You guys will never be,I've some of the thugs we saw this week... First thing Tuesday morning we were on the metro headed to Rome for DDM and there was a lady on there tweezing her moms chin hairs! Everybody was watching and laughing in disgust, it was hilarious. Then yesterday we were walking to the church and there was a guy blowing snot rockets in front of us and I guess one got away from him because he started wiping at his face with his hands and then wiped his hands all over the rails... Oh Italy. One of our members asked to see a family picture the other day, so I showed her and she says, "oh your sister must be like 15?" Um no... Haha one of our other members was telling us about her mission that she served to Missouri like thirty years ago and as she was telling us about her mission she says, "That was the first time I had seen trailer houses and black people!" She is so stinking funny! And finally.... Transfer calls! My prayers were answered and I will be getting an ITALIAN COMPANION on Thursday... For my birthday! Her name is Sorella Rossi! We will be in Ostia! (Another answered prayer!) Sprella McKenzie is going to Sicily with an Italian companion as well to do follow up training. Our new companions are actually companions right now, so we are just swapping! Kinda cool! I am beyond excited!
We celebrated Alejandra's birthday yesterday! Please excuse the fact that I actually look like a sister missionary, but it was cold and windy outside.
We had another lesson this week with Emma. She is always entertaining. Like I said it was windy and cold and she made all three of us pray that the wind souls stop. So we did. And as soon as I finished praying, the wind stopped. And then it started raining. Hard. I just laughed and laughed.
I'm thinking about starting a cooking channel when I get home. Just kidding. I'd probably catch something on fire. Haha I hope you guys all had a good week! And hopefully it's been warm too! Thanks for all of the birthday wishes!!!! I love you! Sorella Hatfield Sent from my iPad
Ah I'm four months down on this thing and we get transfer calls on Saturday! Our guess is that Sorella McKenzie is going to say ciao and I'll stay here and train the city! Praying for an Italian companion! Haha And then next Friday, will be the end of the first fourth of my mission... I can't even believe it!
This week had so many tender mercies! Beginning with a scambio in Rome where Sorella Ensign and I got to be companions again for a day! Sorella Hunter was even at the apartment with us!
I ate my first passion fruit this week! It might look like one of those slimy bugs that Pumba and Timone eat on the lion king, but it was actually really good!
And there's nothing like sister missionary selfies with a name tag and LDM. Also, my freckles are getting significantly darker. Mom, help me!
We learned a lot of interesting things about our members this week! And I was rolling with laughter. Barbara, the one across the table from me asked us, "Do you like black music?" We both sat there for a second like, "what is black music?!" Seeing we were obviously confused she says, "You know, like m&m and Michael Jackson?! When I was younger, but after all four of my kids were born I took a hip hop class and then I would come home and I would teach my kids what I had learned and we would dance and listen to 'black music'!" All of my ideas about parenting have been shattered... Apparently there's a better way to parent and Barbara has figured it out. Oh then she said to us, "If I sing the words to the song and they are bad but I don't know what they mean is it still bad?" ...yes haha
That's all I have for today! I love and miss you all and am sooooo grateful for your prayers, letters, thoughts, and love! Also, shoutout to LANDON who has a birthday on Thursday! Happy birthday little dude! I love you! Love, Sorella Hatfield
The Hot: #1 The weather here is beautiful! If Idaho would just get its temperature under control and also import an beach it would be heaven on earth. #2 Last night I got called "molto sexy" by an Egyptian guy; a few days ago we were walking out of the metro and there were Bangladesh stands everywhere and one of the guys said, "Ecco mi! Ho chiesto per uno ma ho ricevereto due!" Which means, "Behold! I asked for one, but received two!" How creepy right?! Actually I love moments like this because I just laugh and laugh and my companion gets sooooo irritated that I would laugh when they can still hear me. "Don't encourage them!" Is what she always tells me. Does it sound like they need encouragement?! They're going to say things whether I laugh or not and I'm a laugher, so I'm going to laugh. È così! The Cold: #1 We had a lesson with a guy named Vladimir Saturday morning. He was an