Cagliari Week 13

Good morning America!

This has been such a great week! I have had some great experiences and
Mom you'll be happy to know that I took a lot of pictures this week!

Good news, all the missionaries in Italy are safe from the earthquake
that happened earlier this week. Unfortunately it was a terrible
earthquake as I. Sure you've heard and over 290 people are dead. So
thank you for your prayers on behalf of the Italian people, i know
they are appreciated. We here in Sardegna didn't even know there was
an earthquake until we got an email from the mission president as well
as all the emails from back home about it.

Big news! We're going to Rome in a couple weeks! President Keuken is
the head of the European area of the church and he is coming to the
mission to give a training and they are flying all 16 missionaries in
Sardegna in for the conference! We're all pretty excited to go to the
mainland and to learn from our inspired leaders!

So Monday after we emailed we had Family Home Evening at the park with
quite a few people, it was super fun and my companion and I were in
charge. So we wanted to make it a little more fun and upbeat than
usual. For those of you that don't know the church has set aside
Monday nights as a night for all members to be with their families.
There are no church meetings and it leaves the evening open to spend
time together as a family doing what we call "Family Home Evening" or
"FHE" so every Monday night we get together in the "parca della
musica" to meet with the single members of the church as well as the
people that we are teaching so they can meet members and see what the
church is all a about... Families! Anyway, we decided that since we
are in the land of Gelato we would try to make some homemade ice cream
with everyone! So with some rocks alt, some ice (which is a giant pain
in the butt because if you can find bags of ice in Italy it's like 4-5
€ which is almost $6 for a tiny bag so with some Tupperware containers
and a hammer we made ice) some milk, sugar, and vanilla we attempted
ice cream! As we shook these bags everyone kept commenting on how cold
their fingers were and how it was almost painful because of how cold
it was. We brought a couple of towels but for sure not enough for
everyone. So we would let everyone use them one by one but only when
they would ask for it. At the end everyone enjoyed their ice cream and
said it was for sure worth it! We shared a scripture about being
patient in your afflictions and enduring to the end to get the
goodness and the sweet fruit of the gospel. We also tied into the
atonement with the towels, the atonement gives us relief from our
afflictions but only when we use it, only when we ask God for help! It
was a cool spiritual thought and a really fun activity!

Tuesday seems like a long time ago... We did a Family Home Evening
with the Cabras family, the one that always has us over for Pranzo
because they're amazing! So we were in charge of it and we decided to
do a little Fear Factor experiment... So we got ten little cups and
put a bunch of random little things in them. We had olive oil,
aranciata(like orange soda but way better), chocolate mousse, baby
food, fish paste, beans, lemon juice, and vinegar. Some good things
and some... Not so good. Everyone took turns, everyone else would look
at what was in each cup and then the person would have to choose a
cup. All the people who knew what was in each cup tried to get them to
choose a different one. Number 3! Number 7! We then likened it to the
Gospel and how Joseph Smith wasn't sure which church to join in 1820,
most of them taught good things and correct principles, some of them
were a little off (lemon juice) but they were all claiming to have the
truth and saying "Choose this church!" "No, choose our church!" But
none of us had the correct authority to tell them which was correct
but Christ does have the authority and so Joseph went straight to the
source and received his answer. Again another really cool lesson that
was simple and easy to understand.

Wednesday we planned an activity with the youth and the Young Single
Adults because they don't have a weekly mutual activity like the youth
in America do. We went bowling! It was a little bit different than in
America, the approach is shorter, the actual lane is shorter too and
no one in Italy really bowls so they aren't very good. Sorella
Hatfield won by a landslide with an 86 and I was second with a 75.
Anyway, we had a couple investigators come and it was really cool to
see the members bring them into their friend group and fellowship
them. We got index cards and drew bowling pins and a bowling ball on
one side and then the sister missionaries wrote a scripture on the
other side.

41 O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One.
Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is
narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper
of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant
there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he
cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name.

