Ciao!: Week 78: Jan 2 (ROMA!)

ROMA... Ummm what was that, President?

Hey everyone!! I hope that everyone had a great New Year’s Eve! I want to start off with a story from last week to explain what's going on right now. Last Monday we received transfer calls, but leading up to it I thought absolutely nothing of transfer calls because I was literally convinced that I was staying in Napoli. Well, on Monday night my companion Anziano Berger and I got home and started to plan when all of the sudden, President Pickerd calls us... Not gonna lie, it made me pretty sad and I was just kinda stunned because I love Napoli so much and only spent 3 months there.

I have received a new assignment though, and I am still trying to understand fully what I have to do. Basically, what I am doing is taking over the new young adults program/center that got put in here in downtown Rome. I am in a trio with my new companions Anziano Jensen and Anziano Southworth. They are both pretty young in the mission which has been pretty cool. Anziano Jensen is in his 3rd transfer and Anziano Southworth (who is Italian) is in his 2nd. Anziano Southworth is actually going to be serving in Arizona, but he is waiting for his visa to come in, so we will be with him until he goes to America. This program/center was started around 3 months ago with Anziano Jensen and his trainer Anziano Taronto. Anziano Taronto is kinda like a legend in the mission because he served for a very long time as AP and was just an incredible missionary. He finished his mission last week and I was transferred here to take his spot and--not gonna lie--I am still trying to figure everything out. I kinda feel pretty lost, but things are getting better. His greenie, Anziano Jensen, is a beast though and is already a fantastic missionary who works really hard and doesn’t even feel like we need to eat lunch during the day because it’s a waste of time (ummm... we will have to figure that out because I think lunch is important..) and so it’s been a great help because he knows the area and what’s going on. Anziano Southworth is a really consecrated missionary that tries his hardest and is a great missionary as well. I am excited to see what I can learn from them and what we can do together here in this young adults program.

Basically, we need to bring as many people as we can from the ages of 18-30 to this center. The center is right downtown and it’s basically like an apartment complex with a game center, library, spare rooms for english courses, a kitchen, and stuff like that.. It’s an area for all the young adults and their friends to come and hang out and we need to find people and bring them to the center. There are a lot of young adults that participate that are planning on going on missions or have already served missions that come, so they help us teach lessons and go finding. (Hopefully I will see my friend Anziano Calvagna!! He served with me in Terni and he comes so I am really excited to see him again.) We don’t have an assigned area either (with boundaries that we can’t cross into other missionaries’ areas). President Pickerd has given us the instruction to go wherever we can find the young adults… So, for example, we go to a massive college called La Sapienza where there are 100,000 students and we talk to people there. But we can also go to other areas of Rome to work as well. We are free to go where we need to and so that's been pretty cool. We do a lot of finding here and a lot of teaching. Also, we find a lot of referrals for other missionaries as well so it’s been great.

For church we go to the Rome 2 ward which is the strongest ward in our mission. It’s the same ward that our Mission President goes to with all the senior couples in this area. On Sunday, I believe there were around 16 called missionaries there, including us, with all the senior couples and our district. Our ward has about 100ish people. They are all really strong members and there are also a lot of Americans that live here with their families for the Embassy so that’s been pretty sweet. We unfortunately don’t work with the member families; we mainly focus on people from the ages of 18-30 and then all the other missionaries take the families. I still have to learn much more about what I am supposed to be doing and my role, but for now this is about all the information I know. The work here looks really good as well; we just need to keep finding new people and helping those that we are already working with progress. Apparently from what I have been told we are teaching Italians, Africans, Shrilankians, Chinese, and other different ethnicities and so I am excited to meet everyone.

Leaving Napoli was pretty tough. I was pretty shocked and really sad to say good-bye to all of the members. They showed me so much love and were really kind to me. I also really enjoyed working with all the missionaries in Napoli. It was a really great opportunity and I learned so much from all of them. Because I got transfered so soon, I unfortunately was not able to say good-bye to a lot of my friends and the people that I was able to work with. But, I was invited over to like a last-minute meal appointment with one of my most favorite Napoli families to see them before we left. They made us hamburgers and French fries which I thought was super nice. Probably the most special part of last week was being able to see Evans (the guy that was baptized a few months ago) baptize his own son. It was a really special baptismal service and went really well. That family is incredible and they are progressing so well in the gospel. It’s so great to see families coming together in the gospel. I also really enjoyed my time that I had with Anziano Berger. He is a really good missionary who taught me a lot of things, especailly how to be bold with other people. I am happy for the friendship that we made.

I left Napoli Friday afternoon and flew to Rome in just an hour. Things have been interesting so far. I only have two missionary tags and one of them I left with our new convert Fabio and so I just had one while coming up to Rome. When I got to Rome I went up and gave a hug to one of my friends who I had not seen in a while and my tag broke in half... Dang.. Lol so now I have a duct-taped tag until I can get new ones. Other than looking kinda like a scrub (in my opinion) with a duct-taped tag while bearing my testimony to the whole Rome 2 ward with my mission president watching, and meeting all these new people, things are going well;).

Well, I love you all so much! Hopefully by next week I will understand more about what is happening here in my new area. Thank you all so much for your support and love. For my spiritual thought I just want to share one word that I am working on and trying to study more for this next transfer. The word is Exhort... Or esortare in Italian. I am excited for this new transfer!

Vi voglio bene!!

Anziano Spencer

P.S I saw a video of New Year’s Eve in Napoli from my last companion.. It was so sick. There was a fire going randomly right down the streeet and fireworks going off everywhere.. I love Napoli!! Unfortunately, there are no crazy gypsies, or bombs going off in the night here, or other insane stuff. It’s really tranquillo [peaceful, calm] which is kinda sad.