Brindisi | week 18 {Regan getting transferred to Caserta, thunderstorms, concert, and goodbyes!}

Sandra brought snacks for everyone in English course before she left for Australia 

Gerry and Dedy with Anziano Pizza 

Regan with Gerry and Dedy! Regan said he loves this picture of them 

Sorella Crudo 

Regan and Palma 

The Elders with Fratello Greco 

Samuelle. Wow this is one gorgeous kid...how cute! 

Regan with Fratello and Sorella Frascaro 

Sorella Arcaro and Samuelle 

Fratello and Sorella Colantonio (originally from Napoli) 

Concert at a Catholic church 

Regan said that when his friends from English course heard that he was getting transferred they wanted to do one last thing with him before he left. They organized all going to a concert at a pretty Catholic church in Brindisi. It is so cool seeing that Regan has made such good friends in Brindisi! 

Cool new pizza place they found! 

Castle in Mesagne, Italy

The big news for the week is that I am getting transferred this week to Caserta which is a city in the Napoli Zone! I am going to be companions with Anziano Heder who served in my district for my first two transfers and he is so awesome. I seriously cannot wait. Last night Anziano Pizza and I went to visit 2 less actives and they are both from Napoli. They ended up telling me about Caserta and Napoli for an hour. Im am so ridicoulously excited. They planned out all my pdays for me and told me all the food I have to get. Anyways, about the important stuff. There is an American military base about 20 minutes away and so about 30 of our 45 members are American. I will seriously need to start working on my translating. Probably the most difficult part of the language is translating from English to Italian, but Im up for the challenge. Anziano Heder has been on his mission for 20 months so he is perfect. He will definitely help me a lot. I also heard their English course has about 70 students which is unreal. I seriously doubt it will be better than Brindisi though. We shall see. Oh, one more thing about Caserta. So there are a ton of strikes in Napoli which includes the postal service, so mail gets lost there more frequently than it arrives. So...for all my favorite people in the world that send me mail, send them to Rome please.

This week started off pretty interesting. We had District meeting in Lecce and their house is about a 45 minute walk. So there was a typhoon in Sardenia that day that killed like 16 people or something. There was a crazy thunderstorm that day in all of southern Italy because of it, like the worst I have ever seen. It was about 50 degrees and it was absolutely pouring and lightening everywhere. The street we needed to take was flooded so we had to walk around the whole city. We were walking for at least 75 minutes in this. Anziano Jepson started singing this song from our missionary cd and was like "Its gonna take work...and sometimes hypothermia." We were all cracking up and it was actually really fun and memorable.

Tuesday night at English course we had a student named Ilaria who was leaving for Australia for work and she brought an awesome nutella cake which was absurd. It totally made my night. Our whole English course is so tight. We have had so much fun together. When they found out I was getting transferred they told us we had to do something together one last time...so Sunday night we went to a concert together at really big Catholic church right across the street that is super pretty. The concert was amazing. It was people who travel around Europe and they were way good. Anyways one of the ladies who came was new to our English course (I forgot her name and I feel really bad) and she brought her friend. It was so touching to me because she started telling her friend about what we do as missionaries and she remembered my spiritual from Thursday night and told her friend about it while we were walking together. It made me feel like a million bucks. I told Anziano Jepson to ask them if they want to meet with us and take the lessons sometime this week. Im so sad to be leaving!

On Wednesday night I had one of the neatest experiences of my mission. So my second week in the mission I made a rule. Never ever under any circumstances talk to a teenage girl. Nothing good ever comes from it. At least from my experience. Anyways, there were 2 teenage girls and a boy hanging out by the station and Anziano Pizza just said ciao when we were walking by. They guy said, why did you just say hey to us? We stopped and told them we were missionaries, but they all said they were atheists really quick. However, one of the girls (Ilaria) stopped us after a few minutes of talking and asked some really deep and thoughtful questions, like "what does the glory of God" mean? It was easy to tell that she was sincerely listening and was truly hungering and thirsting after spiritual truth. We talked for a solid hour and then she said, "I dont believe in God, but I am a good person. If he exists he will know that and judge me for it. I wish he was real and there was some way I could know it though." It literally broke my heart. We gave her a plan of salvation pamphlet and she committed to pray about it. That conversation made me want to be such a better missionary because I know there are people here who are looking for the truth and I cant just walk by them and miss that opportunity. Im so glad that guy stopped us. I guess my teenage girl rule no longer stands.

On Friday we said bye to Gerry and Dedy. They are easily two of my favorite Brindisinos (even though they are from Napoli). We have visited them every week the past 12 weeks and it has been a pleasure to read from the Book of Mormon and learn the gospel with them. They haven’t been coming to church for about 20 years, but they came 3 times in the past 6 weeks which made me soooo happy. My pic with Gerry is epic and I will have my whole life no doubt. I hope it is up on my blog.

