Napoli Transfer 10 Week 5

Baptismal Interviews, baptisms, and exchanges!

Probably one of the best weeks of my mission even though I say that almost every week! 

Monday night we had Anziano Morlock with us because he was here getting his VISA and so we were in a trip and decided to go out white Boarding. It was a lot of fun and we covered a lot of ground and ran out of pass along Cards! 

Tuesday we had to get up way early to get him ready to go to the airport but thankfully the Senior Couple came and picked him up! I went back to bed... then we had an awesome lesson with Marco. He's the one I talked about last week. He had us over ti his house and we taught him a little about the Restoration and he asked a lot of questions. We ended up talking about forgiveness and we showed him a video about it on Gospel Library. He then said "Can i show you a video about what I think forgiveness is" and he pulled up American Sniper where the sniper just blows the other guys head off from more than a mile away... not quite what I would call forgiveness but we'll get there! When we left he said "God doesn't talk to me when I'm alone but when I'm with you guys I feel like he's talking to me" it was a great thing to hear! We hope to help him feel it on his own soon! 

Wednesday we ended up having District Meeting in the morning which went really well. We met with Nicola and Antonella... they're a less-active Couple and we had a great lesson with them talking about their goals and plans to help them achieve them. Anziano Jensen was in the bathroom when we first got there so I had them wait in the room at the Church and we went in they had written on the white board "We love you Elders, you are angels in God's hands" it was really nice. I would love to see them married in the Italy Rome Temple!

Thursday we had correlation and then I got to go on an exchange with Anziano DeFeo in Pozzuoli! I was excited all week about it! We had a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. He goes home in 7 weeks! We have served a couple times together in the mission and he's a good friend. He is Canadian eh? 

Friday we finished the exchange, grabbed a pizza and hitched a ride back to Napoli with the Senior Couple. I got my companion back and we went and taught a new Convert with the Hyde's. It was a great lesson and I got to share some personal experiences about preparing to go to the temple and I think it really helped her. 

We hopped the next train to Castellammare to do another baptismal interview and it went great! She will be baptized on Saturday!

Saturday night Napoli B had a baptism and it was great! I'll try to send a photo if it will work! 

Sunday of course was wonderful, we had two investigators in Church and a great Sacrament Meeting. Some of my favorite members spoke and it was really nice. I got to go to the African class and their testimonies are so strong so I really enjoyed it! 

Afterwards we went over to our Branch Mission Leader's house, he and his wife are American and so they made us these really good Teriyaki pineapple burgers  and French fries. I was happy :) We were able to share a thought with them and I think it was really good. His wife is not a member but I think she felt the spirit. 

Today we just hung around Napoli, I bought 6 new ties which is big for me, I think I've bought 1 since I've been in Italy... had some pizza (world famous of course) and got some Italian ice which is called "Granita" 

This is probably the shortest email I've written in 6 months, hopefully you made it to the end! I love you and alll and I hope you have a great week! 

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

Napoli! Transfer 10 Week 4

Zone Conference, Lessons with President and great Spiritual confirmations. 

This week FLEW. It was a great one but it definitely could have slowed down and I would not have been upset! 

On Monday night we met Monday! We were supposed to have a Family Home Evening with the Granata Family again but they cancelled on us. We set up an appointment to meet a potential who didn't show up. So we were walking through the train station and I started talking to this man named Monday... Africans have some of the most interesting names ever... Monday is amazing bough, he's so humble and ready for the Gospel. We started to talk to him and asked him if he wanted to come and see our Church. He said "Im a refugee, I live in a camp, the only thing I do is eat and sleep, of course I want to see your Church!" So we brought him to the Church and the look on his face when he walked in you could tell he felt the spirit. We sat down with him and had the Hyde Couple come in with us. We were able to teach him the Restoration and he stopped us and with tears in his eyes he began to tell us that he's been praying and searching for a church like ours. He then continued to tell us that he's crossed from Libya 4 times and each time almost everyone on the boat coming over died but he has made it each time. He understands that God is aware of him and loves him. At the end we had invited him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and he just out of no where said "can we kneel?" And then said "Sister Hyde will you pray for us?" It was like he had been a member his whole life... crazy! Then he asked if he could bring his friends when he comes to church on Sunday... uhhh yeah! 

