Cagliari! Week 9!

The weeks and the days seem to go pretty fast so far! I can't believe
that I went into the MTC two months ago today! It seems like just
yesterday I was balling in the temple parking lot across the street
from the MTC... Anyway, it's going crazy fast!

I need some direction for my emails... If you read them let me know! I
want to know what you like hearing about, what you don't really care
about and what you want to hear more about?

Anyway, so this week! Monday night we had a family home evening in a
park with some new converts and some of our English course students.
The Sister Missionaries were in charge and we started with a game. Due
varita e una bugia which is just two truths and a lie. (Which if
you've never played you tell two truths and a lie and everyone has to
try to figure out which one is the lie) Which was really fun when you
factor in the language barrier between the missionaries and everyone
else there! The point of the lesson was how we discern truth and how
we can use the Holy Ghost to help us discern between right and wrong.
It was a great lesson!

Tuesday morning we had District meeting, always fun with Anziano
Larusa and then after we all went to McDonalds next door to the church
to eat lunch! Let's talk about McDonalds for a minute... Its pretty
good... It's also pretty expensive. But it's like a restaurant here,
like people go on dates to McDonalds. It's a little weird but you can
make it pretty cheap if you try so it was fun to all go as a district!
Both of our lessons cancelled on us that night so we went and helped
with English course at the church and did some bus finding. I'm
learning that I kind of like bus finding because they have no where to
go. They're stuck on the bus and they can't get off so they might as
well talk to you. Most of them are more interested in talking about
America but at least they're talking to us! Tuesday night was
interesting... We have a brick cell phone right? No one has purposely
bought one of these things in years. So we ride the bus back to our
house and we're talking to this guy, Anziano Segura goes to grab the
phone to put our number in it and it's not in his pocket. He looks at
me and asks for the phone... I don't have it. His eyes get big and he
has this "oh crap" look on his face... we get this guys digits and
book it to the other side of the piazza where the bus stops again,
it's already stopped and gone. It's now 9:35 and we're late getting
home. So we book it back to the house and tell our Zone Leaders what
happened. We take the car keys, go find the car (which is always
impossible parallel parked every time we go to get in it) and drive
back to the bus stop to wait, hoping that we left it on the bus. If
not we have he car and can run back and check the other bus stop and
the church to see if we left it there. So the bus finally comes and I
ask him if anyone turned in a phone while my companion looks. (I don't
know why we didn't switch that because his Italian is much better than
mine but I got my point across and that's what's important.) Anyway,
he says yes and I can see our brick of a phone sitting next to him. He
says "I already called the station and told them that I had a phone
turned in so now we have to go through all the paperwork." Ugh are you
kidding me... No one else wants that phone. I promise. We have the
number, we can call it and prove that it's ours. He says he can't do
that. He calls the station and explains and they say no. We can wait
until 11:45 PM when his shift gets done and he can turn it in to the
station or we can come back in the morning. It's way past our bedtime
as it is so we went home and got up first thing in the morning, took
the Zone Leaders flip phone so we could call our brick phone and prove
to them that it's ours. Italians... Ridiculous.

Wednesday I got an Email from America from the church referral
headquarters, I guess we get these pretty frequently but they hardly
have any information so we were pretty lucky! This one was for a girl
who was a foreign exchange student from here in Cagliari, she went to
Arizona for a year of High school and just got back last month. Her
host family was LDS and so she's been going to church for the last
year. She took all the missionary discussions with the Sister
missionaries there and is really interested in the Gospel. All they
had was an address, so we went and checked it out and she met us at e
door wearing a "Latter-day Warrior Mesa Arizona Youth Conference"
t-shirt on... My companion and I about died. She is a really nice girl
and we are excited to continue to teach her! We had a Skype lesson
with the Sister missionaries in Arizona to transition over to us and
then we introduced her to some members. The church is very different
in the way of our buildings and the size of our wards and branches but
the Gospel is still the same and thats the important part! :)

Thursday we went and taught the bravissimo family on the outskirts of
our area and I learned about the churches addiction recovery and quit
smoking plans! Turns out they're pretty fantastic! We were talking to
this family and one of their neighbors came in, took one look at us
and said "You're the Mormons right?!?!" Well why yes we are... And she
proceeded to tell us how she doesn't know about our religion or
believe it's true but there was a couple of missionaries about 22
years ago that helped her husband stop smoking and he hasn't had one
since! Thanks for the testimony lady! It's cool how the Lord puts
people in our paths and he plants seeds for us to pick up later on. It
makes me think of all the seeds that my companion and I may be laying
as we go that some other missionaries may get to continue to work on
in a few years! Thursday was the morning of miracles for us. As we
walked out of this families house we heard a man yell "Anziani!" Which
doesn't happen very often... We turn around and he waves us over and
he starts talking to us. He says "I've been a member of the church for
a long time now... I was baptized, got the Aaronic and then the
Melchizedik priesthood. I let myself get offended some years ago and I
haven't been back since." He was super nice, we invited him to come
back, asked if we could stop by later and share a message and he gave
us a free watermelon! We also had some great lessons that night and
helped out with English course for a little bit with the sisters!

