Cagliari Transfer 2 Week 5

What an incredible and spiritually exhausting week! The week went by
even faster than usual with an amazing trip to Rome from Wednesday to
Thursday! But before we get to that we had a really interesting lesson
on Tuesday!

We have an investigator that is struggling to keep some of the
commandments but he really wants to be baptized! He said "I want to be
baptized in the way that Jesus Christ was baptized" So we have been
working with him and he came to us and said that he had been
thinking... He said "There are other churches that will baptize you
without keeping these commandments so I was thinking maybe I could go
get baptized by them and then continue to study the Book of Mormon
with you and when I am ready to obey the commandments I will be
baptized in this church with the real authority. I would prefer to be
baptized here because I know this is the real church but I really want
to be baptized." It was a really cool experience as my companion and I
testified of 1: the authority that John the Baptist was given to
baptize Jesus Christ and 2: how keeping the commandments before
baptism is for our benefit. If we enter into that promise of baptism
without obeying the commandments we aren't holding up our end of the
deal. The promise is broken before it's even made! It's really
interesting, I have never desired something so much. More than
anything I look at my investigators and all I want while I look at
the, is for them to act in faith. I don't want them to be baptized, I
want them to have the same knowledge that I have of this Gospel and
that will lead them to want to be baptized. Everyone always says "You
will learn to love the people of your mission" I am starting to
understand that more and more everyday. I love the people of Italy!

That being said there is a stigma for European missions... Most
everyone I talked to about where I would be serving my mission said
"Well you'll plant a lot of seeds, but don't expect to baptize much"
or something to that effect. Which basically means no one is going to
accept the Gospel, you'll just be planting seeds for people to harvest
later. I wanted to share with you all that our mission last transfer
which is 6 weeks long had 16 baptisms! We are a European Mission and
we baptize! We are in the heart of Catholicism and we baptize! So I
want you to take two things from this... 1. Don't ever tell someone
that is going on a mission that they will not baptize or that they're
mission will be harder or easier than others. 2. In any given city at
any given time there are at least five people ready to receive the
Gospel and the invitation to be baptized. We just have to go out and
find them!

Public Transportation is useful but it's kind of annoying sometimes...
We took a bus, a train, a plane, another train, a subway and another
bus as well as walked about a kilometer to get to the Rome 6
missionaries apartment on Wednesday night! We left our house at about
3 PM and got to their apartment at about 10:30 PM and we were all
exhausted! Up and out of the house at 7 AM to head to the church where
the conference would be held. There were about 150 missionaries coming
in from allover the Southern half of the country. The day before they
had done a conference with the Sicily missionaries but the rest of the
mission was gathering in Rome! With 150 missionaries using public
transportation to the same place to be spiritual edifices Satan is
bound to try to mess things up! We made it to the conference just fine
but they shut the metro down at about 8:30... Leaving about 30
missionaries stranded in Rome without transportation in the pouring
rain. A few buses and some missionaries being shuttled in the mission
van later and all the missionaries arrived safely, some a little
soggier than others!

The conference itself was amazing! As always we were told to prepare
ourselves spiritually and bring questions that we want to be answered
by the spirit. President Keuron is the President of the Europe area,
he presides over the churches affairs in all of Europe and he is an
amazing man. A convert himself he loves missionary work! He was
baptized at the age of 26 and has been an incredible leader in the
church since then. The spirit was so strong in that meeting, all my
questions were answered in a matter of minutes when he began speaking.
He brought up three major points that I would like to share with you
because I think they can apply to all of us. The first is:

"Stop worrying, just work hard!" He said we see more and more
missionaries going home for anxiety and stress than almost anything
else. We don't have to know everything, we just have to work hard and
the Lord will provide. I think it's very similar in life, obviously we
have responsibilities that we have to worry about but most importantly
if we work hard, do what we are supposed to and are obedient, Jesus
Christ makes up the rest!

The second is to "Be the message!" Do people know immediately that you
are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? He
demonstrated this with a role play where he had two sister
missionaries approach him without smiling, without being excited and
it was not obvious that this message had changed heir lives so why
would he want to listen to it??? He then had them do it again with
smiles and excitement and a convincing message that we know this is
the true church! We need to be the message all the time whether we are
missionaries or not. People need to see the light of Christ in our
lives!

The third thing was to find strength in the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love each one of us, without a
doubt. When things get hard or difficult that is when we need to reach
out and lean on them.

So the conference was incredible and we're all on a little bit of a
spiritual high! We flew out Thursday night and our flight was delayed
so we didn't end up getting home until about 11... So tired.
Spiritually exhausted and physically exhausted from traveling!

Pretty low key weekend as we got back into the normal groove of things
and prepared for Sunday. We had a great Sacrament meeting and Gospel
Principles class and I even had enough energy to pay attention during
priesthood... I'm understanding more and more everyday and I'm
noticing that I have to think about it less and less as I listen to
people speak.

As always I hope you all have an incredible week! I can't wait to hear
all about it! Also I'm sending the pictures of when I went to the
Colosseum when I first got here! They will be on the photo stream so
Jill should have them up on the blog soon!

Love,

Anziano Jacob Bellucci