Tuesday was just as good, it was Ferragosto which is like sacred for the Italians. There is not a store run by an Italian open, if the Africans and Pakistani don't sell it you can't buy it on Ferragosto... so for us missionaries it means we get to clean the apartment all day! We spent most of the morning cleaning and then at 10 we had to go to Sam's house for correlation and lunch. It was great as usual and then came home, cleaned a good amount and then went to the Church. We had a lesson planned that didn't show up but we had some Africans show up for Italian class and two Italians for English class! I was surprised for sure! We were starting to worry because we hadn't seen a pizzeria open all week and we had to order 30 pizzas for Zone Conference... Mario told us he had seen one open so we sent the other Elders to go check it out and we went to go meet President at the hotel and pick up the Assistants. It was so great to see President again, he was gone for almost a month. I missed him for sure! Sister Pickerd had her surgery and her first round of Chemo and will do one more round of chemo before coming back to Rome where she will do the other four rounds. She should be here mid September. 

Wednesday we had interviews set up with President starting at 8:30 every 15 minutes until 2:30 and then two hour long baptismal interviews for refugees so he was a busy man! We had ours first, practiced our training for Thursday and practiced the musical numbers for Zone Conference. We found that pizzeria and ordered the pizza , got some watermelon and everything else for the Conference and then I got to do a little mini exchange with Anziano Draghi  and President. There is a family here, the Mom has been a member since she was 8, they have two kids that are active members and then the Dad is not a member. He kind of reminds me of Brother Stephan... President has met them a few times and really took an interest in their family. So I set up an appointment to meet with them and it went really well. (Except for we got lost getting there... oops). It was about 8:45 and the Mom said "By the way, what time do you have to be home, I made dinner." (We're supposed to be home by 9) President says "Well I'm in charge, we'll eat dinner." It was great and a really good opportunity to get to know President a little better. He's a great teacher and so I enjoy working with him as well as Anziano Draghi. 

Thursday was Zone Conference! Up early and over at the Church to get the last minute details set. We had great musical numbers from the missionaries in the Zone and great trainings from the Assistants and President Pickerd. We talked about cascades and how when we change one thing it can cascade into other things. Kind of like a ripple effect. The Assistants trained on finding, how we can plan our finding and make it a better more effective experience. Giuseppe and Joele that just got their mission calls came and so I got to translate a good part of the morning. #Exhausting Americans speak real fast... and use a lot of words. 

We ate lunch  and the pizzas weren't too bad and watermelon  was a big hit! We sat back down and Anziano Jensen and I along with Sister Crandell shared our training on applying Christlike Attributes with the Baptismal interview questions as we help our Investigators become like Christ. I think it went really well and there was so much participation that we went a few minutes over time...  oops! A quick meeting with trainers and trainees and that was the Conference! Lots of clean up and then straight to English Course! 

Anziano Friedman had ordered some buffalo mozzarella and ricotta cheese and he left it in the fridge at the Church which is like 15€ worth of cheese ... thanks Anziano Friedman! We grabbed some fresh bread on the way home and demolished half of it ;) Side note: Anziano Friedman goes home on Tuesday :( I'll miss him for sure! 

Friday was finally a minute to breathe! I was so excited to have the full time to study in the morning and just enjoy getting into the scriptures. It's really cool how you notice the difference when you haven't been able to study as much as you would like. We had our studies and then did weekly planning and the Hydes came over to fix a few things in our apartment and then we headed to the Church for a lesson with Monday. We had Peter come with us, he's the one who served a mission in Nigeria and now he's a refugee. He's a stud. He had 94 baptisms on his mission so he definitely knows how to teach Africans. He came with us and we had a great lesson with Monday and set him with a baptismal date for September 9th! He asked us again if he could bring friends to church! 

