This week has been a really interesting week! As I mentioned last week my companion was off the Island and back on the mainland in Taranto to get his permesso so I was in a trio with the zone leaders from Monday morning until Thursday night. We would have usually both gone together but Monday was like the Italians Thanksgiving so travel was super expensive! So I stayed here and got to see how they do missionary work! It started off on Monday with all the cleaning I was telling you about and then Tuesday we went to do some finding in a nearby park called the parca della musica, any returned missionaries that have ever been in a trio will probably understand how hard it is to try to find with three people. People get really intimidated and it's just awkward. So we kind of split up and One of the Zone leaders would talk to someone sitting on a bench and I would go with the other one and we would talk to someone on the next bench. The first guy we talked to was a man who said he had seen our pamphlet on his table at home, that his wife had encountered the Sister missionaries maybe just a week ago. How perfect is that? So we sat down next to him and taught him the Restoration of the Gospel. I'm getting a lot better at switching off with my companion and being ready to speak and pick up where he leaves off. He kind of had an air of disinterest in his eyes and then I shared the first vision with him we could see his demeanor change and he began to understand as he felt the spirit that comes from sharing such a sacred experience.
We then had our District meeting, we did a role play about inviting people to church to "Come and see" as Christ says to his Apostles. I was paired up with the District Leader's companion Anziano Adepoju. He is probably one of the coolest missionaries ever. He is from Africa which is where he was baptized and then his family came to Italy just a little while ago. When they have people who come to different countries as refugees they have them serve in that country. He speaks very little English and even less Italian. But more importantly he knows this Gospel is true! He shared a really cool experience about how there are so many churches in Africa and they all have their little pieces of truth but when he came to the LDS church for the first time he knew that it was truly the Church of Jesus Christ. The best part is you can tell how hard it is for him to say what he's thinking in Italian but his testimony is so strong and he's going to do whatever it takes to tell you why he knows it's true. It was a testimony to me, as he asked me for help with his words that it is less important what we say than what the spirit makes them feel! After the role play Sorella Hatfield offered our Addestramento on how we can be more consecrated missionaries. It was great! And a real eye opener to how we can do better as we try to align our will with God's. We had a great rest of the afternoon, got cancelled on by everyone of our appointments so we decided to give the sisters a break from teaching English course and so the Zone Leaders taught while the sisters and I strategized some ways to help the ward. We had a pretty cool experience that night, our Mission President gave us a referral from when he served here in Cagliari 30 years ago. Of course we were on top of it, he came to English course that night and was amazed at how much the church has grown in the past years. We gave him a tour of the building and set up an appointment to meet with him!
Wednesday was an early day... I told you that we were getting transfer calls on Monday, because President changed almost everything this last transfer he didn't change much with our zone here on the island. So there was only one transfer in the whole zone! Sorella Hills (the really tall one) was transferred back to the Mainland and she had a 7AM flight... The Sisters don't have a car so if they were going to go to the station in time for her flight they would have had to take like two trains and a bus at 4 AM so we woke up at 4:30 and went to the sisters apartment and brought her to the airport. We show up at their apartment at 5 and they meet us in the parking lot with fresh baked banana bread that they had made that morning... We have the best sisters in our area... So we get her to the airport and come home, sometime between 4:30 and 5:45 AM someone stole our parking spot right next to our apartment and so we had to park like a 10 minute walk away AND it decided to rain for the one and only time I have ever seen it rain here. It poured while we walked home at 5:45 in the morning. We got back and Anziano Chugg said "Let's do some Johnson and Johnson workouts!" Anziano Blocker and I glared at him and collapsed on our beds. Basta.
We did some finding and then the Sisters called us and said "We made lunch, come to the church!" So we did, again we have the best sisters! We ate and talked with them for a while and then one of the sisters that served here about a year ago showed up with her whole family visiting from Washington State! So we spent some time visiting with her and she gave us the name of some old contacts that we should try. We sang the Linea di Roma with her (The mission fight song I told you about) and her family and it was so fun!
