Hey Sweetie, Hey Puppy, Hey Lovey, Hey Babe

HEEEEEYYY!!!

As for moi:

~PDAY- last pday like i mentioned we were in ladispoli. waded about in the water at the beach, sat in the black sand, played a spastic game of soccer with pieces of trash to make the goals, and then carved pumpkins and ate taco salad. 'twas most excellent. THIS pday for halloween we're gonna meet the elders at the church and make lasagna, wear sweats except i'm wearing my teal pants, drink "blood" (anziano embree has been talking about this stuff he "bought" for days....), and beat candy out of a tiny pinata sorella winward made with paper mache. pictures to come.

The beach in Ladispoli. 

Our beautiful punkins.

~I BROKE A BANANA ON MY HEAD. to any and all cadets from my original LOBO flight. it can be done! but no one was there to see it.... but i gasped so loud they were all worried about me.

~ I love my english class so so so much! I feel like I cant really be myself all the time with the missionaries, but with my class im relaxed and funny and they keep coming back so i must be a half decent teacher. or at least somewhat entertaining. i gave one of the girls in my class a test cuz she wanted one to help her practice. i got it back yesterday and for some of the translations she wrote things like "I'm twenty one age years" "My birthday father's is twenty-nine november". Adorable right??

~ I don't really like doing "house" = ringing buzzers and them answering "who is it?" "we are missionaries of the church of jesus christ and we bring a message about him if you have a few minutes..." "oh, no thanks, im not interested" "oh, ok, thanks anyway" "you're welcome".

but it makes me laugh when they say "prego" at the end, like they did me a favor by rejecting me. :)

~ After dad's email last week about Jordie and his comp coming up with different ways to say "it's gonna be a great day" i made a little sign and sing to myself the andy samberg song "i dont know WHY but today seems like its gonna be a GREAT DAAAAAAAAAAY!"

~ Little old Michele from english course came to our ward activity this week AND to church. it was the primary program. and we gave him a bom and he said he would read. boom baby.

~ Spiritual roller coaster moment: we went to Alina's to teach Vittorio. She told us about her many lots of problems healthwise, debtwise. It's really sad. And she hasn't been coming to church. We bore testimony that those are the times when you can't slow down in the church or in your prayers and scripture reading. It was a really special little lesson. and she asked them for a blessing.

THEN Vittorio jumped in a started a long string of ridiculous bible-related questions about NOTHING and after one second i turned to anziano embree and told him i wanted to punch vittorio's face and the spirit ran away with how tense and frustrated the room was. after about 20 minutes of wasteful nothingness i turned to embree again and said "ask alina if she wants her blessing now and then let's beat it."

she wanted it then and the elders gave her the most incredible blessing and the spirit was brought back in full force and it was a really fantastic couple minutes. and i wanted to shout from the housetops "THATS WHY OUR CHURCH IS TRUE! BECAUSE THEY CAN DO THAT!" meaning, give powerful blessings.

~ Alma 31: 34-35. Has been my prayer this last week. And I have sought to let people know that they are precious and important. Even if one minute later they purposefully touch Sorella Sobeck's bum or look at us like we're something to eat.

LOVE YOU ALL. MUCH MUCH MUCH.

Olives. Flowers. Baby Jesus.

Herrrroooooo!

It's been a pretty great week.

So many chins. It's all that McDonalds...

PDAY: Last p-day we went to st. peter's and sat on some steps and ate mcdonald's and people watched. the best guy we saw was an old guy doing stretches and it made us laugh real hard. then we walked to castel sant'angelo because im obsessed with it. i dont even know why, ive never been inside. i guess ive just always wanted to go dancing on a barge in front of it on the river like princess anne in roman holiday.

Then we went to visit Salvatore and brought Brother Frulla, a sweet, skinny, bald guy from the ward that is so slight you feel like you could blow him away just by talking too loud. We talked about the priesthood and Bro. Frulla explained the responsibilities and how Salvatore will become a priest after he is baptized. Then Sister Smed and I bore our testimonies about it. I talked about how my brothers are always getting hurt or sick but I'm grateful my daddy is worthy of the priesthood and can bless them. It was a wonderful lesson.

mcd's at san pietro's

FOOD: Sorella Winward cooked us cheese-stuffed FLOWERS this week. hmmm. delicious.

i bought a figho d'india (those strange fruits that come off cactusy plants). that guy at the store was like, oh be careful! there are pricklies. and i was like oh, i didnt feel any, after i had been squeezing it with my whole hands. 15 minutes later several spots on my fingers starting hurting. they DO have pricklies. idiot.