 We went to this park afterwards and we found these three YSA aged kids (20's) and we taught them the whole Restoration and they were super interested! I love when we tell people that there's a living prophet on the Earth today and they're just like "I didn't know that" it makes me so happy to be a missionary, share the good news that we have a Prophet just like Christ's original Church. We have an appointment with them on Tuesday! 

Saturday we got to go down to Castellammare to do a baptismal interview for a man named Alessandro. It was great, he's super prepared! We spent the morning traveling, doing the interview, and eating lunch with them and then coming back. Afterwards we were supposed to have a lesson but we got cancelled on and so we just met with Richard who is a new convert and was going to help us with the lesson. When Monday couldn't come Richard just said "That's ok, I have some questions. Let's pray and you can help me." He's so cool, and he had some great questions about celestial marriage, patriarchal blessings and some scriptural words. I definitely learned as we studied together.  

Sunday was great! All of the talks were given by missionaries, Anziano Andersen and then the Senior Couple all gave talks today. They did a great job and Sister Hyde even had her talk printed in English for me so I didn't have to translate or look up all the scriptures! Monday came to Church and really enjoyed it! We ended up going white Boarding in the evening and had a great time. We stopped this kid named Marco, he was sweet. His Dad is American but his Mom is Italian and he grew up here. He has a pretty big desire for the Gospel and so we are going to start teaching him on Tuesday! It was a great week for sure! 

Today we are going to "La Reggia" which is a palace in Caserta with these gardens that are like 2 miles long. We're going to rent bikes and go through it. It should be fun! I'll try to send pictures if it will work! 

I hope you all have had a great week! I love you and I know that Heavenly Father loves you all as well! 

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

Napoli! Transfer 10 Week 3!

Everyone is on vacation but we're still busy!

This week has been great as usual! Literally everyone is on vacation so it's been hard to try and see people but it's given us more time to meet with our African Investigators which has been really good. The month of August is a holiday... pretty much the whole thing. Everyone that we talk to still says "Yeah in September you guys will still be here?" Which is kind of frustrating but I'm hoping that means we'll be super busy come September! 

Monday night we had a great Family Home Evening with the Granata family, we invited them to read "The Family: A proclamation to the World" and we are going to talk about it with them tonight! The proclamation is really cool, it basically explains our beliefs about the family and how it is ordained of God. It talks about our responsibilities as husbands, wives, parents, and children. If I can get a link to it I'll add it in here ;)

Here it is! https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&old=true 

Tuesday was interesting, we were getting ready to plan for the day and I got a feeling that we needed to attend the Caserta/Pozzuoli District Meeting. I kind of ignored it because I knew it would take our whole morning and we wouldn't be able to get out and do much finding or talking to people on the streets, however Heavenly Father knows I'm thick some times so I had the same feeling again. I told my companion and I called the District Leader to let him know we would be coming. It was a great District Meeting for two reasons. It was really spiritual, the spirit was so strong and it was great to see everyone in the District become united as they felt it. The second was that we were able to share some great experiences from last August and help their District be excited for the work even though it seems difficult in August. Listen to promptings! You don't always get them twice ;) we ate pizza with them and then in the afternoon we met with Trust! He is such a stud, we taught him the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. Our whole District is out of English BOM so we found this pocket sized one to give to him but he loved it and he's been reading it all week! At the end he said the most sincere prayer to know if the Book of Mormon is true that I've ever heard. It was really great. 

That night one of our contacts came to English Course. He and his wife just adopted two kids from Russia, one is 10 and the other 14 and they don't speak Italian or English so their world is kind of turned upside down. He brought them with him to English Course and the younger kid wouldn't even look at us or anyone else. He sat in the hallway and about halfway through the lesson I went and sat next to him on the floor and got out Google Translate on my iPad and started asking him questions. I tried to pronounce the Russian but that was useless... I found out how old he is, his name and that he thinks pizza is gross... he's a cool kid! 