ex-simp that we had called to see if he wanted to meet with the missionaries again. (Since exsimps are the only people who will answer our phone calls! Grrrr) Anyway, it was kinda chilly that morning because of the wind, but it was hardly enough to need a light coat and our appointment was in the park. We sit down and start the lesson and then he stops me mid sentence and says, "it's cold can I sit between both of you. It's warmer that way." So I switched him seats and began talking again. We went on this way for a few more minutes and then he looks at me and says, "you look cold, here, wear my coat." I had my own coat, but I wasn't cold (granted I had been sick this week and still wasn't feeling too great, so I can see how he was unconvinced with my red nose and tissue in hand) I insisted I was fine and tried to get back into the lesson again, but he took off his coat and made me wear it. And then he literally shivered through the rest of the lesson, but wouldn't take his own coat back and wasn't about to let me just put my own coat on. Anyway, so we get back to the lesson and by this time I knew the lesson was a joke, but decided I'd make the most of it and invited him to be baptized. He said yes, but that he had a question for us first. He wanted to know how we could believe in our prophet if we wore make up, cut our hair, and wore earrings. Apparently it says in the bible that women can't do those things and if they do the they are adulterers.. Then he told us for this reason the Prophet wasn't a real prophet. I've never felt the Spirit leave so quickly. Oh and he tried to tell us that we are married to Christ... Where do some people come from?! This was just a week for interesting people. We met a lady on the metro and my comp had met her once before but I'd never talked to her. She is slightly dramatic... Anyway, She was telling us that Rome 4 was going to have their water shut off for 22 hours so that the city could do some work. Then she says, "I have contacts! How am I supposed to go without water for 22 hours?! My eyes will die!" I couldn't even hold it in. I was laughing so hard. Later that night, the Anziani told us that some of the people who had told them about the water being turned off believed that terrorists had poisoned the water and that's why the city was shutting the water off... Italians are so gullible, superstitious, and irrational sometimes haha but hey it's funny for the rest of us! Occasionally they get something right. Like one of our less actives named Tina. We went to visit her this week and she said something that I loved. " Io penso di oggi, ma Dio pensa di domani" I think of today, but God thinks of tomorrow. Today we went to Rome! And while we were sitting at the Trevi Fountain (my favorite place in Rome!) a couple got married at the fountain! I don't really have any pictures this week... Sorry! I love hearing about what everyone is up to and all of the funny stories and seeing pictures! I love you! Love, Sorella Hatfield
This is how we general conference. A super sweet family in the ward, the Durango's (Blake, I forgot to tell you about them in my email! They lived in Calgary for like 13 years, so you might have known them on your mission!) they brought us pranzo because we were spending all day at the church showing the conference sessions. While everyone else watched conference on the projector screen in the chapel, we watched on an old school dell computer in the office, so that we could see conference in English! Two of my favorite quotes from this weekend were, "Love is making room in your heart for someone else" and "Always choose the harder right over the easier wrong." Right now I feel very much like these two quotes were said especially for me.
Clara, who we affectionately nicknamed "La Nostra Mama Columbiana" let us help her make the ambrosia chocolate drink this week!
Clara's brother, Jaime and her sister Lucia, own a "fruit and random foods from other countries" shop. We needed oats, so we stopped by! Jaime would ask me how to say a bunch of different things in English and then he would repeat them and then he would say to me, "okay repeat me" and he would say the word again and then he wanted me to say it like he did. Then he would laugh and laugh and say "I'm teaching you South American!" They are originally from Columbia (South America), but to everyone outside of the USA English is spoken in England and American is spoken in America hence the "South American".
We went to the beach today for people-day! 73 degrees with only a little bit of wind... And we even managed to find a clean beach (clean as in sanitary...) the other bright side (okay so maybe not bright side) but there was only one very large and very nude butt on the beach today!
