BARI :)

Buongiorno guys!

Well I did it! I finally left Caserta. It was harder than I thought it'd be! I sure loved my time there but I'm excited for this next adventure down in..........BARI LIBERTÀ!!! Monday night I was with the Battipaglia Sorelle in Caserta when we got transfer calls and we found out that they were getting blown out too so this past week was insane with getting everything ready to go for the 4 new Sorelle coming in. 

We packed and left Caserta Tuesday and spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Battipaglia getting their apartment clean and packed up. 

Bye to Luana and Veronica 😭

Wednesday was crazy haha. We got all-you-can-eat sushi with the Anziani in Salerno (which is so so beautiful) for pranzo and then later that night we had a dinner appointment with a member. They fed us a ton come sempre. We wanted to stop by one last lady right before going home that night and turns out she had made us dinner too!!! Sooo, it was 9:20pm and we had to be home at 9:30 and we still had a huge plate of food and we were already stuffed from eating literally right before it. We pounded down the food in like 2 minutes flat and ran home hahaha. The stuff we put our poor bodies through on the mission😂

Thursday we took a train up to Rome for MLC. All the Sister Training Leaders and Zone Leaders in the mission stayed in the Villa (mission home). It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot!! Sorella Pickerd gave an addestramento and talked about the word "peculiar" and how it's used in the scriptures. In the Bible dictionary it's defined as "One's very own, exclusive, or special; the Lord's own special people or treasure." 1 Peter 2:9 says, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." I love this!! We are different from the rest of the world! We have the light of the Spirit with us! I read the talk, "Zion in the Midst of Babylon" by David R. Stone from April 2006 this week during studies and I really liked it. It talks about how to live in the world but not be of the world and how to have courage to be different from the world. I encourage you all to read it! :)

I got to Bari Friday night and finally got to unpack my bags!! It feels so nice after a couple weeks of living out of a suitcase :) My companion is Sorella Sargeant from Boulder City Nevada. We were in the same MTC group and we actually met at BYU before we left. She's the sweetest thing ever and we're gonna light up Bari Libertà this transfer!!! Also, I'm so excited to be back in Puglia just about an hour from my first area :) You know what that means? I get to eat panzarotti again! 

Panzarotti from La Maddalena 

Sunday was crazy being back in a full-Italian ward. They're all so in gamba here. Bari is the promised land!! After church we had a meal appointment (they have a missionary feeding calendar in the ward!!!!!) and they started eating these things called "cozze" (mussels). Well some of them told me to try it and I wasn't gonna say no, so I ate some raw cozze. Let's just say I now have food poisoning and don't feel that great today hahaha. Welcome to Bari!!

Sorella Seargants mom sent a Valentines Package

I'm excited for this next transfer! It's gonna be a blast. Thank you guys for your prayers and support! Love you all :)

Con amore,

Sorella Hess

Piazza Monte Gemma 9

Roma 00141

Italia 

1- Bye to Luana and Veronica 😭

2- MLC Training Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders
3-Panzarotti from La Maddalena 

4- Lungomare in Bari today