Wednesday we had correlation and I made Tiramisu to bring with Sam. All went well and we ended up getting pizza... again. 

Wednesday night was a good night of finding, we talked to a lot of people and this guy came up to us and he knew the Elders in the past and so we sat down on a bench and tried to teach him. He then asked us to tell our parents that we invited him to come and live with him and that he would join the Church in America and become a part of our "Community." He was crazy. We left. 

Thursday was our own District Meeting! Anziano Ruiz did a great job, we actually had a presentation from the Senior Couple about how to utilize them in our work and keep them busy. It was really helpful and I learned a lot. Afterwards we decided to go to the world famous pizzeria "Pizzeria da Michele" and for a Thursday at lunch time there was a LOT of people out there, just a swarm. Anziano Jensen took a number and we waited and we waited and we waited the whole time talking to people and then this group of Mormon tourists came up and talked to us and they offered to buy our pizza! They were super nice, eventually I went in and asked and found out he had taken the wrong ticket so we were waiting for a table when we really just wanted to take out pizzas... went to the front of the line and had pizzas pretty quick! They were SO GOOD! I thought Pellone was good but this was Heavenly... and it was free... 

Friday morning we Skyped into Rome for Mission Leadership Conference which was great, it was good to have President Pickerd back! We got an update on Sorella Pickerd as well, she had her surgery and has started chemo therapy. We hope to have her back with us in September if all goes well. 

After that we started our exchange with he Caserta Anziani and I got to head to Caserta and work with Anziano Sacco for the day. He's from Toole county in Utah and he's finishing up being trained by Anziano Daniels who is in Anziano Allen's group. We had a good afternoon, we had to open the Church for a family to come and clean and then they took us to grab a sandwich and gave us a bunch of American food which is always a plus, you can never get enough peanut butter and Doritos and Dr. Pepper!

We did some finding in the morning and then came back to Napoli to meet up with everyone and grab another pizza from da Michele and then planned Zone Conference with the Sister Training Leader Sister Crandell and then we met with our new Investigator Newman. He is super cool and we're hoping to set him with a baptismal date this next week! 

Sunday is always good! There weren't a lot of people that came to Church because everyone is on vacation but by the end of the meeting we were up in the 40's... Ecomano came to Church! I'm not sure if that's his first name or last name but he's from the Ivory Coast so he speaks French and Italian. We obviously teach him in Italian because French might as well be Chinese for me... (It's actually interesting I can understand so much French after learning Italian) but we had Joele come with us and she read the first vision to him in French which will be her mission language in just a few weeks! It was great and we were able to give him a baptismal date for the 9th of September. 

We met at the Church to see the tour bus that was taking all the youth to Switzerland to go to the temple! I love seeing all the youth in the Church. They are the future leaders and missionaries here in Italy and it makes me happy to see them going to the temple. 

We went white Boarding with the Anziani and called it a night! 

Today we went to Mt. Vesuvius! It was so cool! These last few days have been super nice as far as weather, it's been mid to high 80's instead of high 90's to 100's and so the hike was beautiful. I took quite a few pictures and we had a great time! It's good to play tourist every once in a while. I bought some souvenirs as well I think for the first time in my mission. Anyway we had a great time! Hope y'all have a great week!! 

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

Napoli! Transfer 10 Week 2

Mormons! Like the Book of! 

Last Monday when we were on the American base we were getting ready to leave and someone asked "Who are you?" Anziano Lamoureux said "We're American" they looked at him kind of funny and said "We're all American, you're on an American Military base! It was kind of funny... then we told them who we are and his response was "Mormons! Like the Book of!" Yeah, like the Book of! Haha anyway...

This week was really good! We had a lot of success, it's been kind of a dry spell for our work here but this week was full of miracles, all in all we ended up setting a baptismal date with one of our investigators, having two of them in Church and 5 new investigators! It was a great week! 

On Monday night someone decided it would be a good idea to walk down the Metro tracks and so they shut down the Metro and we weren't able to make it to our Home Evening with a less-active family so that was a bummer but we still got to do some quality finding and help a New Convert make an LDS account.  

