Un anno!!(2)

Hi guys! 

Il battesimo di Deborah :)So this has probably been the craziest week of my entire mission. My cute bff Sorella N went home this last P-day for a couple months and it broke my heart to say bye to her. She's a rockstar. I've learned SO much from her. I'm SO very grateful we got to serve together and know that we will be friends for the rest of our lives :) I've been bouncing around the zone between my area and the other sorelle's area (2hrs away from Caserta) so we could still do some work in our own city and get things ready to go for Deborah's baptism.

Monday and Tuesday I spent in Pozzuoli. Wednesday I took a train by myself to Caserta (with permission from President😊), and one of our recent converts, Luana, was waiting for me there to be my comp for the day. I can't explain to you guys how much I love her. She was baptized back this past April and is doing Pathways (online BYU-I), learning English, living with an American family in the ward, working, and constantly helping the missionaries. She's awesome. It was a lot of fun to be with her. We got to go to District Meeting, out to lunch as a district, taught some lessons, and had a meal appointment with the family she lives with. The Pozzuoli Sorelle came and met up with us that night and stayed with me there in Caserta.

Thursday morning I worked on planning the baptism and making the program and getting everything ready to go and then we took a train back to Pozzuoli. I CRASHED on the train. Sleeping on a futon and living out of a backpack for a week isn't the funnest haha. Life of missionaries I guess haha. "I'll go where you want me to go dear Lord." :)

Friday we spent the morning in Pozzuoli and then went to Caserta. We got a lot of good stuff done and I was able to pack up a lot of my stuff and apartment. We get transfer calls tonight but President already told me I'm leaving Caserta...just didn't say where I'm going yet...which makes sense because it's been 5 transfers (7 months) since I got here. I'm dreading saying bye to this city and the people here. It feels like home and like they are my family. I spent the night with the senior couple Friday and Saturday night which was fun! Weird sleeping in a bedroom by myself though! They took me out to dinner for my 1 year mark which was really nice of them! Blessed with the best in this mission.

Saturday was the baptism!! Everything was crazy trying to get 15 people from Caserta to Pozzuoli on trains but it all worked out. The baptism was perfect! Deborah was glowing afterwards :) It was such a great day. 

Sunday she received the Holy Ghost and it was really powerful! I was so happy to see her family there all together in church. They are the sweetest people!! The mission is so rewarding.

I just want to bear my testimony on trusting in the Lord. Things will always work out if we put our trust in Him. We are never alone! What a blessing that is to know that no matter what we are going through, there is someone with us. He loves us and is aware of our needs. A lot of things haven't gone according to plan this week but one thing I've learned is that sometimes things are out of our control and the best thing we can do is have a good attitude and move forward with faith trusting in the Lord. Ok, enough preaching. I love you guys! This is Christ's church!! Have the best week! Also s/o to my little brother for entering the MTC this coming Wednesday!! Fiji is lucky :) And Happy Birthday to Sadie Paige for turning 13 this Sunday! 💕

Con amore,

Sorella Hess

Piazza Monte Gemma 9

Roma 00141

Italia 

Le foto:

1- Il battesimo di Deborah :)

2- Pozzuoli 

3- L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele in Napoli on my year mark :) finished this baby by myself! 

4- Fuori la Reggia oggi! Don't judge our ugly shoes and socks...massive rainstorm came and our other ones were destroyed so we bought some ugly 2 euro shoes and socks hahaha. The mission brings out our worst sometimes hahaha. 

Conferenza Generale, Scambi, 8 Mesi!!(11) Oct. 3, 2016

Buonasera cari miei!!

Come va? I seriously cannot believe it's October. Today's my 8 month mark in the mission!! I want time to stop. The mission is incredible. Also, wanted to give a quick shout out to my little brother Sam on submitting his papers this week :) Keep your fingers crossed he comes to the Great Italy Rome Mission :) 

We had an exchange with the Sorelle in Battipaglia from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon and I was with cute Sorella Shubin from Alpine!! We found a 14yr old girl on the street and taught her the Restoration right there. She was really interested so I'm excited to see what happens with her :) Scambi (exchanges) bring miracles!

We visited an older man in our ward and his wife who isn't a member this week. They fed us lunch (ovviamente haha) and it was delicious. He is the coolest member ever and has a full on baptismal font in his house. It was the biggest and most beautiful house I've seen on my whole mission. Out in the middle of the country with a huge garden. It was amazing. We love Fratello Izzo. 