EXERCISE: we've gotten up every day this week to go jogging or play soccer with the anziani. its really fun. and better than what we used to do, namely, do 10 situps take a little nap, do 10 pushups, take a little nap.... Today we are in Ladispoli visiting Sorelle Ivory and Buckley and we're gonna go to the beach and play soccer with them. Cant wait!

"sor. smed" and "sor. sobe" on a crammed metro

OLIVES: Monday sorella perego came to pick us up so we could do service in her neighbor's olive orchard. it was fabulous! they set up nets on the ground and use these strange flapping combs to "comb" down the branches and knock all the olives off, then

we gather them in the nets and put them in buckets. It smelled wonderful. and was so fun!

Olive Queen 

Sam Perego 

OTHER: my ward is great. full of characters. i sat by a sister who loves to sing. very loudly. and she dresses like cruella devil. we sang "called to serve"/ "chiamati a servirlo" and she sings like she's on a roller coaster: "iiiiIIIIIINNIIIIII di vitOOOOOOriiiiiaaaaaa" priceless.

Drama: sor. smed. had to give a sister the smackdown last week because it's the fifth or sixth time the sisters have warned her not to look up dangerous videos online, because she is obsessed with when the second coming will be. she showed us part of one she was really excited about and it was a cheesy narrative about love but the background was disturbing images and ufos and aliens. no no no. she ignored us on the street and didnt come to church. we're visiting her tonight.

THOUGHT:

We met up with Tiziana this week. We planned restoration, but instead mostly she told us about how she knows God exists because she visited a country village where a woman saw baby jesus, and how l'arcangelo san michele blessed her, etc. etc. Sor Smed tried to emphasize that it was important to ask God directly if things are true so we can know for ourselves. At the end I said the prayer and prayed just for Tiziana, she has a lot going on, and afterward she cried because she said it's been rare in her life that she has felt loved, and that she felt our love for her. We reminded her that God ALWAYS feels that way about her. It reminded me of what daddy told me on the phone in the airport, that as long as we make people feel loved that's most important. I agree.

 I tried to chat with a guy on the metro on our way here, I just said hey, how are you today? and he answered "why?" these peeps arent used to a little friendly convo from a stranger. after all "you can always depend on the kindness of strangers..."

love you!

-sorella rain

Castel Sant'Angelo

Trevy! Call Salt Lake!

CIAO!!!

Everyone! I've been up to so many many "sings":

But first. Let me give you a lovely picture of my life here:

Squashing against people on crowded buses, smelling rancid italian man b.o. as people's bodies rub against me, the heinous smells of garbage cans, church bells early in the morning, graffiti everywhere, dog poop all over the sidewalks, tally marks of how many times we get the up-down from creeps on the street and saying "NOPE!".... i wouldnt have it any other way.

-Last P-day: we went for a "stroll" and hit up trevy fountain, piazza navona, pantheon. then in the evening we went to visit a member named Alina and ended up teaching her friend Vittorio who is from Moldova who has been living in italy for 2 years and still doesnt speak very good italian so she translated into romanian for him. We taught him the quick restoration and invited him to read the BoM. We've taught him once again since then, he had already read many chapters, taught restoration in full with "the cups"- building a little pyramid with the apostles on the bottom, principles building the top (faith, eternal marriage, baptism, priesthood...), and jesus on the top. "it's gold, jerry! gold!"

-Thursday: we went with Doris- a new member from nigeria- and her 2 little girls millicent and divine (africans here have the best names ever!- sor. smed. said she met a "god's power" and an "almighty" once. i'm partial to almighty for a middle name. whatcha think? oh, and Doris' husband's name is Monday) to her visiting teacher's house. sorella perego is american married to an italian and they live a ways away. we ate lunchie there and then stacked wood for service for the lady who lives under them and owns the restaurant down the way.

-I struggle just starting conversations with people on the bus/metro. So I practiced this week. One of my first ones I talked to a lady on the bus. She said she was romanian and new to italy. I offered her an english-class card and our bigliettino, which she accepted graciously. She then told me she couldnt read and then asked me for money.... :S

I did my first "sondaggio" this week. For street contacting Sor. Smed. likes to stop people and say we're missionaries and we're doing a short survey of 2 questions. I did it all by myself and it was slightly horrifying.