Tuesday we had correlation and I got a quick haircut before we headed to Sam's house. He has a lady that comes like once a week to clean and stuff and she is from the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 and she is a cook let me tell ya. She made this beans and rice dish that was so good! If you know me you know I hate beans but these were so good! We had a great correlation and then took some pictures outside because it's so beautiful out there. 

Wednesday morning we did some finding and talked to this guy named Genni and invited him to Church. He said "If I'm among the living I'll be there" he didn't come though so im slightly worried... haha 

In the afternoon we helped Sam do his Home Teaching, he's assigned to this Italian couple so we have to translate his lesson. It went well, they're less active and said they would come on Sunday but apparently they weren't able to make it yesterday. 

Then after that we had a lesson with Mario, Nicoletta, and Fabiola... we all got pizza together and then we decided to sit down and have a group lesson. They're all kind of in different spots but they all kind of needed the same thing. Well it turned out not as well as we had hoped but we gave them all a challenge with a promise. We gave them 4 specific chapters to read over the next four days, an invite to pray Morning snd night each day and to fast with us on Saturday-Sunday and come to Church. They all accepted! We promised them that they would receive an answer as to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. 

Thursday we had District Meeting in the morning and it went really well. Anziano Ruiz is our District Leader now and he's doing a great job, this is his first Transfer as a DL. We got some pizza after and then in the afternoon we saw Mario again. We invited Nicoletta to come to the lesson as well. So the lesson with Mario went well, we talked about the apostasy and explained the break in Authority from Peter onward and he didn't quite understand it but Nicoletta came as well. She sat on the other side of the room and just listened as we testified of the things we know are true. We had English Course afterwards and then after that she came up to me and started speaking in Italian which she never does. She said that she really enjoyed seeing us teach Mario, she said it was really cool to see us teach someone else. Her words "You both have a spiritual power, a certainty and I want to feel that too." She's ready to be taught! She has been taught in the past but always said "I just want to learn for cultural reasons" after this she started asking all sorts of questions and explaining the confusion in her mind and Anziano Jensen and I were stoked! 

Friday was Anziano Lamoureux's birthday, little guy turned 19! So Anziano Andersen took him running and we surprised him with pancakes hot and ready when they got back. After we weekly planned and then for lunch we headed to this Chinese Buffet which was soooo good for lunch. We then started an exchange with the Castellammare Elders and I got to head to heir city with Anziano Drenk! Anziano Drenk is a stud, he is from Upland California and has been in the mission about 9 months I think... we had a lot of fun! We went and played soccer with this kid and taught him some English. He's a cool kid, he asked me if I would be there next time but I had to tell him no :( 

We spent the whole morning in Castellammare doing finding, it was about 100 degrees with literally no exaggeration almost 70% humidity. It was so much fun. Haha we really did have some good conversations and we took a minute to get a gelato and cool off. While I was gone Anziano Jensen who was working with Anziano Haws met with our Investigator Kelly and set him with a baptismal date! He is on track for September 2nd! They also went and met with a guy that called and asked us to come over. He neglected to tell them until they got there that he is under house arrest and can't accept visitors or make/receive phone calls. We won't be going back again... 

Saturday night we had 8 people that told us they were coming to Church and Sunday morning we ended up with two so it's not too bad! Haha We actually had an incredible fasting testimony Meeting. We had two African members bare incredible testimony and I had the opportunity to translate for them but the spirit was so strong. Then we have a member here from Albania and another one who is from Albania and served a mission in London and she speaks Italian so she translated his testimony into Italian. It was a worldwide fasting testimony meeting not to mention the American Missionaries and the three soon to be missionaries that bore their testimonies. The spirit was great and I think our investigators really felt the spirit. 

Afterwards we taught a lesson to the Albanian guy using the returned missionary as a translator. It was interesting, he's just here for work and will be going back but he misses the missionaries and asked if we could meet with him. 