We had a busy and awesome week and conference was the icing on the cake!! Wasn't it incredible? I loved all of the talks!! I took way too many pages of notes haha. Here are some of my favorite quotes/thoughts I had while listening: (sorry if they aren't exactly worded right)

"Even though storms will beat on the ship, we need not fear because the Savior is on board. He is our captain! Even the winds and seas obey Him. He will never abandon any of us." -M. Russell Ballard

"As we become more familiar with something, we lose our sense of awe. The same thing goes with the gospel. We've been given so much!! The message of the gospel is exciting!! We should be proud of our message! We have unimaginable glory to come." -President Uchtdorf

"Let the Savior be your caregiver. Turn to Him." -Robert D. Hales

I could go on all day, but I encourage you all to go back and read the talks again. 

I LOVED the talk called "The Master Healer" from the Women's session. You should all go read it right now :) and of course "Fourth Floor, Last Door" by President Uchtdorf.

We get transfer calls tonight after 8 so it will be fun to see if we stay or go! I love Caserta so much. I could honestly serve here until I go home and be happy. Caserta is the promised land and Napoli Zone is the best 😊 I love you all. I love this gospel. I love the joy that comes from sharing the gospel. We are SO blessed. Pray for an opportunity to share your testimony!

Vi voglio un mondo di bene,

Sorella Hess

Positano last P-day

Amalfi!!

Amalfi

Positano

Rough Drafts, Identity Crisis, Taranto e Roma bound Sept. 12, 2016

Me, C, F, L Sorella Jarnagin, and Denis
(member). How stinkin cute are her daughters?

Hey Hey Hey! This will be crazy because we have to take a train backto Taranto today in a little bit to pick up my Permesso (basically my visa to stay in Italy). It will be fun/weird to be back in my first
city! We stay there until Wednesday morning and then are taking a
train from Taranto to Rome for a mission conference on Thursday! It
should be a fun week! Here's to over 16 hours of trains this week! Le
vite delle sorelle. 🇮🇹❤️

-We had to drop one of my favorite investigators this week and it was
pretty hard. It's tough when we have the gospel that brings us so much
joy but people aren't ready to accept it. It's like giving someone the
best present ever and them saying "non mi interessa" (I'm not
interested). I know there are prepared people here. We're praying so
hard that we will be led to them and that they will be led to us.

-Our senior couple this week took us to the American military base for
lunch (American burgers 😍) and then took us to the Navy Exchange
store and let us get some stuff. Bath and body works, American shampoo
and conditioner, etc. We were happy campers. :)

-F is our investigator from the Philippines and she's so ready
to be baptized!! We practiced the baptismal interview questions with
her the other day and she did great. Only problem is that she lives
over an hour away from the church and doesn't have her license yet.
She's taking her driving test in a few weeks and we are praying so
hard that she'll be able to start coming to church.

Sweet church we found the other day when we visited a less active. I
love my mission. This kind of stuff is almost on every corner. 😍

My identity crisis moment. Waiting for the bus in Bellona :)-We highlighted our hair this week and mine turned out good. Poor

Sorella Jarnagin on the other hand.... Haha lets just say she got to
experience what it's like to be a redhead.... Well more like an
orange-head ;) We fixed it and she's back to her beautiful self :)

-I forgot my name tag the other day and we were running late to catch
our train to go to a lesson so we called the elders and had them bring
me one of their extras. Buongiorno!! Sono Anziano Caliò. Haha yeah I
was Anziano Caliò for the day. Identity Crisis or what? An elder's
name tag is better than no name tag I guess :)

We were talking with a member the other night (Jessa-literally my soul
sister. She's unreal) and it was amazing what she said. We were
talking about the Atonement and how when we stand before Heavenly
Father at judgment day, we will basically hand Him a paper of our
life. We can give ourselves a lot more work because we control how
many rough drafts we have to do, but we can turn in a perfect paper
because of the Savior. We don't have to use an eraser and leave behind
black marks. The Atonement allows us to start over on a fresh new
sheet and we will be able to turn in a perfect paper. I'd never
thought about it like that before but I loved it. I'm so thankful we
can get a fresh new page each time we sbagliamo (mess up).

Sorry this is so scatterbrained. We have to get going but I hope you
all have a great week! Since we only get an hour of P-day today, we
get to spend the rest of our P-day in Rome on Wednesday so we're
planning on going to either the Vatican or hitting downtown Rome
(Trevi fountain, Coliseum, etc.) Stay tuned :)
Vi voglio un mondo di bene!

Con amore,
Sorella Hess :)

Cibo messicano, casa dei pazzi, complimenti = nuovi simpatizzanti :) Sept 5, 2016

I love it here🇮🇹

Hi guys! I hope you're all doing well and having a fun Labor Day
weekend!! It's still hot & humid as ever here in Italia but we're
surviving :)

We had a lesson with one of our investigators named O who's been
meeting with the missionaries for a while and it went so well! We
hadn't seen her for pretty much the whole summer because she's been
out of town but she called us to say she's back and wanted to meet
with us! We talked about faith with her and at the end she just
started crying and said she had been missing feeling the Spirit like
that so much and how she knew that Heavenly Father had sent us to be
in Caserta at this time. It was super powerful :)

La casa dei pazzi!! The house of the crazy!

