We leave the MTC at 3:50 AM (I'm really excited to be up that early...) and head to the Salt Lake City Airport, we take off at 8:36 and fly to Atlanta GA, we're there for 45 minutes and then a straight shot to Rome! We land at 7 AM on Tuesday Local time so it will be 11 in Utah and 1 in NY! (I think)
We had a departing talk with our Branch President on Sunday which made me really excited! There's a lot of Sisters in our Zone who have never flown before so they are kinda freaking out!
That was probably the most exciting thing that happened this week, its a little scary but I'm so stoked! We also committed both of our investigators to baptism! They both ended up saying yes! It was really cool to hear them commit to it, I can't wait to see someone in real life accept the Gospel.
Saturday we had kind of an extra special Devotional for the 4th of July! The speaker spoke about how the Lord prepared the United States as a place for religious freedom so that one day the Gospel could be restored here. Starting with some of the earliest parts of American History with Colombus and then the Revolution and the signing of the constitution, the Bill of Rights, Abraham Lincoln and his contributions to make this country a better place and able to receive the message of the restored Gospel. They carried flags for every country where there is missionaries in the MTC going or from. Then they had us stand up by country where we are from and then by country where we are going. After the devo we got to go outside and stay up past bed time to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks and we could hear a little bit of the Tim McGraw concert in Provo!
On the language side of things we have memorized so much! I have Doctrine and Covenants section 4 memorized in both English and Italian, The First Vision, 1 Nephi 3:7, 3 Nephi 5:11, Moroni 10:4-6, Baptismal Invitations and the Missionary Purpose! It's been a crazy week for memorization!
Monday was pretty good! I had a pretty good Birthday with lots of well wishes from the Sister missionaries! No mail on the 4th of July but I got lots of Happy Birthdays on Tuesday!
We heard from an Emeritus 70 on Tuesday; Elder Marlin Jensen, it was an incredible talk about faith and the steps of faith that we can find through out the scriptures. Starting with a particle, then much faith, then great faith, then exceeding faith, then exceedingly great faith and the different things that come from our different types of faith. That was probably pretty confusing but I don't have much time to explain today!
Yesterday we got 33 new missionaries in our zone heading to Rome and Milan! There usually isn't an overlap but with the new mission president things got a little mixed up so there are a lot of missionaries here and its really cool to see how little they know and how far we have come in just a few short weeks. I'm so excited for them and our teachers are encouraging us to speak to them in Italian! We're trying but they just look at us with that "Deer in the headlights" look and I wonder if that's how we look every time one of our teachers opens their mouths.
I had a really cool conversation yesterday with some of the sisters in my district and our teacher Sorella (Sister) Russell, we talked about the difference between faith and hope and desires. We can have a hope in something that is not seen or true , its still a hope but it's not faith by Alma's definition (Alma 32:21) Our hopes come from our desires, we can control our hopes by controling our desires and through that we can control our faith. Hope can also be an expectation or what we expect to happen. So the part I really liked was tying in "Faith without works is dead." So we can hope in something like God or Jesus Christ but if we never act on it, or do something to bring you closer to it or prove it then it will never become faith. So my invitation to you all this week is to act. I know I talk about faith in my emails a lot but I want you all to think about your hopes and how you can turn them into faith. Alma 32:27 says "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."
Next time you hear from me will be from Rome!
Vi Voglio Bene!
Anziano Jacob Bellucci
Vi Voglio Bene!
Anziano Jacob Bellucci
I talked to Jacob for a while today while he was at the Salt Lake Airport waiting for his first trek to Atlanta, Georgia then onto Rome, Italy! He sounded GREAT, very excited to be finally heading out and scared at the same time. I asked him how the language was coming along and he recited the "First Vision" to me in Italian! I have to admit, it was pretty cool (it could have been anything because I didn't understand a word of it! haha) It was great to hear his excitement! He should arrive in Rome at 11am tomorrow, which will be 5am in NY and 3am in Utah...167 days until I can hear his voice again! Tick Tock!
ReplyDelete