Miracles happened last night, we taught the Restoration twice and ended up with two new investigators! Napoli is exploding and our Zone is taking off, we had 17 new investigators in just our District this week which is really impressive with literally everyone in vacation for the month of August! It's going to be a good week! We're at the big American base today bowling with some of the Americans that go to the Caserta Ward. Hope you all have a great week! 

Love,

Anziani Jacob Bellucci

Napoli! Transfer 10 Week 1!

I'm staying in Napoli for at least six more weeks! Im super excited to be staying, and my new companion is Anziano Jensen! 

So on Monday we did Zone Soccer and then emailed and everything, before P-Day ended we came home and showered and went back to the Church for Home Evening with our African friends. We didn't do a very good job of announcing it because just Richard came but it was so fun! We played Minute to win it games and it was a blast. We ate ice cream and then called it a night! 

We got our Transfer calls a little bit after we got home and we found out that Anziano Perfili was transferred to Catania! So he's headed back down to Sicily! So I am staying here in Napoli for at least another six weeks! My new companion is Anziano Jensen! I don't know if you remember him but I was his Zone Leader back in Bari and he was in Lecce. I got to do an exchange with him my firstTransfer there and he's a super hard worker so I'm excited for this Transfer! 

Tuesday morning was mostly packing and laundry for Anziano Perfili while I cleaned the house. We went and visited some people so he could say goodbye and then we met the other missionaries at the Church to say goodbye to some of them and then we were invited to lunch by an English Course Student named Mario! He invited us and the Napoli C Elders, we went over to his house and he hooked us up so well! We ate so much food! He started with classes mozzarella di bufala which is mazzarella made with buffalo milk... so good. And then baked gnocchi in a red sauce... gnocchi are potato pasta and they are so filling and heavy, he bought two and a half kilos and we were all so full! Sausage and roasted veggies for round three, followed by watermelon and then of course gelato. I wanted to die afterwards. Mario is the best, he has known missionaries for the better part of 20 years, the Church used to be underneath his apartment. He knows all of the doctrine, comes to Church almost every week and all the members know him. He explains our doctrine to English Course Students and even in Sunday School he participates and contributes... he's just not willing to be baptized yet... in his own time! Anyway it was a great lunch with him and then we came back, did language study and did some finding before English Course. We had quite a few people come to English Course, being the summer there really aren't a lot of people around so I was happy with the amount that came. Fabiola came too so it was good to see her! 

So Anziano Pesci got transferred to the promised land of Cagliari... so lucky! So he as well as two other Elders were flying to Sardegna from Rome so they left Wednesday to head up to Rome so they could make their flight on Thursday. Anziano Fryer and I made Tiramisu for District Meeting on Wednesday morning and we also made spring rolls which are hecka good! We had a little mini DM and then put them on their train! Wednesday night we set up pizza night with all our of the youth and the young adults, we ended up being just a few of us but it was fun anyway! I got half of a Nutella pizza... they're so good! But they hurt my teeth they're so sugary! It was a good night for sure! 

Thursday Transfer day! We had a morning in the train station, I was there from 8:30-12:30... Anziano Perfili left somewhere in that block, along with Anziano Fryer and a bunch of others coming and going! My companion got in at a few minutes after 12 and we came home helped him get a few things unpacked and grab some lunch and went back to pick up two other missionaries at the train station. So we as Zone Leaders get a travel matrix that shows the arrival and departures for all the trains  and travel plans for the mission. I saw a train with two of our missionaries coming in at 15:25 and I looked at the arrival board and it wasn't there... I looked back at the matrix and saw that it was a flight coming in from Cagliari and we were at the train station and not the airport and we travel without phones... their flight landed in two minutes! Oops! So I grabbed Anziano Jensen and we busted to find the bus to the airport and made it there to see two Anziani sitting on the curb waiting for us! Haha but the point is they made it right!?!? My bad...