We also taught E and P (the two sisters) this week! They're on
fire!! We taught them the Plan of Salvation and they were loving it!
They had both read a bunch of the BOM and could explain the story
perfectly. The little sister P (15) told us that she cried at the
part where Sariah was waiting for her boys to return from getting the
plates from Laban. She said she could just imagine how scared she was
and how much she loved her kids and wanted them to be protected. I
think our Heavenly Father is the same way with us! He wants us to
return to Him so badly and it's up to us to make the correct decisions
in this life so that we can.

Dopo la mostra ieri sera con il nostro amico Denis ed Anziano
Allen!! "Facciamo un corso d'inglese gratuito ogni Martedì e Giovedì!"

We were on the train the other day going to visit an investigator and
my awesome comp complimented this lady's shoes. It triggered a whole
conversation and we were able to teach her a lesson on the train and
pray with her! (We pray in public alllll the time haha). She seems
super excited and invited us to come visit her this week! Compliments
go a long way :)

An American family in the ward fed us CAFE RIO this week!!!!!! Never
been so happy :) Go eat some Mexican food for us :) We miss it!!

Slla Jarnagin, Pia, Ester, and yours truly (with crazy flyaway hair🙆🏼)

I wanted to give my #1 BFF a happy birthday shout out this week!!!
Mama Hess is turning 29 this Saturday😉 I'm so so blessed to be her
daughter. Thank you for your example to me!!! I love you and miss you
❤️🎉 Tanti Auguri!!

One more thing. I've been trying for these past few weeks specifically
to align my will with the will of the Lord and to be an instrument in
His hands. This is His work and I'm just lucky enough to be the
mouthpiece. I love this verse of "I'll go where you want me to go."

"So trusting my all to thy tender care,
And knowing thou lovest me,
I’ll do thy will with a heart sincere:
I’ll be what you want me to be."

Love,
Sorella Hess

1- Slla Jarnagin, Pia, Ester, and yours truly (with crazy flyaway hair🙆🏼)
2- La casa dei pazzi!! The house of the crazy!
3- Dopo la mostra ieri sera con il nostro amico Denis ed Anziano
Allen!! "Facciamo un corso d'inglese gratuito ogni Martedì e Giovedì!"
4- I love it here🇮🇹

August 8, 2016 "vesuvius, Exchanges, Sushi, etc.

Hi guys!! Another amazing week!! 

Here are some highlights:

-R is doing awesome!! She has read 12 chapters of the BOM and said she feels peace every day when she reads :) She explained everything she had read perfectly!! I love her :)

Chalk street display we did for our exchange with the other Sorelle.

3 Meal Appointments in the past week!!! (WHOO!!) Discovered that my stomach shrunk since I left Taranto because we haven't been eating as much with members. The first meal appointment this week almost killed me hahaha. Soo much food!

-We spent P-day hiking Mt. Vesuvius today (massive volcano near Napoli). Sooo cool. I have to pinch myself because it feels like a dream on days like this. (Pics included!) EVERYONE needs to see it from the top! You can see the whole Napoli Bay-Amalfi, Capri, Pozzuoli, Ischia, Napoli, etc. Pictures don't do it justice!!

Looking into the volcano!! 

😍😍😍

-

I had an exchange with Sorella Littlefield from Orem! Always so fun to be with people from UT county:) 

-I found out that my investigator Miriam (18yr old) from Taranto was baptized last week!! Seriously made my entire week!! So happy for her :)

-After DDM (District Meeting) in Napoli on Wednesday, our whole district went out and got sushi! All you can eat for only €9!! We definitely got our money's worth!!

I've been studying a lot this week about what it means to be truly converted. I loved the talk by Bonnie Oscarson from October of 2013. She said, "Being truly converted means we are acting upon what we believe and allowing it to "create a mighty change in us or in our hearts. We must do the work first and exercise faith by living the gospel, and then we will receive a witness that it is true." I've seen this a lot on my mission. When we ask someone to follow the word of wisdom or come to church or something, they have to act on faith to do it and then that's when their testimony of it comes. The same is with us! We have to act and have faith in order to be converted so we can have that mighty change :) 

Also I encourage you all to read "Laborers in the Vineyard" by Elder Holland from April 2012. It's incredible.

Sorry this is all over the place! We don't have much time to email today but I promise I'll respond to everyone next week :) Sure love you all!! 

Xoxo,

Sorella Hess

1. Chalk street display we did for our exchange with the other Sorelle.

2. Looking into the volcano!! 

3. 😍😍😍