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 ;)
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
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