We showed all the new missionaries what a real Napoli pizza is like and then did a little street finding until English Course! Had a great time with some great people! I got to teach Advanced Course which was great, we talked about going to the beach seeing as that's where everyone is these days! It's funny the verb for "To make out" in Italian is "Limonare" and the word for lemon is limone and I said I love to bring lemonade to the beach and they all started making fun of me haha it was funny! 

Friday was weekly planning and a little mini grocery shopping trip, we made some great plans for the next week. I really hope we have a great week here! Anziano Jensen likes to cook and he has the metabolism of I don't even know what but he's pretty skinny and he pretty much eats whatever he wants! He offered to make me lunch and he made a homemade besciamella with mozzarella cheese in it and that pasta was so good I could feel myself gaining weight! At least it was good though, right?!?! After lunch we went to visit Ermando the guy we met last week and then over toVincenzo's to visit with him. Vincenzo is so great, he has a testimony of Jesus Christ as big as the day is long and he loves the scriptures and he loves to talk to us. We can go over there and he will just go off about how people don't follow the scriptures, they don't understand the doctrine that Christ gave and he's gained a real respect for us because we share so much in common with him. We have to get him to understand the authority principle but he's such a great guy! And he loves his family so much, we walked in to his shop and he said "Anziano Bellucci, I have to show you, I took more pictures of my kids!" he's a proud Dad of a two year old girl and a two month old baby boy that he loves to show off.

After visiting Vincenzo we went white Boarding with the other two companionships and showed them what Napoli magic is like! How nice the people are here and it went really well. We had to switch where we were going because they shut down one of the Metro stops because they found a backpack and they suspected a bomb so we ran into a little problem there but the night turned out really well. We had some awesome conversations and got a few people's numbers. 

Saturday we had a great day, we went and did a good amount of finding in the morning, we tried to swing by some less actives while we went from place to place and then when we got home we were making lunch and a guy that we called last week called us back and said "How did you get my number? Let's meet up, I want to know who you are!" So we met up with him and it was a little sketchy at first but we met him in the Church and he was really able to feel the spirit and it was a great lesson. We're hoping to see him this next week. So there is this family in the Branch the Borelli family and Sister Betty the Mom is the Gospel Principles teacher. She has a son serving a mission in London, a daughter that left like two months ago to serve in Brazil and they invited us over to watch her youngest daughter Joele open her mission call! It was great and she invited a group of non-member friends to come and watch and so it was an awesome missionary opportunity for us. She opened her call to the Leon France mission and she will be working in Switzerland as well! We're really excited for her! She leaves in September so they will have all three of their kids on missions at the same time! Crazy! Watching her open her call brought me back so many memories! 

Sunday was interesting... I was exhausted by the time we got home. I began translating Sacrament Meeting into English and then Sam our Ward mission leader was assigned to give a talk but he only speaks Italian so I had to switch my brain and go stand at the pulpit to live translate his talk into Italian and then switch back to translating into English. I'm sure there was smoke coming out of my ears! Everything else went really well in Church, none of our investigators came but there's still hope for next week! 

We went and saw Noemi our Recent Convert in the evening. We usually meet her with another Philippino Sister and she's always been opposed to us come over to her house. But we convinced her! She has a very humble home, it's just one room and a bathroom but we were really happy we got to be there and bring the spirit to her home. It was a great lesson and Anziano Jensen knows like two phrases in Tagalog and so they fell in love with him right away! We made a lunch appointment to eat some food from the Philippines! 

We finished the night off with some white Boarding in Centro and talked to so many good people! Unfortunately as August approaches we hear a lot of "We'll come in September" all of Italy goes on Vacation in August, literally everything shuts down so it could be a rough month but we're still going to work hard! 

Little overview of my companion! He's from Pleasant Grove Utah, he likes Shakespeare and Johnny Cash... he is a theater and debate geek and rocks it. Haha He smiles all the time and he's always super happy! He's a few transfers younger than me so that makes me the oldest in the District... I don't know how that happened, I just got to Italy like last week! 

I love you all, I hope you have a great week! 

Elder Jacob Bellucci