Friday we went meno-attivo finding... (Less active finding) out in one
of the outskirts of our areas. Turns out EVERYONE AND THEIR DOG GOES
TO THE BEACH ON THIS ISLAND LIKE EVERYDAY! Which makes missionary work
real hard. We had the car that day so we hit up like 10 houses of meno
attivi and it was pretty much all a bust except we found out that
there are some wrong addresses on the directory. Then that afternoon
we had our Skype transition lesson and called it a day!

Saturday. I love Saturdays because so many people are out and it gives
me a chance to talk to everyone and practice my Italian! It's getting
better, slowly but surely but I want it to be even better! So we had
some appointments in the morning, came back to the apartment for
Pranzo, did some bus finding and then the sister missionaries had an
idea. So they had been to this park last week and there was a ton of
families so they asked if we wanted to do a Gesso with them on Sabato
Sera. We said sure! We show up to this park, three companionships of
missionaries ready to do some work. There's literally like six people
in this whole park. We ask the sisters what day they came because we
just assumed it was last Saturday. Nope, it was Wednesday. The closed
to the end of the week you get the more people are at the beach. So we
decided to do some gelato finding. So gelato finding is when you go to
a public place and try to contact people and if you get a return
appointment with someone or you have a really good conversation with
someone even if they say no they you get to go get some Gelato. Sounds
like a win win for me! So gelato is bomb. Even the fruit stuff is
heavenly. I got peach gelato which actually tastes like a peach
instead of some imitation fruit wanna be garbage. It was amazing. And
then I got this Nutella, peanut, swirl gelato which was also amazing.
It's made so fresh in these little gelaterias. There's a gelato place
on almost every corner. I took a picture of one that we ate at
theother day, if I remember to I'll send it.

Sunday we walk up to the church and we see this huge van parked
outside and we both say to each other. "Looks like a Utah family is on
vacation" we walk in and we see all these blonde people that are
speaking fluent English with just a hint of an accent. Not Utah. Not
England. Hmm. And they make all us missionaries guess! Finally they
tell us they're from Norway. All 7 of their kids from the age of 24-5
years old are here in Sardegna for two weeks. But they don't speak a
lick of Italian. So we get out the voice translator microphone things
(I have no idea what they're called) and my companion live translated
the whole Sacrament meeting for them. It was so cool! So in Norway
they start learning English as a second language when they first go
into what we call Kindergarten so they are all fluent. Even the 5 year
old could understand! Craziness. They decided not to stay for the
meetings afterwards but it was really cool to get to know them a
little bit. There is a Stake Conference in Sassari in September so
they spent all of third hour trying to decide how we were going to get
there. I think they decided on renting a bus. I'm not really sure
though... They argued about it for like an hour and so I started
tuning out :/

Pranzo. Are you all tired of hearing about Sunday Pranzo yet? The same
members invited us back so that's the third Sunday in a row that we've
been there! Round 1 was probably some of the best rice I've ever had
in my life. It had mushrooms, artichokes, and cheese and a ton of
spices. I want to get the recipe next time. Round 2 was these meat
things. It was beef with cheese and some other meat stuffed inside.
Not my favorite but they were pretty good. The next part was worm
cheese and bread.

I ATE THE CHEESE! It was disgusting.The member's dad went out of his
way to find Casu Matzu for us to try. It is the strongest cheese I've
ever had in my life. It is so strong and the odor is ridiculous. It
was so pungent and the worms are still alive! Who looks at that and
says "...hmm I think that would taste good..." No one. It was nasty.
And I had already drank my water so all I could do was look at my
companion and point to my cup as I tried to wolf down the rest of the
piece of bread with no cheese on it. Ew. But I did it and it's over
and yay me I guess #BucketList. I have videos and pictures of the
worms and of me eating it. It's nasty.

Anyway, the usual salad, fruit which is always amazing and then onto
dessert. Homemade cookies! But not like American cookies... She made
homemade meringue cookies and a bunch of other ones and they were way
good. Then because we had been sitting there a while (like 20 minutes)
they thought we might have gotten hungry. So they brought out some
gelato. So good. So full.

Our lesson fell through for Sunday night so we went to some meno
attivi houses and did some bus finding and went home for the night!

P-Day has been less than eventful, we spent the whole morning cleaning
our apartment because it was in desperate need of it and we have Zone
Conference on Friday and so the Mission President and the Assistants
are flying in and our apartment will be inspected by someone.

So I've been coming up with spiritual thoughts the last couple days,
and one thing that I love is Mormon messages. So my invitation to you
guys this week is to check out Elder David A. Bednar's Patterns of
Light videos. There's a couple of them and they're only a couple of
minutes long. Check it out and I want to hear your thoughts on them!
You can find them on LDS.org or they are on the Gospel Library app
too!

I hope you all have a great week! I love hearing from you all!

Love,
Anziano Jake Bellucci