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