Saying bye to everyone at church was tough, but I cant wait for Caserta. The branch there seems awesome. It will be fun to converse with Americans again. Working with Anziano Heder will be amazing. You best believe I will be sending a pic of my first nopton pizza next week. That is much anticipated.

Anziano Smith

Brindisi | week 16 {zone conference, 2 funerals, still loving Brindisi}

Another week in Brindisi has come and gone. It seems like I am writing home every other day. My time here has been much enjoyed and it is incredible to look back and see how I have grown in these past 4 or so months. I have never been much of a talker or socializer in my life, but that is certainly beginning to change. I remember always being in my car 5 minutes after church ended or like 10 minutes after school got out. I am not like that anymore. It has become so evident to me that our relationships with others are so important and we should always treat them with a ton of care and love. I say this because we often go through our branch list to contact people to go visit. There are about 25 or 30 active members here in Brindisi and about 70 inactives. We have spent a lot of time and effort to reach out and contact all of them. I have met with many of them and it always saddens me and fills me with compassion to listen to their stories. Many have been through heart-wrenching experiences that I certainly cannot relate to, but I know the Savior can. Anyways, I have learned that everyone in the church needs good friends and support/encouragement throughout their whole lives. Visiting so many people and listening to just a part of their life stories has made me want to be a lot better listener and more concerned about their circumstances.

In the past 10 days we have gone to 2 funerals. 1 was for the mother of a lady in our ward and another was for Fratello Frascaros father. He is a really bright and funny guy - always making a joke or doing something funny. We had no idea his dad was in bad health condition, and we got a call on Wednesday morning saying that his father died the night before and the funeral would be that afternoon at a Catholic church right down our street. We went to the funeral and we saw the really rude guy I wrote about last week and probably my favorite English course student (Pietro). They were both his nephews. We had no clue. It was actually kind of cool because Anziano Alvey gave an amazing spiritual thought the night before at english course on the plan of salvation and what it means for our families. The funeral was actually the first Catholic Mass I have ever attended, and it was a neat experience. It was certainly an eye opening experience to see a lot of people who were suffering and sad and think of the message of glad tidings we are called to teach. It really made me want to be better.

The next day was Zone Conference up in Bari. The assistants gave an awesome lesson on introducing the Book of Mormon to people on the street. The key that stuck out to me was giving other people a chance. It is way cool to listen to missionaries who have been out year 18 or 20 months and listen to their teaching skills/the people they have become. Always inspiring. I have to go now. Sorry this letter is short. Missionary work is the best and I am truly loving my time here. These truly are the best two years! At least so far.

Love,

Anziano Smith

Brindisi | week 14

 Anziano Pizza rescuing a cat from a tree!

Hello Fellow Americans,

It has been two weeks since I last wrote and much has happened. I will go over some of the highlights quickly. 

First of all, there are two new missionaries in our district who are instant legends. Anziano Querisma from Torino (in Italy) and Anziano Kwodwo from Ghana. It is so cool meeting missionaries from different parts of the world. I have only talked to them for about an hour at our last District Meeting (which is every Tuesday morning), but that was certainly enough to tell that they are incredible missionaries and really cool guys as well. Hopefully I will be able to go on some scambios with them this transfer.

So, at the beginning of English course we all meet together for announcements, prayer, introducing new people, etc then we split into the advanced and beginner course. Last Tuesday after the prayer, Anziano Pizza made a comment after the prayer about how the fun course would remain in the chapel while the boring course went with Anziano Alvey and I to the Relief Society room. Some of us took offense to that comment and decided to act. So...we have advanced english course pizza party Wednesday night at the best pizzeria in Brindisi. It was so legit! Only 4 of them could make it, but it was awesome to say the least. No worries, it was not a night off of missionary work. Half of the time we were talking about prayer and it was really awesome to talk about the gospel in a more relaxed, informal setting. They really opened up to us more than they do during our spiritual thoughts. We also gave Salvatore (my favorite student) the past 2 conference talks by President Monson and he read both of them that night. He is awesome.

The coolest experience of my mission by far was this past Thursday morning. There is a school right outside this park where we have been visiting a family for the past two weeks and we usually try to meet them around 12 or so. On Thursday we finished talking to them around 12:40, but we dont go back to the apartment until 1:30 for lunch. We decided to walk around the park for a while. Turns out there is a school right on the other side of it which gets out at 12. There were 4 or 5 students sitting and talking with a teacher and I told Anziano Pizza we should try to talk to them. The teacher was a really funny guy. He was kind of poking fun of us at first, and then he was like, "Class! come listen to the American kids!" All of the sudden about 25 kids who were all 17 and 18 were standing around us. Anziano Pizza introduced us and talked for a while. At first they were kind of making fun of us and not really listening. They could tell I was the new kid and pointed at me and were like say something in English to us. So I whipped out my Book of Mormon out of my bag and started explaining what it was in English. I wont lie, I was scared at first, but as soon as I opened up my mouth there was absolutely no fear. It was one of the most amazing feelings I have ever felt. It got absolutely dead silent when I opened it up to the picture of Christ ministering to the people in Ancient America. Anyways, we told them all about English course and all of them freaked out and said they wanted to come. They haven’t come yet, but we will see.