Typical "missionaries went to the beach today photo". I'm not even kidding when we stepped onto the beach and I looked down the beach I felt like I had stepped onto Amelia Island. It's basically perfect here.
Also, Michael Jackson isn't dead. He's in Italy.
Okay so a story from the week... We went to visit one of our neighbors (Tina) because we had been running into her a lot lately and she asked us to stop by one day if we had some time just to visit. So we planned a time to go over and she was asking about our families just like everybody here does and she wanted to see pictures. So I showed her our family picture and she says, "Wow you have such a beautiful family! Your parents are so young!" This is almost word for word what I get every time I show someone picture of my family, but Tina took it a step further and asked if my dad was an actor. When I told her no, she was pretty sure that I was lying to her and insisted that he was an actor and I just wasn't telling her.
I love you! Hope everyone is doing well! Good luck with baseball, school, dance, and whatever else all of you are doing! Love, Sorella Hatfield
Biking around Rome... My favorite part? WEARING PANTS!!! Haha not really but that was a bonus!
Basillica di San Paulo... Well supposedly St. Paul is buried here... It just confuses me that first they killed the apostles and then they decided that they were actually pretty good guys and so they built these hives churches and cathedrals as if that was going to fix what they had done...
So the person that took this photo... An American, LDS woman from Idaho... No joke. Their family was trying to quietly discuss if we were the sister missionaries and I happened to hear them and I was like heck yeah we are! That's Rome behind us.
Fun facts for the week: Apparently I am 45% fluent in Italian according to duo lingo I have 41 husband points
Okay, missionary moment coming up... We are celebrating Easter this weekend! I would assume that maybe you guys are too... I dunno though! Haha Anyway, there is a new Easter video out that was produced by the church and it's really awesome! If you haven't seen it yet, you should make sure and watch it! I love getting to teach about Jesus Christ. I know he lives. I know that we can live again too. He died for me, but He also lives for me and for all of us. How blessed are we?! I love you all! -Sorella Hatfield
This is for minds and granny d... Poor sound quality. I blame the iPad not our lack of talent. Also, just pretend that it's your names! Haha we didn't have time to sing the song three times! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! TANTI AGURI! I LOVE YOU!
Biking around Rome... My favorite part? WEARING PANTS!!! Haha not really but that was a bonus!
Basillica di San Paulo... Well supposedly St. Paul is buried here... It just confuses me that first they killed the apostles and then they decided that they were actually pretty good guys and so they built these hives churches and cathedrals as if that was going to fix what they had done...
So the person that took this photo... An American, LDS woman from Idaho... No joke. Their family was trying to quietly discuss if we were the sister missionaries and I happened to hear them and I was like heck yeah we are! That's Rome behind us.
Fun facts for the week: Apparently I am 45% fluent in Italian according to duo lingo I have 41 husband points
Okay, missionary moment coming up... We are celebrating Easter this weekend! I would assume that maybe you guys are too... I dunno though! Haha Anyway, there is a new Easter video out that was produced by the church and it's really awesome! If you haven't seen it yet, you should make sure and watch it! I love getting to teach about Jesus Christ. I know he lives. I know that we can live again too. He died for me, but He also lives for me and for all of us. How blessed are we?! I love you all! -Sorella Hatfield
This is for minds and granny d... Poor sound quality. I blame the iPad not our lack of talent. Also, just pretend that it's your names! Haha we didn't have time to sing the song three times! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! TANTI AGURI! I LOVE YOU!
Before I forget... Transfer calls! My companion and I are both staying in Ostia.
We did a lot of less active work this week and while trying to find a man named Tido, we found Chris Brown. 1st. How American is that? 2nd. That's the name of a pretty famous rapper for anyone who doesn't know haha We also contacted another less active. We made cookies and invitations for the ward party this weekend and were taking them around and we rang the citofano and they hollered for us to come up and they literally were in the middle of a drinking party. Hahaha my companion was embarrassed and I was just laughing. The less active was a woman but there were a bunch of guys there and they kept asking me, "who are you?! Who are you?!" while my companion talked to the less active. It was hilarious.