Creative way to stay on the straight and narrow and tie in a fun activity!

Thursday we got all our IKEA furniture! So we drive a Toyota Yaris...
And we have a lot of faith but we also had a lot of furniture... So we
got there and they brought out these two hugs carts with some big
boxes and I was with Anziano Chugg to pick it up and we both looked at
each other and said "There's no way that's going to fit in our car."
So we called Fratello Sanna who is an absolute Saint and he helped us
get the stuff home in his car and we spent most of the day putting it
together and getting our apartment organized. I'm pretty sure my
companion and I could work for IKEA, we are pros at putting together
closets and dressers. We did a little bit of finding and then English
course!

Friday turned into weekly planning, more furniture putting together
and a trip to the pizzeria down the street which is Heavenly. Side
note about pizza... They have like their individual pizzas bit then
you can go to all these pizzerias and get it by the slice. However,
their sliced pizza is like a sheet pizza that they cut into squares
and fold them in half and hand them to you wrapped in like wax paper.
There is this one right by our house called smile pizzeria and we go
there all the time. It's absolutely amazing and so quick.

Saturday
I'll be honest I don't remember exactly what we did most of the day
but we met up with the sisters to do a Gesso in the shopping centro
with a few members that want to serve missions in the near future. One
of them brought their little sister who is 12 and we gave her some
English course pass-along cards and some that have the date and time
of our sacrament meeting and she was going crazy giving them out to
people and no one wants to reject the 12 year old so people would talk
to us! It was really cool! We also taught a lesson to an investigator
who is having a problem with the Commandment to obey the law of
chastity. So Friday morning Anziano Segura and I studied up on
everything we could find on chastity. He had a repertoire of responses
for why he should be the exception and should be able to be baptized
without obeying the word of wisdom. He was slightly defensive and said
"This is what's wrong with all you churches, you find someone who
wants to be baptized and you won't let him because he's not perfect"
which gave me an incredible opportunity to bare my testimony about the
power of the atonement and explain that we have these commandments and
these requirements before baptism because when we enter into the
waters of baptism we covenant or promise to obey them. If we were to
be baptized without any intent to obey the commandments then we would
be so miserable as we didn't hold up our end of the two way promise.
Afterwards he seemed to understand and he asked if he could take a
week or so before he decides if this is still something he wants to
do. It was the first time I had been able to turn a negative
experience with an investigator around. Usually I can't think of the
words or explain it to them but as I shared my testimony it was
amazing to see his perspective change.

Sunday
There was another American here! So we got to church yesterday and I
saw a blonde... Italy is lacking in the blonde department so I wasn't
sure who it was. So the sisters went and talked to her and turns out
she is from Salt Lake! So she plays violin in the Orchestra on temple
square. She is here to learn from some lady from France how to be a
better violinist so she is here for a week and she looked up the ward
and decided to come! So we decided afterwards that we should take
advantage of those musical talents while we have them. So we got her
number and told her we would text her and see if she was free to do a
Gesso with us. Well our phones wouldn't send her a message probably
because it's not an Italian phone number... But the sisters remembered
the hotel she was staying at. So they went to her hotel and talked to
the guy at the front desk who was a little reluctant to let
missionaries bother his guest but they must have batted their eye
lashes or something because he let them in and they asked her to come
to another family night that we had last night at a park. We sang "I
know that my redeemer lives" with her playing the violin and it was
really cool! I got a video and some pictures that I'll attach but
you'll probably have to get the video from the blog :)

P-Day is here, it always goes by faster and faster but we haven't done
anything too exciting! We did some grocery shopping this morning and
cleaned the house. The other Anziani went and checked out a cross fit
gym to buy a T-shirt since we're not aloud to have gym memberships and
we stayed here to chill, we've had a pretty relaxing day!

Anyway that's about it for my epistle his week! I love you guys and I
love all the photo streams you have started with me! Have a great
week!

Anziano Bellucci