Chapter 57: "Happy Easter, Harry!"

That 👆🏼is how my comp greeted me Easter morning, since she knows how much I love Harry Potter. What a gem.

Hey friends! I hope you all had an INCREDIBLE Easter!! Alright I'm not gonna lie, it's been a really hard week. Buuuut luckily it's also been a week of awesome miracles and crazy good experiences, so I can't really complain🤷🏼‍♀️ gotta love the rollercoaster of life, yeah? And we woke up at 5am to spend today at *wait for it* CINQUE TERRE!! It was insanely beautiful!! Get excited for these pictures 😉

Ok so last Wednesday after Pday stuff, we went out with the youth to do some finding, specifically based on the Book of Mormon. We did splits with them, and had some super cool experiences. One was with a guy who claimed to be an atheist. Sorella Arndt and I love talking to Atheists because so far, we've been able to get 100% of them to admit by the end of the conversation that there IS, in fact, a God! This guy was super awesome, and he even admitted in the end that he thinks God migh have sent us to specifically find him that day. I think he is right😉 It was awesome overall- these youth are so amazing!

Thursday was a day of member appointments, extending President Allen's invitation for members to invite their friends and family members to meet with the missionaries. It's been such a humbling experience. So far every single member we've extended this invite to have called or texted friends about meeting with us. They've all had various fears and excuses at the start, but in the end have all gotten up the courage and faith invite their friends and family to come uno Christ. It's super inspiring to me- I think of how often I was the member at home who was too scared or too busy or just too awkward to share the gospel with friends and whatnot. Gosh dang it, these Italians are just too good❤

Friday, we got up dark and early to head over to Pisa for scambio. I was with Sorella Arkell, a young but awesome missionary! I've never met a missionary so good at being lovingly bold- I'm pretty sure I learned more from the scambio than she did! We biked from appointment to appointment, so that was new. I mean, awesome because who doesn't want to ride a bike through beautiful toscana? Buuuut also pretty rough when we rode for literally hours in the hot sun. And I haven't been in a biking city my whole mission. Oh mamma, my butt still hasn't recovered, lol.🚲 Make fun of me if you want😂but hey, you try riding a bike for two hours after a year of not doing it, and then lemme know how your booty feels. Gosh. It was fun though because we got to meet with some people who knew both my trainer Sorella Smith, and my bff Sorella Anderson! Super cool to spend a day serving in their birth city! We got home from Pisa Saturday morning (after doing morning workouts at theLeaning Tower, of course). Literally none of our investigators could meet last week, which was a bummer. Buuut we made good use of that time by meeting with some more members and less actives, so yay!

Sunday was EASTER! So many awesome lessons during church! And then we went over to the Morelli family for Easter lunch! Haha, and so many members gave us food for Easter lol. Easter egg hunts may not be a thing here, buuuut Italy does have giant chocolate eggs with a surprise inside and who doesn't want that??

Remember how Italy likes making up their own holidays? Same. So Monday was essentially Easter part 2 lol. So there was a super huge Easter lunch at the church, so that was fun! ALSO we were out doing passbys (since holidays in Easter typically mean no busses and no one wanting to meet, lol). We saw the name "Cabezas" on a citofono and were like "oh that's funny, there's a fam in our ward with that last name" and so we rang. And it wasn't them. But it was their niece Carolina and her family. And they are not members. And they let us in. And we had an amazing lesson with them. And we are coming back Friday. I. Love. Them. I can just see this adorable family getting baptized, and I'm sooooo stoked we were able to find them!!🤗❤ they have a 2 year old son named Christian who kept playing his accordion and pretending to be a dinosaur during the lesson. I want to adopt him.

Yesterday was awesome! We had normal Tuesday stuff like English class and district meeting, but we got a new investigator and she is amazing! She is also named Carolina lol, but she's like 19 and is basically our new best friend. Like seriously it was one of the best lessons ever! She is sooooooo ready for the gospel! She talked to us about how she is missing peace in her life, and she wants what we have! She had so many awesome questions, and we are seeing her again on Friday as well! Seriously, a miracle week!!

