Bari Libertà Transfer 7 Week 2

April 3, 2017

The Hardest Thing I've ever Loved to do...

This has been a pretty trying week for me, Satan has been working on me and he's been having a lot of success getting into my mind. But I think it's because he knew how amazing General Conference would be this week. 

I've been learning a lot about who I am as a missionary this week which has been kind of interesting. As I watch other missionaries in the Zone I see the things they do well and the things I could improve on and I really enjoy that. It makes me want to be better. I also had a scary realization reading an email yesterday from one of my MTC teachers. She was making a reference to the missionaries that have been in the MTC for the past few months and I was like "Oh yeah that was me..." then I remembered I went there almost a year ago. Ahhhh! This last year though has honestly been the hardest thing I've ever loved to do, I only have a year left and it's for sure going to count! 

We had a really good day on Monday, our Family Home Evening that we had set up cancelled on us so we got to hit the streets of Bari and talk to some pretty cool people! The people in this city are pretty open especially when you hit them with a big cheesy smile! Missionary work in a big city is a little different than a small one, there's so many people! This is going to take some getting used to! 

We had mission leadership conference on Tuesday so we all Skyped in to Rome with all the other Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders which was pretty cool! I got to see some of the other missionaries that I've served with which was pretty cool! It was a great conference and we talked a ton about working with Young Single Adults and focusing our finding efforts on youth. President gave us permission to go to the Universities to eat lunch once a week so we can get closer to the College Aged students and try to talk to them in a more chill way. We're excited to try this out! We went out to a Chinese restaurant afterwards and I ate sooooo much sushi! 

So the Senior couple here teaches Institute on Tuesday nights so we teach The Intermediate level English Course here in Bari Libertà and then on Thursdays we teach a course in Bitonto. There wasn't enough people to do a third course so we didn't end up teaching but we met some cool people here! 

So there is a miracle family that was baptized I think two transfers ago, I remember hearing about it in Taranto. They were taught almost 25 years ago and then last year the missionaries found a map in their apartment with a name marked on it. It was behind some furniture and probably looked like trash. Instead of throwing it out they decided to go to this little city and find them. A few short months later they were baptized. So now every week we go out to that city to teach them and their son is going to get baptized on the 28th! We're super stoked for him! 

So one of our investigators, his name is Sam and he is a stud! We got a call from the Senior Couple who are working with him a ton on Thursday and they said he finally got a job which is an answer to prayers for sure! He is Nigerian so he needs work to stay here. Unfortunately he works Sundays now but he hasn't missed a Sunday at church in the past year. So his Baptism is set for the Monday after  Easter! Keep him in your prayers, Satan works hard on people as they get closer and closer to Baptism! 

We went and had lunch at "Grandma's" in Bitonto! She is probably in her 70's and she asked us to call her Grandma! She's hysterical! It was her and another older lady from the Branch. Oh my heck she reminds me of my Mom and Roxy when they get older... we laughed so hard and had such a good time! She made a great "pasta al forno" which is just pasta in the oven like a baked ziti. It was so good with homemade little meatballs. Then she gave us some steaks. Then she had these mozzarella balls and ham and bread and I took one of the mozzarella balls and cut it up on my plate with the steak and apparently that's a no no, you can't eat anything on the same plate in Italy... also I cut the mozzarella ball with my fork instead of my knife and she yelled at me for that too! Italians... haha! We had a great time at lunch and then we shared the new Easter Video with them and the spirit was so strong! If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out! It's called "Prince of Peace" and it's so good! I haven't actually watched it in English but it's the same thing so go check it out! 

We decided we wanted to try and work a little bit more out in Bitonto to grow our English Course and our teaching pool out there so Friday we decided to take the Sisters with us and do a "Bitonto Blitz!" We hit the city hard for about 3 hours and had some good finds with a gelato at the end! 

Saturday we went to the park with a frisbee to do some finding and after a few minutes a couple showed up and said "Hey can we play?' In perfect English with no Accent. I was kind of shocked... turns out she's from Canada and married an Italian and they moved back here about five years ago. We had a great time with them and it was nice to get a little taste of home even though she was Canadian! 

GENERAL CONFERENCE! 

It was the absolute best! I watched a lot of it in Italian so I want to rewatch it in English and see how much more I can get out of it but it was all good! I really enjoyed President Uchtdorfs talk and President Ballard. One of my favorite quotes was from President Eyring he said "If you feel a little overwhelmed, take that as a good sign. It indicates that you can sense the magnitude of the trust God has placed on you." I think sometimes we all feel overwhelmed and that leads to feelings of inadequacy but it shouldn't be that way! Sometimes we're meant to feel overwhelmed! I have some others but I'll be a little more specific next week... I want to hear what you guys liked! I'll be honest I was pretty spiritually drained by the end but it was really good! We obviously spent a lot of time watching Conference this weekend and I got to meet a ton of members from the Bari Libertà Ward! 

We got to watch the last session at a New Convert/their son is our investigator's house. They made us homemade pizza and everything! It was such a good day! 

Today we had so much fun... we went to an indoor beach volleyball place! We're all fat and out of shape but we had a really good time! And I actually took some pictures! I hope you all had a great week! Like I said I want to hear about what you learned from Conference! I love you and I hope you have a good week!

Anziano Bellucci