this week to do some family history together! Plus she said she'd like to learn more about our church and beliefs, win-win. 

Okay one more thing and I'll stop boring you to death. Last night we were waiting for a bus to take us home and we were starting to get frustrated with the typical, unreliable, Sicilian public transport. Then guess who comes running up to us to give us the biggest hugs ever???? RITA!! Ah she is so cute and just loves us tons, the feeling is mutual. We got to meet her boyfriend too! She invited us to her house on Wednesday, she wants to say goodbye to Sorella Hope before she gets transferred. Goes to show that being in the right place at the right time, it pays off! 

So yeah, lots of ups and downs this week. But hey, that's the mission! And you know what? I love every minute and wouldn't trade it for anything. I love my Savior and the chance I have right now to be a representative of Him in Italy! My sister sent me the new efy album and I've been listening to it some this week. One of the songs is sung by Patch Crowe and he says this: "Every life I touch, every heart I lift is a reflection of the light He shines to me. He is the One that helps me become all I'll ever be". I know that it is because of Jesus Christ we have the potential to become all we will ever be! Let's follow His example today and always! 
Love yall!!!!
XOXO 

PS happy Father's day to the best dad in the world!!! I love you dad! 
PS shoutout to Austin Briles who's coming to Italy as a missionary the day I leave haha dang it.





World Cup but no Itlay



Crazy p-day adventures




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

Monday, June 11, 2018

Giuseppe gets baptized

Hey do you remember Giuseppe, my best panificio friend from Statte???? Well he got baptized yesterday and I'm probably just going to be on a high this whole week from how happy I am. He made it!!! It's been a long time coming, but this man has completely turned his life around for the best and I couldn't be more proud of him. So I guess it depends on the mission, usually you get to go to the baptism (unrealistic in this mission) or Skype in for the baptism but we can't in our mission :( I did get like a 3 minute Skype call with him after to say congratulations!!! It was great to see the light in his face and also great to see Elvira even if it was only for a short time. I miss them like crazy, but they'll always be my Italian parents I told Giuseppe I hope to see him in the temple in a year and he said he hopes so too, and that he will always follow the laws of Heavenly Father. My heart is so full! Seeing the pictures of him in white......these are the moments you pray for as a missionary and when they happen it's like cloud 9 joy and nothing can bring you down. It's something I'll remember for the rest of my life, I'll leave it at that.
Giuseppe and Elvira
Well I wish I had some really cool miraculous moments from this week but hey the reality of a mission is that some weeks are better than others! We did lots of casa in casa and lots of contacting on the street. There was one building we were knocking and every door was just straight rejection hahahaha. One man opened the door, saw us, we made eye contact for a few seconds and before I could even open my mouth he slammed the door. Haha no words even exchanged.... but you just have to laugh in moments like that and it was pretty funny. And pretty much every door in the building was like that! Until we got to the last one..... I hate to be stereotypical but that's just the way it worked out. The last door we got to we were smiling so hard when the lady opened the door because we had been dying of laughter at all the rejection. But we still went for it! Asked if we could show her a video and she was like "yeah, sure! As long as it's not a video that's going to make my cry!" I had to clarify making sure I didn't just imagine her saying that. We showed her the CiSaráSempre video and no more than 5 seconds into it, she was in tears. There was such a special spirit there at her doorstep as we explained who we were and the importance of our message! We exchanged numbers and are hoping to see Stefania again this week

Mirella has been bailing on us so unfortunately we haven't gotten to see her.

We gave Carmen The Book of Mormon in Romanian! She was really excited to get it but we couldn't talk because she was really busy. 

There was a huge concert at our church on Saturday night, the bishop printed off TONS of fliers and used them in our finding!!!! We had a great turnout at the concert, over 150 people and we set up a table that they couldn't avoid on their way out, we gave away so many cards and pamphlets!!!! 

S. Hope, Lucia, Ricardo, Naomi, me, Salvo
We had a great lesson with Lucia this week, Riccardo (her less active boyfriend) was there along with Salvo (Fratello Caraffa). We taught her about the word of wisdom and why its important to protect our bodies, they are a great gift God has given us and he wants us to take care of them! She smokes and so does Riccardo. Salvo bore a really powerful testimony, he is a convert and was addicted to cigarettes before he was baptized but he talked about how when he learned about the word of wisdom he quit immediately and never smoked again. He offered to give her a priesthood blessing at the first sign of struggle. Lucia took it all really well and committed to living the word of wisdom!!!! We couldn't believe it! Then not too long after, Riccardo starts smoking and tempting the heck out of her AH it was incredibly frustrating but we told her she is strong and she can do this! She said yeah it should not be a problem because I'm not addicted it's just more of a social thing because Riccardo does it. So the next day we messaged her to see how it was going!! She responded "we like to smoke so for now, we don't want to quit"....huh. "WE". I'm guessing Riccardo typed that one. You can probably imagine where our frustration level is right now because if he wasn't in the picture we'd actually be getting somewhere. So this week I think we'll probably just call him out on holding her back from eternal salvation and then try to get him on board. Vediamo un po', dai. 

We had the best scambio this week, with the Ragusa sorelle. They are so awesome! I was with Sorella Sullivan who is the cutest. We went and talked with Happy and Marvelous about the law of chastity! They ate it all up and then while we ate, Marvelous read the entire law of Chastity pamphlet to Happy, pausing and talking about it after each paragraph. Wow.  We also met some great contacts doing casa in casa during our scambio so hopefully good fruits will come out of those seeds we planted! 
on exchanges with the Ragusa sorrelle
 We also taught Happy and Marvelous the 10 commandments this week, complete with hand signals to help them remember them! (Thanks Sorella DeMann!) So that was a blast. They came to church again yesterday, they are making great friendships with the bishop, the Cicciò family, and the other ward members who (attempt to) speak English! It's incredible! We showed them the baptismal font and the looks on their faces when they saw it. Mamma Mia. June 23rd can't come fast enough! This family is so ready and so are we . My heart is so full! 