Well friends, this is the last week of video-themed spiritual thoughts (although if you STILL haven't seen the actual video, here ya go https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc lol)

3- Prince of Peace

This week has been pretty hard. Just physically and emotionally and just all the ways. Obviously tons of miracles as you've seen, but a rough week nonetheless. Interestingly enough, I was rereading my journal from the MTC, and realized last year's Easter week was pretty hard too! I don't remember all that went into it, but it was apparently a difficult week. I remember last year on the Friday before Easter, our district was having a hard day. Our teachers came in and noticed that something was off, and decided to change our lesson to talk about Easter, and specifically the death, Atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that changed everything for me.

I remembered it then, and I remembered it this week- that Easter week was also hard for someone else. It was easily the hardest week for Christ. There's a quote by Joseph B Wirthlin that I love (shout out to mom for randomly sending it this week, you champ!)

"It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow. Of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

Each of us will have our own Fridays-those days when the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. But I testify to you, in the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. 

The Messiah overcame all, that we could live forever.”

Meno male it's been Easter time, so that I could remember and reflect upon His hardest week. Sorella Arndt and I have been memorizing The Living Christ in Italian, and I'm so so so grateful for the knowledge and testimony we can attain of Him during this life. Plus, I'm studying Romans in the New Testament (Paul is just a boss. I'm loving it) and chapter 8 is literally the best. Just look at how it ends👇🏼

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So I guess those are my scrambled thoughts after this awful, no good, really bad week that also happened to be full of miracles. 

He lives. 

Nothing can separate us from His love. 

Through Him, we are conquerors. 

And Sunday will come.

xoxo

Sorella Smedley 🌷🌿🌸🌻🌱💐

1-4 Pisa scambio   5-8 Leaning Tower   9&10- Easter!    11-23- P-day in Cinque Terre

   

    

  

   

  

  

 

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

   

  

  

Chapter 55: "I am your king!" "Well I didn't vote for you!"

*The full Monty Python movie quote from which this week's title un-apostately derives will be found at the bottom of this email. Thanks mom, for keeping me connected to the real world* 

Well folks it's been an amazing week. A week of being eaten alive by mosquitos. A week of amazing miracles. A week of being so exhausted by the end of the day that you literally flop onto the couch and listen to beauty and the beast, because you're too tired to get ready for bed. Just another week in the life of a missionary😂🤷🏼‍♀️ ALSO!! The church just put out an amazing new video for Easter!! Go look at it🤗---> https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc

Ok, so last Thursday we had a combined District meeting, followed by a couple appointments with members and less-actives. Super cool though- on our bus ride back to the station, we were sitting across from this lady named Maria (classic), reading a play script. Arndt and I were instantly intrigued, and started asking this lady what was up lol. Maria told us about how she was the lead in this big play, and even said she could score us some tickets for it in May🎭 Then she started asking us questions about why we were living in Firenze, and the convo took off from there! It was pretty awesome, and we exchanged numbers and gave her a Book of Mormon. 

THEN

We got off the bus for our appointment, and saw she got off in the same area. Well we finished up at our appointment and felt prompted to call Maria. Well, the spirit is real folks because 10 minutes later we were sitting by the Arno river teaching Maria about the restoration. It was by far one of the coolest lessons. I don't think I've ever met someone more ready for the gospel. The whole lesson just flowed so naturally, and the spirit was so strong. The mosquitos were also strong, but we won't get into that. Anyways, we have another appointment with her this weekend, so yay💕

Thursday evening-Friday evening, we had scambio (exchanges) with the Sorelle from Prato! I was with the amazing Sorella Tullis! Seriously such a fun and hardworking missionary, it was such a blast🌈 We had an appointment with my favorite RM Jan whilst eating Chinese food. Just some advice: eels taste like they look🤢 haha it was awesome though! Jan constantly inspires me! We also had correlation and some other passbys, during which we showed the NEW EASTER VIDEO at https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc 😉 That night after the Prato Sorelle left, we had an appointment with the Larrain family. The father of that family passed away a little over a month ago, so we've been trying to help them out. We decided to make them an American dinner lol. Sorella Arndt and I realized we shared the childhood favorite of poppyseed chicken, so we scored some ingredients from th American base up north and made it for the family! Haha it was pretty much the best night ever! Sorella Larrain was in love😂😂😂 she's one of my favorite people I've met here in Italy!