-I may or may not be eating a whole bunch, many, much a lot of nutella.

-We met with a potential named Prince (also Nigerian) at the mall where he works. AND GUESS WHAT HE SAID! "i'm not sure if my parents baptized me. can i be baptized in your church?" um. YES. sor. smed. explained we would have to continue teaching him to prepare for it but he completely agreed. We taught him restoration. He said he believed it all happened. He said he had been looking for a BoM for a really long time cause someone told him once he should look into the mormon church. He seemed so excited to read it. He asked if we could stay a little longer to study with him and we read the first few pages of the restoration pamphlet. This was all in english. We teach in english a lot.

-Our potential Tiziana came to the last bit of sacrament meeting. yay! and vittorio came for all of church with alina. the only bad thing. he was giving me unwelcomed attentions. not good. it made me very uncomfortable. he is Old. like 50s. ewwww.

but otherwise church was marvelous! loud and crazy and a little unorganized. but fantastic. just what i would expect and desire.

FUNNIES:

~Sorelle Sobeck and Winward were teachin a guy named Andrea last week who we met in english class. He came to conference. He told the missionaries he had a dream of God, that he had a white beard and was smoking a cigar of light. In the sister's last lesson with him he said he had a dream that there was someone with a gun who was going to kill the MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR. he insisted that if they had 3 dreams about either shepherd or sheep that night that it would come true. he came to church next day for the first two hours, and then right before sacrament, he started insisting they "CALL UTAH! CALL SALT LAKE! THE CHOIR IS IN DANGER! SOMEONE HAS A GUN!" they told him they didn't believe him and he stormed out. uh. yeah.

One of the ladies at church who i already adore, Mariateresa, asked why we couldnt bring normal people to church.... :)

~We were walking home from a lesson this week in a thunderstorm and we were so scared and then sor. smed's umbrella cracked in half and she just left it on the sidewalk and we ran home and i was laughing like a manic the whole time. it was really scary. we were soaked.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

-Zone Conference was yesterday, the theme was change. Pres. said we should learn to not be frustrated by change, or we'll always be frustrated. Excellent thought.

- ROMANS 8. Yes. it has Everything. If God is with us who can be against us? Nothing can separate us from the love of God. The sufferings of this present time will not compare with the glory that will be realized in us. I love it so much. And through my personal study- which I look forward to every day because I go on wild rides going from scriptures to topical guide to other scriptures and am learning so much- I find these things all the be true.

The Gospel makes sense. The Gospel is for everyone. It meets the needs that we all have.

Love you! Be Good.

-Sorella Caj.

In front of the Trevi Fountain

Eccomi in Italia!

CIAO!!!!!

ECCOMI IN ITALIA.

I am currently sitting in a little internet cafe across the street from our apartment. i have been back in my beloved italia a whole week. can you believe it?

the picture of bodie on his bike talking to that old man pulls right at my heartstrings.

Thanks for sharing that talk papi. it's something i was thinking about a lot, especially yesterday when we went to visit this old lady named fiorella. i'll talk a little more about her in a second.

um BOONE. would you do that to the family? has that ever happened in the history of the world to have 3 out at the same time??? AHHHHH!

um gen. conf. was marvelous. we took a bus and a metro and a 15 minute walk to go to the rome 1 area to their building to get it. got to see relief society broadcast and the first 3 sessions. my favorite thought was elder holland saying he wouldnt be surprised if God asked "did you love me?" THINK ABOUT THAT! are we showing Him we do??

Update for the last week and a half:

-Got in last wednesday. the flights were rough on me. traveling in a skirt is the worst. but i had my first experience talking about the church with a kid from mexico on his way home from a trip to vienna. i told him about prophets and how long i would be in italy as a missionary and gave him a mormon.org card. i dont think that's how he planned the conversation to go.... ;)

-Stayed the night in the mission home. The guy who drove us there from the airport is italian but learned english in australia so he had a hilarious aussie accent. "there's the tiber rivah..." :)

-Got our first areas. Me: ROME 3. the south eastern section below Roma centrale. Comp: Sorella Smedley.

Sorella Smed. is from layton, and has been out almost a year. we get along great and study great together. she's cute and has perfectly straight blonde hair. she did karate. and has horses.

