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