Transfer 3 Week 1

Boun Giorno tutti!

Hey everybody, it's me again! Weird it's been a week already! It feels

like so much has happened this week that last Monday feels like an

eternity ago... But it also feels like yesterday!

Monday was torture as we were waiting for our transfer calls, they can

come anywhere between 8 PM and 10:30 PM because they have to call all

over the mission obviously. So President called the Zone Leaders at

around 8 and told them all the transfer calls for the zone but they're

not allowed to tell us we have to wait for a call from either the

President or the Assistants to the President. So they started freaking

out and telling us how excited we should be and then we waited. And we

waited. And the more we waited the more anxiety I had... Anziano

Segura and I were freaking out and the Zone Leaders told me that my

transfer call surprised them the most! 10:30 comes and we still

haven't received a call... So I texted the assistants "Did you forget

about us?" They call us right away and say that President Pickerd was

supposed to call us but he must have skipped it and he said "Are you

ready for your transfer call Anziano Bellucci?" Yes I'm so ready!

"You're staying in Cagliari and Anziano Larussa will be your new

companion!" So... I already knew my companion! Anziano Larussa is our

District leader and has been in Oristano for the past 12 weeks which

is the city right next to ours. I had already worked with him a little

and he's super cool! Y'all are never going to guess where he's from...

Drum roll!!!!! New York! I never in a million years would have thought

I would get a companion from New York!

Little mini Biography on Anziano Larussa... First of all Mom his name

is Greg so you can stalk him on Facebook but he said all the photos

that it will let you see are from a long time ago so don't judge too

harshly ;) He is a convert to the church of five years so he was

baptized when he was 15 and his family members aren't members of the

church except his Mom. He's a few months older than I am and he has

been on his mission for exactly a year and a half. He was a wrestler

all through High School and apparently was pretty good... He went to

BYU for a year before coming on a mission which means that all three

people that I live with went to BYU. But that's ok, we can all repent

;) He served almost all of his mission so far in Sicilia and he speaks

so well! I'm excited to learn from him!

So Tuesday I helped Anziano Segura get packed and we had District

Meeting so I saw my new companion and then he went back to Oristano to

pack. We helped all the other missionaries come in that we're flying

off the island Wednesday, we had some appointments and met up with

some members so Anziano Segura could say goodbye! I wasn't even the

one leaving but it was really hard to watch him say goodbye!

Wednesday we brought Anziano Segura to the airport, took some pictures

and he was off to Rome, his transfer call is to Terni to be the Zone

Leader. Terni is the Northernmost zone in the mission so he's going to

have a chilly winter! I then got to be companions with Anziano Bentley

who was down here waiting for his companion to fly in. He is going to

be training this transfer so he's a little scared but mostly excited!

He's a really cool guy from Alpine UT and he's only in his 6th

transfer so he's pretty young in the mission to be training! We went

allover the city and I realized how well I know it. Most of the time I

just followed Anziano Segura but I learned the city really well. My

companion came in from Oristano on Tuesday because his companion was

flying to Sicily. We spent most of Thursday sitting in the Cagliari

airport waiting for the new Zone Leader to get here... Through missed

flights, delayed planes and lost travel plans he finally made it

Friday morning! His name is Anziano Bourne, amd so far he seems pretty

cool! I don't know if I ever said this but we live in a 4 man house so

the Zone Leaders live with us so I'm sure I'll get to know him better

over the next six weeks!

We spent the last two days doing so much work, Anziano LaRussa and I

have been hitting the streets and talking to everyone! Friday we went

to Carbonia which is about an hour train ride away to teach a man that

runs this tai chi gym... It was really cool but really far away. The

coolest thing that happened was we walked out of the train station in

Carbonia and we just see these mountains in the background and both of

us felt like we were in Utah. It was nice to get a taste of my home

away from home!

Saturday I learned a lot about my companion... Turns out wrestling

taught him a lot about Gymnastics! We decided to do a Gesso in the

Centro area with the Sister Missionaries. We decided on English Course

Publicity but there were so many street performers it was easier to

just walk around talking to people than actually setting up a sheet

and having people walk by. So we had about 100 pass along cards each

and we just went to town. Well we had been there about a half an hour

and this guy in a full Spider-Man outfit starts playing music and

crouches down like Spider-Man. He then proceeds to do some gymnastics

moves, he did some hand stands and round offs and I look next to me

and my companion is gone. I look around and he's climbing up this

fence and I thought "what is he... Oh oh he's doing a..." And he did a

back flip off the fence! Well that got a crowd around and it turned

into a little competition between my companion and Spider-Man they

started doing backflips and hand springs and it was really cool! And I

was walking around giving out English course cards saying that I teach

an English course with the guy that's doing backflips... It was really

funny and I got some good videos!

We walked a little bit further down and there was another group of

street performers that were doing Break-Dancing and they had a little

mat set up and LaRussa went up to the, and started talking to them...

Turns out he does break dancing too! So Anziano Larussa was their

opening act he started dancing and got a huge crowd for their show.

Then they did like a five minute show and they were so good! We

learned afterwards that they travel allover the world doing shows but

that they are based out of Sardegna. Their whole show was set to a

violin song that Lindsey Sterling does and I told them after that she

is Mormon. They were astounded and I'm pretty sure they didn't believe

me but they said they were going to be touring parts of England and

needed to learn some English so hopefully they will come, maybe we'll

just have them dance for us instead of learn English!

Yesterday we had six appointments scheduled some with members and some

with investigators and all of them bidoned us. A bidone literally

means trash or dumpster but it's what we use when people cancel on

us... So it turned out to be a little less productive than we had

hoped. I did have a really cool experience at church though! There

were 13 people visiting from Switzerland and everyone in Switzerland

learns English in school from like 4 years old so we translated the

Sacrament meeting for them. We use these radio like things and they

have headphones and then the missionaries that translate have a little

microphone and I translated about ten minutes of the Fasting Testimony

Meeting for them! It was so fun but also a little scary! Definitely

the Gift of Tongues working there but it was a lot of fun!

This is a very long letter and I don't have a specific invite for you

all this week but I want to let you all know how much I love this

Gospel and how grateful I am to be able to serve this mission. I see

miracles everyday, I have the opportunity to learn from so many great

people and I meet so many incredible people all the time. Remember the

invites from the past couple weeks as well... To watch General

Comference (All of it! If you've seen it all once go through and start

round two by reading the talks!) tone a missionary and invite people.

Living in Utah is not an excuse... There are plenty of inactive

members in Utah!

Anyway, the church is true, the book is blue, and I love you!

Anziano Jake Bellucci