Sorella Smedley

-Um, did you remember that Hendrik Larcher was on his mish here? I didnt. I didnt see him, but saw him in our mission newsletter on the list of people going home last week. So i left him a little note at the mission home.

-A ton our our elders got to go to Napoli. I gave them notes for the Lords, Fede Bruno, the Romanos, Mariella Baiano. One is going to pozzuoli. i was writhing in jealousy.

-i want a lord of the rings cd too!

-FIRST DAY: unpacked, failed attempts to visit less actives. Taught english class all myself. Beginning. There were 6 people. I picked up some tips from Fratello Pesci in the MTC by teaching some words (we reviewed months, days of the week, and colors) and then putting it into a question and answer and asking everyone the questions.

Then we gave a new member lesson to Denis. He is from Gabon, speaks italian and french, and got baptized in july. He's adorable! He has such a strong testimony and most of the lesson was him raving about Sor. Smed. and how she brought him to the right path.

He calls us every night to make sure we got home safe and is so kind and excited to be a member.

-OTHER INVESTIGATORS:

1. 2. 3. the "kiddies": the most darling kids EVER! Eva (14), Ivan (12), and Elen (10). Their mom is inactive, their dad strongly catholic, their uncle Davide newly reactivated who insisted they get to meet with the missionaries. They would be baptized in an instant, they want to be, but their parents wont even let them come to church, not even with their uncle.

We taught them keeping the sabbath day holy and about general conference and prophets. and sang "follow the prophet/ segui il profeta" with them. it was slightly disastrous cuz the italian words are awkward but it was funny.

Elen gave me a big hug right when i got there, and another at the end and said "i dont want to let you go" and i promised we would be back soon. we meet with them every friday.

Sor. Smed. told me  when they invited them to be baptized a while ago, and they knew they couldnt, Elen said the closing prayer to that lesson and asked "please help us to be good so we can be baptized as soon as possible". doesnt that just kill ya????

4. Salvatore: is a welder working on the temple who had a dream of himself and his family in the finished temple all in white. he asked anziano fenn- who is overseeing the work there- what it meant. Sor. Smed has been teaching him since the summer and he's getting baptized Nov. 17, it would be sooner but he wants to kick his smoking habit. He told us yesterday he's down to 3 cigarettes a day instead of 30. yay yay yay!

5. Tiziana- a referral from some other sisters. All 4 of us met with her this week after she talked with Sor. Lovell on the bus and said she was searching for meaning. She's a 42 yr old school teacher, looks 32, incredibly intelligent, speaks perfect english, has studied all over europe, and is just wonderful. very open minded and willing to try. we're gonna try to meet with her again next week. She made me laugh really hard when she said that when she first saw Sor. Lovell (who always looks a little loopy happy) on the metro she asked herself "what crack is she on?" but realized she was just genuinely content.

Afterward we went and got gelato with her and at the gelateria she said to the lady there "dont these girls look happy? theyve been teaching me about how i can be too, you should listen to them too!" adorable, right??

OTHER VISITS:

-Fiorella: the mother of a Melchiore (one of our ward missionaries) who is 82 and practically bed ridden. when she walks she is practically at a 90 degree angle. she likes us to come over every once in a while cuz she doesnt do anything all day. we chatted with her and sang her a hymn, and she showed us pictures of her family and from when she was first married and then went on and on about how beautiful we were and how she wished she were young again. i almost cried cause she's so sad. she insisted on giving us both a little spankin when we first got there and when we left and she showed us her diaper. We reminded her God loves her and prayed with her.

-Patrizia Prato: is a spectacular member but cant always come to church because she takes care of her little papito. they're both like 4'10". and her dad has a cross eye that makes him hilariously adorable. she made us dinner last night and we gave a quick thought about lehi's vision and holding the iron rod to get to the delicious fruit.

I'm so happy! I cant wait to meet the ward. I love walking and riding buses and smiling at people and attempting conversations. I need to be bolder. Im practicing.

The church is true! I love it and I love italians! I love love love the scriptures and the things I'm learning that will help the people we teach.

VI VOGIO BENE!

-Sorella Caj

Sister Nakatsuka

 ADL district. Teachers Sis. Allen and Bro. Thorpe

Italian District. teacher Bro. Pesci

 Me and Sis. Nakatsuka escaping over the MTC back gate

 Sor. Winward and Sor. Sobeck, the sisters we live with.