On Friday I went on a scambio with Anziano Jepsen all day. He is a champ. He works like there is no tomorrow and I love it. We divided the morning into visiting less actives and x investigators with street contacting on the way to both. We were so effective I felt like we did a days worth of work by 2pm. That morning we found Sorella Dimurri who has not been to church in about 15 years. Talking to her for an hour was heart-wrenching. She has gone through so much pain. She firmly told us 3 times that she could never accept the existence of a God again. However, she was so kind to us and gave us her phone number and told us we could come back because she is pretty lonely. Situations like that call for miracles. They call for power beyond our own to reach out in compassion and help another feel of the healing and power of the Atonement. She is an absolutely perfect example of a sheep the Lord needs fed.

This Sunday we only had 20 people at sacrament. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly spiritual sacrament meeting. It truly does only take 2 or the 3 people to be gathered in the Lords name to invite the Spirit. They hymns, sacrament, prayers, and talks were some of the most beautiful I have ever heard. The members here truly are inspiring. Their faith is so vibrant and they are about 25 out of a city of 70,000. They all know it is true and sacrifice so much for the gospel. They make me want to be better not only now, but for the rest of my life. So long until next week!

Love,

Anziano Smith

Brindisi | week 12 {Monday is Pday, no one gets transferred!}

Anziano Smith, Anziano Jepsen, Anziano Alvey, Anziano Pizza

Ah! We can't wait to go visit Brindisi one day! It sure seems like a special place

Lasagna Anziano Pizza made for the elders last Friday for weekly planning. Delicious!

Regan said this was a local duomo (big Catholic church)

Sure looks beautiful there!

Anziano Pizza and Anziano Smith

Well, this was a shorter week since pday was changed to Mondays but I still have some good stuff to report. First of all, I dont think I have given the members here from Brindisi enough love in my emails home. They are super legit. Prime example. Last Friday Fratello Frascaro asked us to come to the church really quick to help him with something for his family history and he bought 4 wheels of focaccia for the 4 of us. It was so nice of him. 

On Saturday I went on a scambio with Anziano Jepson. That night was easily one of the best of my whole mission. Anziano Jepson decided to go out to see someone they met on the street earlier that week. She told them they could come back and talk. She was about an hour walk from our apartment. I thought it was a very questionable decision to go and see her, but he wanted to, so we did. After 40 minutes of walking came across an older couple and a younger lady sitting on a bench and we stopped to talk to them. It was a way neat experience for me to say the least. Anziano Jepson talked to the younger lady (who wasnt super interested in our message) while I talked to the older couple. We ended up talking for like 30 minutes. It boosted my confidence a ton to know that I can hold a conversation completely on my own. Anziano Pizza is giving me control of the phone now which is another big step. Anyways, I gave them a Book of Mormon which they said they would read. Only problem with contacting them again is they have no idea how to use the phone they have. Getting a hold of them might be a problem. I had to take her phone from her and call my phone to get her number cause she didnt even know it. We shall wait and see.

Then we finally got to the apartment we were going to in the first place. It was a very very nice lady who was in probably the nicest apartment I have seen since I have been here. She showed us pics of her kids weddings which were incredible. We got to know her better for like 20 minutes and then asked if she has met with the missionaries before. It turns out she is the great aunt of Anziano Liccoli who was the missionary that I came to Brindisi to replace. I was so shocked. He is from somewhere in Northern Italy. We then taught her the lesson on the Resoration. She said she wasnt interested in meeting with us again, but I still felt amazing after that lesson. It is really neat to think of how much joy God lets us feel when we do our best. I know that I am not by any means a perfect teacher, and I have thought a lot of times that I could have given another person a better chance to here this wonderful message. However, the only thing that matters is that I keep trying to grow in my love for the Lord and others and do my best and that will be enough because the Lords grace is sufficient. 

Next big moment from the week: Transfer Calls!!! Our whole house is staying together this transfer. I was psyched! We actually got the call while we were at Victor and Blessings for dinner and a lesson. We had an amazing dinner of pasta and fried chicken sandwiches. It was legit. Anyways, all the elders here truly are my brothers. This work unites us like none other. I love them all so much and am so happy to hear that they are all doing well. 

Im out of time. Everyone just know that the Lord lives. He loves everyone one of us no matter what we do. We can never go so far away that we are out of his sight. We are his children and always will be. It is the quest of a lifetime to come to know him more intimately and serve him with all our might! 

Love,

Anziano Smith