Cagliari Transfer 2 Week 4

Good morning America!


This week has been a whirlwind of travel and new cities and meeting
lots of people and so many blessings!

We started off the week with Family Home Evening in the park and only
three people came so it was kind of a bust but we had a good time
anyway and we decided to teach them how to throw a football which none
of them have ever seen before. Then we were playing catch and there
was a group of ragazzi (young people) behind me so I "accidentally"
let the football go behind me and into their group of people. I ran
over and they tossed it back to me and I asked them if they had ever
seen a ball like this and they all said no except one. He said C'è un
futbol americano! So I tossed it to him and he threw it back with
almost a perfect spiral. So we invited the group to come and play
catch with us, it was a lot of fun! So we've started carrying a
football around with us sometimes when we do finding and seeing who
will play with us! It's worked really well!

Tuesday we had our District meeting as usual with the Elders from
Oristano, we talked about how we were specifically called here for a
reason and that there are people that only we can help. It made me
think of a lot of missionaries that I know and have spent time with
over the years. Many of them have impacted my life so much and I know
that they were called to the New York Utica Mission to help me get to
where I am today. So shoutout to all the missionaries that helped me
from way back to Elder Clark and Elder Scott all the way up to Elder
Lamb and Elder Geilman, I love you guys! I hope to be able to help
people here in Italy have the same change of heart that I have had and
gain a testimony of the truth of this Gospel through the power of the
Holy Ghost!

After District meeting we went to McDonalds and as we were leaving
Anziano Larussa said "I forgot we have an investigator meeting us here
in Cagliari at 6 and we're supposed to be back in Oristano for English
course at 7... Anziano Bellucci are you up for a last minute scambio
(exchange)? How fast can you pack your stuff?" So I packed a change of
clothes and we hopped the next train to Oristano!

Oristano is beautiful, it's one of the smaller cities on the island
and its a little more out in the country so the train ride up was
beautiful for me, I finally got to get out of the city for a little
bit and see some of the country side. Olive trees are way prettier
than the way that olives taste... (which by the way olives don't taste
any better just because they're in Italy, still tastes like rubber, I
tried!)

We did English course and it was so fun! There was three people there
that were pretty advanced and then about five or six who barely knew
how to say hello... So I stood up after we prayed and said "Anyone who
wants an advanced course, come with me!" Because it's very difficult
to teach basic English in my opinion and when you do the advanced
class you mostly just talk with them! So I left Anziano Larussa with
the basic group and we went to another room. I had a such a good time
talking with them, and just like it's really good for me to hear
native Italians it's really good for them to hear native English
speakers so I spent a lot of time talking and telling stories. We had
a really good time and two of them asked me if I was going to be there
on Thursday... I had to tell them no but it made me feel good to know
that they enjoyed it!

The next day it was interesting to be in a different city with a
different companion, I felt more confident and ready to go to work
than I have felt the last few weeks. Anziano Larussa said that they
want to build their English course back up so we grabbed about 100
English course pass-along cards and we just went crazy and I felt so
confident and ready to talk, I was understanding and actually a couple
times when we were in the park we would split up and I would talk to
other people and I wasn't worried, I was understanding everything. The
gift of tongues is so real! We handed out about 75 of them in two
hours and we had to head back to Cagliari soon so that was the end of
it but I definitely had a lot of fun!

Back in the beautiful city of Cagliari! It's finally starting to cool
down a tiny bit... It's still really hot in the afternoons but it's
cooling down a lot at night and this week it rained quite a bit which
was nice.

One of the first families to be converted in Sicily is the Simoncini
family and they were baptized back in the 60's! They are serving as a
senior couple for the Rome mission and they are in charge of keeping
the missionary apartments maintained. They are super nice and brought
us lots of new stuff and installed some new appliances in our
apartment. Being from Sicily they speak almost zero English and their
accent from Sicily is ridiculous! When I talk to people here in
Sardegna I understand almost everything. When Anziano Simoncini talks
I get maybe every 10th word! Anziano Segura says all the Sicilians are
like that so I'm super glad to not be starting there! It would be like
trying to learn English in Dublin or something... I don't know how to
explain it but they slur their words together and it makes no sense to
me whatsoever!

Friday we had a great lesson with one of our investigators, she is the
referral from America that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. We have
been teaching her quite a bit and we felt like we should invite her
family to learn more about the church. She accepted the invitation to
talk to her family and invite them to learn more! It was a really
interesting lesson to me because I thought about the importance of
families in the gospel. One of the first points in the first lesson we
teach is that the Gospel Blesses families, and it's so true! The
Gospel brings families closer together and blesses our lives as we
strengthen our families!

Saturday we had a Pranzo appointment with this family that we have
been teaching, the wife is from the Philippines and the husband is
Italian. They are the nicest couple and we walk into their house and
there are ten place settings around the table. We both looked at each
other and Ruth came out and said, "we invited some friends, I hope
that's okay!" Which for missionaries is like a Heaven sent gift! We
got to share a spiritual thought with them and set up an appointment
to return and teach them more! Plus we got an awesome
Philippino/Italian meal! It started with Lasagna and then they did
this meat and vegetable stir fry type thing that was so good! Followed
by salad (it's still weird for me that they eat salad last) and then
this mint and coconut cake with gelato that we made with them! So
good...

This weekend was also stake conference! The Stake that we are in is
the Rome West, it covers part of the mainland and then all of
Sardegna. So the Saturday session was broadcast down here to Cagliari
but held in Sassari, the northernmost city in Sardegna. Then yesterday
everyone here met as a ward and they rented a tour bus to drive to
Sassari for the session. They had more people that wanted to go than
the bus would hold so the four of us missionaries drove our car the
three hours to Sassari! It was a really fun drive and made me miss
road trips! The conference was amazing, and President Pickerd and his
wife flew in to be a part of it, so we got to hear them speak as well!
As most of you know the Rome temple has taken way longer than
anticipated to be finished. The area leaders released a statement that
said "The Rome Temple will not be finished this year, but we as the
people need to be ready this year, and right now we aren't. The temple
will not be finished until we are ready" It was a huge call to the
members to get working on some missionary work. There are not enough
members here to keep this temple going once it's open, and missionary
work is the responsibility of members! We as full time missionaries
should be teachers and the members should be doing the finding! So my
invite to you all is to get out there and find someone you can share
the Gospel with! It's going to be a little awkward because you've
never done it before. But we have a promise from Heavenly Father that
if we open our mouths the Lord will fill them with the words we need.
So get out there and do some awesome missionary work!

Also my Mom says I should include some Italian vocab at the end of my
emails... Sooooo today's word is "mozza fiato" which means "breath
taking" hope that's useful! Haha

Until next week!

Anziano Jake Bellucci