This week we got to watch the devotional to youth from President and Sister Nelson "Hope of Israel". If you haven't seen it yet, would recommend. It is amazing. I especially loved how Sister Nelson says "it’s time to stop comparing ourselves with others. It’s time to put away those erroneous views of ourselves and others. The truth is that we are not as hopelessly flawed as we may think..... The only thing that really matters is that you and I are doing exactly what we committed—even covenanted—premortally with our Heavenly Father we would do while we are here on earth. So, let me ask you a question: What were you born to do?" I invite you to think about that during your week!! What were YOU born to do? I know that each of us has special, God-given gifts and talents we can use to bless the lives of those around us. I know that President Nelson is a prophet called of God to guide us! I am thankful for him and his counsel. 

Vi voglio un sacco di bene! 
XOXO
Giuseppe and Bishop Castaldo





Swordfish anyone?




chocolate crepes with gelato inside for lunch



Nothing says district unity like yoga
Sorella Carley Neuberger
Le Sorelle Missionarie
Via Polibio, 17
Siracusa, SR 96100
Italia

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Girls!!

Happy Birthday Chase!!! Elder Neuberger! Sending tanti auguri from Sicily to Korea! Hope you have the best 19th birthday ever and eat lots of moochi or whatever that weird ice cream stuff is! Also super jealous that you guys went on a hike for zone conference haha that's sick!!

Wow what a week! It's starting to warm up here in Sicily and well, it's Italy which means no air conditioning......even in our house. Yikes. We're trying to get that one fixed asap! 


Okay I'm going to drop the biggest miracle first this week since I can't wait until the end to do it :)
DINA! Do you remember her from a few weeks ago? She's the one that's lived in America (and pretty much every other country in the world) well she's originally from Venezuela and she's here teaching english and teaching classes at the gym! Oh she is so cute and has a 13 year old daughter too! We met her on the street but she didn't have time to talk so we just exchanged numbers. 

Well, we were walking to district meeting Wednesday morning and we were walking through the park and from behind us we hear "Girls!" in english and turn around to see...Dina!! She was sitting down on a bench just sitting there. Turns out one of her lessons got cancelled so she had some free time. She said "I'm ready! I'm ready to watch the video!" We showed her Because of Him in english and talked on that bench for a good 40 minutes about the Restoration and even parts of the plan of salvation it was incredible! She was so curious and so receptive. The only hard part was that she grew up with lots of visits from Jehovah's witnesses (her parents are JW) and so she doesn't want to commit. But she definitely wants to learn more! After our discussion she said "do you have something I can take home?" Oh..hmmmmm........let me see if I have anything. hahaha we left her with a restoration pamphlet in italian but she prefers reading in spanish so we got her a spanish copy of The Book of Mormon and are hoping to meet up with her again this week!!

At Happy's for lunch
Next big news of the week: Marvelous is going to be baptized on June 23rd too!!!! So he and Happy will be baptized on the same day, how special and perfect is that?!?! We are doing everything we can get to get them all prepared but they are already there. They are so elect and just ready for the gospel, they eat it all up. We had a great lesson with them this week on the Word of Wisdom, even played a fun game with pictures to help them remember it! When we went back a couple days later, they remembered it perfectly and said they had been following the word of wisdom! Marvelous even opened up to us about a time in his life when he was drinking and smoking a lot but he quit because he couldn't feel the holy spirit and he's been sober for 3+ years! Wow this family is just so amazing, I can't emphasize that enough!!!! We love them. Also we are starting to develop a stomach for african food.....haha we'll get there eventually. 

We had an amazing family home evening last week with them and the Ciccio family! They are a super en gamba family in our ward, Fratello Ciccio isn't technically the ward mission leader but he's basically the ward mission leader (he was born in Argentina, dad!). So he and his wife both served missions (rare here) and they speak english very well (she served Temple Square SLC). But it was still really funny to sit and just observe the communication between Italian english and African english, especially because Marvelous barely understands us (Happy translates for him from english to pigeon english). Wow so complicated! But we made it work and had a super successful FHE! They are making friends with the ward members and really pushing the members to speak english it's great :)

Skype lesson
We had a great skype lesson this week with one of Sorella Hope's friends living in the Czeck Republic! His mom is Australian and he lived there for a while but he's originally Hungarian. Anyways! We had a skype lesson with him this week and he was so open and receptive to our message about the restoration! He even agreed to do a pass off lesson with us on skype and him with the Czeck Republic missionaries so they can bring him a copy of The Book of Mormon!! I'm still mind blown by this one. Miracles. Technology is blessing this work in so many ways. 


with S. Hope and Lucia
We finaly had a lesson with Lucia this week! She has been out of town visiting with her grandparents. We had a lesson with she and Ricardo about the gospel of Jesus Christ and why faith, repentance, baptism, and enduring to the end are so important! She really wants to get baptized next month so we are going to push for it! We are all praying for a date this week. She just adores Sorella Hope and wants her to be here for it but Sorella Hope had to break the news that she's getting transferred at the end of June, dang it. Ma comunque we are so excited to help her in this journey! And to help out with Ricardo too. I had a heart to heart with him yesterday at ward pranzo trying to help him understand of doing the little things and how they will make us strong! I know that seems like such a simple and basic concept but if we can just do that, everything else will fall into place. If you don't believe me, put it to the test.


Love yall!
have the best week
xoxoxo




Pday was spent visiting an ancient Greek theatre and ruins










Sorella Carley Neuberger