Okay so... We managed to blow a breaker... Is that how you say it? on Thursday! I was baking cookies in the kitchen and my collega was blow drying her hair in the bathroom and that was that. We tried to flip the breakers...? It didn't work. We tried knocking on our neighbors door to ask her if she still had power and to see if she knew how we could get ours turned back on. She wouldn't answer the door and was instead just yelling to us... So we called the Anziani because they should know, right? Wrong! Thankfully we only knocked the power off to our apartment and not to the whole building. After about 1.5 hours without power we found a closet downstairs with all of the breaker boxes and we got our power turned on again. It was pretty funny! Later that night after we got home our neighbor knocked on our door and apologized for not answering her door earlier. Apparently somebody in the building had been robbed or raped... The words in Italian for both of those are really really similar and we weren't sure which she used... Anyway, she said that she was afraid to open the door because of that. She's like a 65 year old lady who lives alone. Her name is Tina and every time we pass her door all I can think of is the movie quote from Napoleon Dynamite, "Tina ya fat lard..." I can't remember the rest of the quote but yeah... The next night after we got back to our apartment she brought us homemade biscotti that she had made with her granddaughter and told us we could have it for breakfast!
On Sunday after church we had Pronzo with Alejandra and Nohemi and Colojero! Nohemi made lasagna (okay I hate lasagna in America but I could eat it for every meal here) for the first course. And then for the second we had fried chicken (I don't really understand how those two go together...) and spinach, and bread, and a fennel/oranges/green olives salad (I'd never eaten fennel before... It was good. The olives were disgusting! But just some good ole Bolivian (Nohemi is from Bolivia) knowledge for anyone who needs it... If a mom isn't producing milk, she should boil the fennel leaves and make a drink and after she drinks it her milk will come in). Then you have desert, which was a cake called shaped like a dove that's super popular here right now because it's almost time for Easter! It's kind of like a fruitcake... With candied nuts in the top and dried mandarin oranges in the cake... It's actually really good. Oh and they celebrate Easter over here for like 1.5 months! After Pronzo Alejandra wanted is to teach her how to make brownies. They were some of the best brownies I've ever made and she was so excited!
We had a dinner appointment last night at the Merx's (American family)!! Clara and her daughter Laura went with us as the "Italian guests". They do dinners like this so they can practice their Italian and get to know the ward members better! I love their family and Clara and Laura too! They are from Columbia! It's funny because I wanted to go Spanish speaking, but I was called to an Italian speaking mission, but everybody here is an immigrant from South America so they speak a Spanish/Italian. Prayers are answered. Just sometimes not in the way you think. This is just more evidence that Heavenly Father has a sense of humor.
Oh so funny story from dinner last night... Sorella Merx always makes American dishes when we go over there because, "she doesn't cook Italian for Italians!" Smart. Haha We just can't do it the same no matter how hard we try. Anyway, for dessert she made "Better than you know what Cake" and of course Clara and Laura had never had this type of desert before, but they loved it and wanted to know how to make it and then they wanted to know what it was called. I honestly started laughing out loud when Clara asked what it was called. I don't even know how to say that in Italian, so I just told her it was called chocolate cake... I thought Sorella Merx was going to die of embarrassment.
Okay last story for the week! We were calling people a few nights ago about Corso and I had called a number, but the guy didn't answer. A little while later he texted us and was just like "sì?" So Sorella McKenzie texted him back and just said "hey we are the missionaries who do the free English corse and we just wanted to let you know that we are still doing it and invite you to come again." He texted us back and was like "Oh okay thanks! Goodnight! Oh read Alma 37:37. Goodnight!" So we looked up the scripture and it's something about laying down at night unto Christ or something... So there ya go I f you ever need a good night scripture.
Love you all! Thanks for the emails and the pictures! Sorella Hatfield
