Chapter 56: "Are You a Jew?"

Once upon a time, it was Pday. This Pday was a tad different than your average Italian Pday, because there was a huge youth activity going on in the evening. Thus, the day was spent signing up Sorella Arndt for some classes, and chilling around centro. As the two lovely sorelle were walking around centro, a random man tried to do what most weird Italians do: determine who exactly these "Sorelle" are. Today was a new one though, he looked me straight in the eye and said "Are you a Jew?" Huh, I've gotten Amish, nun x200, and polygamist, but never "Jew"... 

*Disclaimer 1- My dear greenie Sorella Richards: Do you remember the one Jewish conversation we had one time?😏😏😂😂😂😂😂😂*

*Disclaimer 2- Thanks to the youth activity, personal email responses will be sent either tonight, tomorrow morning, or not at all... we shall see...*

Thursday and Friday were absolutely crazy! Ok so one of the companionships Sorella Arndt and I are over is Sorella Zombra (my companion during my fourth transfer) and her companion Sorella Ruby. Well, Sorella Zombra had to take a flight to Sicily to renew her permesso (we've all been there, amiright?) so we were in charge of getting them to and from the airport in Firenze. Then we had Sorella Ruby with us in a trio while Sorella Zombra was in Sicily. It was all rather exhausting, but also fun...?🤷🏼‍♀️ Well, when we weren't busy traveling and whatnot, we did some finding in centro and we saw our investigator Elizabeth, who had a ton of random & deep prophet questions. Gotta love it when lessons somehow make sense despite being 100% improvised, aaand in Italian. Go team. 

The weekend was literally full of back to back meetings with the stake leaders and then the zone leaders. Pretty boring stuff. But hey, we got pizza! And saw a movie poster for the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie. That's what missions are all about, right? Luckily church was great- full of translating for tourists and then doing a special missionary lesson for the youth. 

This week was also zone conference, which meant we got to spend the day with Presidente and Sorella Allen!! Tons of trainings and just awesome stuff. Our stake president spoke, which meant I got to translate for Sorella Allen😅 Sorella Arndt and I also were asked to give a training and a role play about the church's new push to share the gospel through social media. Lemme give you some backstory. It used to be that missionaries spent a good amount of time doing "casa" (aka good ole fashioned knocking on doors). Presidente talked about how when he was on his mission, they would go out doing casa for a couple hours and they knew they be let into at least a couple of homes. Now, it's not that way. I've been let in maybe 3 times in my entire mission. Presidente' current challenge for us missionaries is to meet with members, share a message, and then invite them to use technology to share the gospel. However, President Allen isn't just wanting us to send out a video link or something. He wants us to invite the members on the spot to text a couple of friends inviting them to meet with us missionaries the following week. Pretty nerve wracking for both the missionaries AND the member involved. So that was what our role play and training was supposed to be about. We started working on some stuff for it over the course of the weekend.

BUT THEN

The day before zone conference, we met with Betty. She's seriously one of my favorite people! She's had the hardest life and had phases of time where she wasn't super active in the church. However, she's back now and is super strong. We watched the new Easter video with her (https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc in case you STILL haven't watched it🙄) and talked about the peace and happiness we can receive thanks to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The conversation continued forward, and we decided to extend the invite pres had talked about. Betty was so down hahahaha! She pulled out her phone and started calling people right then and there! She has so much faith, and such a willing heart!

We got a new investigator this week named Pillar. We met her in the most pigeon filled park I've ever seen. I wanted to vomit. Oh well, she seems cool and we are seeing her again tomorrow!

Lol so we had  an appointment to see Maria (sorry there are multiple investigators named Maria, yay Italy. Buuut she's the one who we usually met in her car). Well this week "Car Maria" shook things up and invited us to her home! After an hour of riding the bus through beautiful Toscana, we got to her house. We were greeted by this giant puppy named Benji, so I was stoked🐶 theeeen it got weird... in fact, it's an appointment that I feel describes missionary life in Italy fairly well. First of all, we were not the only guests lol. There was a catholic tea party going on lol. I'm not joking, like a whole group of catholic women, holding their palms (because palms Sunday, duh) and sipping tea. Lol, so we joined. Yay for church conversations with a group of devout catholic women...? They watched the Easter video with us though and then left. It was fun but we were secretly glad to have just Maria there so we could teach her. Lol, jokes on us, because her atheist husband came out within 10 minutes. He proceeded to smoke and bash Christianity. 

Atheist: Tutte le chiese non sono vere. L'ho provate. (No churches are true. I've tried them)

Smeds: hmmm, ma ha mai provato la nostra chiesa? (Hmmm but have you tried our church?)

Atheist: No.

Smeds: ah, ecco perché non l'ha trovata la verità! (Ah... that would be why you haven't found the truth!)

Smeds: 1 

Atheist: 0

Anyways, it went well given all of the craziness haha, and we are seeing her again this week! 

Hopefully alone this time, lol.

Anyways, EASTER IS THIS WEEK!! Gotta love talking to people about Christ, aaaaaand showing them the stellar video @ https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc ❤ In following last week, let's take a lil look at the second title assigned to the Savior in this stellar video!

2- Lord of Lords

I am beyond grateful to have Jesus Christ as our Lord. There is no one else who has the perfect balance of justice and mercy. What is it that makes Him our perfect Lord? Well, there are lots of reasons, but I believe the ultimate is that He represents His father. He is exactly like our Heavenly Father, and we see that anytime we look back at the scriptural accounts of Christ's ministry and works.

Elder Holland said: "Jesus did not come to improve God’s view of man nearly so much as He came to improve man’s view of God and to plead with them to love their Heavenly Father as He has always and will always love them. The plan of God, the power of God, the holiness of God, yes, even the anger and the judgment of God they had occasion to understand. But the love of God, the profound depth of His devotion to His children, they still did not fully know—until Christ came.

​​​​So feeding the hungry, healing the sick, rebuking hypocrisy, pleading for faith—this was Christ showing us the way of the Father, He who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long-suffering and full of goodness.”​​​​ In His life and especially in His death, Christ was declaring, “This is ​God’s​ compassion I am showing you, as well as that of my own.” In the perfect Son’s manifestation of the perfect Father’s care, in Their mutual suffering and shared sorrow for the sins and heartaches of the rest of us, we see ultimate meaning in the declaration: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”​​

I'm grateful for both a perfect Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, and for the loving Father who sent Him here for us.

Enjoy Pasqua 🐣 

Xoxoxo

Sorella Smeds