We are planning to do a ward activity in a few weeks where we put on a little play for the Restoration and do a ward barbecue! So we spent some time talking about it and making plans for how to get he ward involved. We picked up my companion at 6:30 and went back to the house, he was so exhausted and passed out at 8 until the next morning at 6:30 AM... Sometimes I forget how exhausting traveling is...
Not much happened on Thursday, my companion and I taught English course which was pretty fun, we met some new people and invited them to learn more about the church. So we have some appointments this week with new investigators!
Friday we weekly planned, and taught some lessons with our investigators and well we were waiting for one of our investigators a man pulled into the church on his motorcycle and said "I used to meet with the missionaries a long time ago but I wasn't ready to change my life back then, I realize now that it's time to change and I miss the way I used to feel when I was meeting with you and I want those feelings back!" How cool is that?!?! That night we had a dinner appointment with the Sanna family. They are a super strong family, he used to be the assistant to the mission president but President Pickerd released him when he first got here. We shared a spiritual thought about how Satan can counterfeit things. We took a 5€ and then we tried to draw a 5€ and we talked about what are some of the obvious things that are different and how we can tell the difference between things that are of God and things that are not and it really for the most part comes down to being worthy and being in tune with the spirit. It was a really cool spiritual thought! For dolce after dinner they made like a peach cobbler pie and it was soooo good with some amazing Italian Gelato... It was heaven.
Saturday we spent painting again, lots of fun and then they made us Pranzo, we started with Spaghetti, then onto an eggplant bake which was soooo good! Anziano Segura loves eggplant, he said it would have been way better fried which I totally believe but it was good nonetheless... Round three was fish. I couldn't tell you what kind but it was dang good. Lots of these little tiny bones but the fish was really good. I took a picture that I'll send!
We did a Gesso on Saturday night with the sisters to publicize English course because it's getting to be the time when people are returning to their normal schedules and so we want to make the course big again! We did it in the Centro around all these stores. Sometimes I forget that I am in one of the worlds biggest tourist destinations. People come from allover to go to the beaches of Poetta and see the castles of Mussolini here on the Island and it is definitely still tourist season. Especially when you go to the centro. So most of the people I tried to talk to either responded in English or responded in some other language that was for sure not Italian. I'm pretty sure I heard Russian, German, lots of French and Spanish, some Romanian, Meldovan, some English from the UK and I met a couple people from America. Not really what we were going for but we told them where they could find LDS churches where they live. We got Gelato after because that's what Americans do in Italy...
Sunday is always amazing... I didn't understand much of Sacrament which is weird, I usually get most of it. We had a bunch of investigators in church though which to missionaries is like Christmas morning when they walk in. It's amazing the spirit they can feel when come and see the ordinance of the sacrament and see the happiness that the families in the Gospel have!
Today we went to Auchan which is Italy's version of Walmart I guess you could say... It's in a shopping center though almost like a mall. It was so nice to walk around a mall and it almost felt like America! We went to this electronics shop and it was so cool to see how much technology has changed in just the last three months! Maybe I just ever paid attention but it seems like everything is already changing! I bought a new iPad case. One thing that I've noticed here in Italy and apparently it's similar in the rest of Europe is that Apple is not Very common. You hardly ever see people with iPhones or iPads except the missionaries. Everyone here has Android phones and tablets. Just something I thought was interesting. I feel like iPhones are way more common in America than anything else.
That's about it for today/this week we are waiting for all of our new furniture to come into IKEA this Thursday so we're pretty excited!
Congratulations if you made it to the end of this email, I had to make up for last week's! I love you all and I love hearing from you! I hope you have a great week and recognize the Hand of God in every part of it! That's one thing I've for sure seen this week! Keep on keeping on, and my favorite Apostolic quote from the Mother of Joseph B. Wirthlin "Come what may and love it" the Lord provides, we can take anything that comes our way in stride.
The church is true, the book is blue, and I love you!
Anziano Jacob Bellucci
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