Saturday started off with interviews with Presidente Allen! It's always so amazing when we get to see him and Sorella Allen❤ then Saturday-Sunday was GENERAL CONFERENCE🌷☔️🌱 Even before the mission, general conference has always be right up there with movie marathons and midnight showings for me! I just love it, and this past weekend was no exception! These leaders are so inspired, and the messages shared were truly from God. If you didn't get the chance to view it this past weekend, I'd def suggest you head on over to lds.org and give it a gander. And hey! While you're there, you may as well check out https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc Best of all, some of our investigators came to general conference!!! It was so awesome! There's also a guy in the ward who is both blind and deaf, and he came to the conference. At first I was like "lol but why", but there's this pro lady in the ward who learned Italian sign language from him. So she signed the entire conference into the palm of his hand. I was so blown away by both of their dedication and genuine desire to be there for conference! And it was beautiful to look over at them from time to time and see the tears streaming down his face. It was evident that he miraculously understood the words of the prophets thanks to this member, but more than that, he felt the spirit that was there. So cool. Also, yay me for being able to understand all of conference in Italian #miracles

Monday we started planning a special exhibition we will be doing Easter weekend! Buuut it's a secret, so stay tuned😏 (and in the meantime, feel free to check out the new Easter video https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc .) We met with a super old less active lady, and she made us random fried dessert things that were obviously unhealthy, and thus delicious. The diabetic nightmare was the closest thing I've had to a donut since America. Ahhh. We also visited these two German sisters who literally kill me😂😂 so basically just another awesome day!

Yesterday was full of random appointments, meetings, and getting beard-baccied on the bus. Yes, I'm talking full-on kissed on the cheek by a bearded lady😂 ah well, she was super nice and loved the video on https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc 😉

TODAY we went to the fairytale city of Siena! It was absolutely beautiful! Plus we went down a random little street and found a studio where we found ANTONELLO! Coolest guy ever! Literally a piano master and photography master! We accidentally spend almost two hours just chilling with him and these two students from the university of Siena. Antonello told us all about his insane life! We talked about God, listened to him play the piano, and just had the coolest experience ever! Plus he took some professional photos of us and the university couple all together, so go scope that out on Facebook lol. If you'd told me a year ago that I'd casually go to Siena one Wednesday and casually spend a couple hours with complete strangers and just have cool lil experiences all day long, I probs would've laughed at you. And yet, here we are🙃

So cool thing. The awesome Easter video (yes yes, the one found here ---> https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc  talks a lot about the various things the Savior did and was. At the end, there are three names used. There are conveniently 3 emails (including this one) leading up to Easter. I think you all see where I'm going with this.

1- King of Kings 

Christ was and is the perfect King, and unlike the scenario in that classic Monty Python film, we DID vote for Him, lol. I finished John in the New Testament the other day, and basically my mind is constantly blown with all the amazing things Christ did. My dad mentioned something the other day about how all would be well if we just had Christ here as our leader, and it's true! Political leaders and other leaders are imperfect, and many are faaaaar from the mark. The Savior, however, was the perfect example of what a leader should be. He's the perfect balance of justice and mercy. He's knowledgeable but compassionate. He's selfless and serving, though He acknowledges His divine role as the literal Son of God. And I guess that's the good thing, is He is our King! Yeah, maybe he's not the physical leader of our country or state or school or whatever right now. He is still, however, our King. In the Bible, you can read about how He healed, performed miracles, forgave sins, and showed charity. Although He isn't physically here right now, He still fulfills these same roles in our lives. Through accepting Him as our King, we open up the ability to use His Atonement to heal us and comfort us, and lead us throughout life. Spiritually, He is our King. That much is certain. And one day, He will return to physically be our King. And that is worth celebrating.

xoxo

Sorella Smedley☔️

PS: I love the apostle John. He is my absolute favorite! Lol he just knows so much, and you know he was just chilling on the island in exile being super sassy as he wrote his books lol. Lil savage decided to end his gospel with this bad boy: John 21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

PPS: The Monty Python quote, as promised:

Arthur: I am your king!

Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!

Arthur: You don't vote for kings.

Woman: Well how'd you become king then?

Angelic music plays...

Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering silmite held aloft Excalibur from He bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king!

Dennis interrupting: Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!

PPPS: just in case you haven't already https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc https://www.mormon.org/?player=bc

1- American meal with Sorella Lorraine   2-5 Pday in Siena!  6&7 Antonello!

8-18  More of beautiful Siena