Cosenza Transfer 12 Week 1

Transfers are in and as you can see above I had to leave behind my beloved Napoli! I was sooooooo sad! And I still kind of am but I know that it’s the Lord that leads this Church and the missionary assignments so I’m good with it!

Monday night we had a Family Home Evening with the Grandulli family and it ended up just being the parents and us. Genny (Short for Gennaro so it’s a dude) was working and their other son was at a friend’s house so we ate dinner with them and had some really good discussion about General Conference! They’re such a sweet family and I really enjoyed spending some time with them. Sister Grandulli made this olive red sauce for the pasta and it was so olivy! As my Mom knows I LOVE olives... not. BUT I ate it! Haha it was alright, I wouldn’t ask for it but it was good :)

As usual we got the call on Sunday night that I would be coming down here to Cosenza which is back in the Taranto Zone and it’s actually in the same District as Crotone so I’ll be able to go back and visit some of the people there! I am still a Zone Leader so I’ll get to go around and visit quite a bit of Calabria which I’m really excited for. Cosenza is a city in the mountains, it’s a lot bigger than Crotone but it’s a lot smaller than Napoli for sure! My new companion’s name is Anziano Youngblood and he’s a stud! He’s in Anziano Jensen’s group so he’s about three months behind me.

So Tuesday morning was quite a bit of packing, I printed a few pictures to give to people and tried to get a lot of it done in the morning. We went over to visit the Ariante family for lunch and we had a great time. Giuseppe leaves on his mission in I think two weeks so they were asking us all sorts of logistics questions for him. She made is this broccoli pasta with homemade noodles, it was way good! Fish and greens for round two and Cachi for dessert... that fruit thing that’s sooo good! They won’t be in season when my family comes to get me in May which is a bummer but they are so good! (Yes fruits actually have a season here... I will miss that!) we talked about General Conference with them as well and had a great discussion about giving our will to the Lord, how it’s important to keep the commandments and do everything that you should but if we don’t change our will as we do these things then we miss out on so many of the blessings that he’s ready to give us. So that’s my invite for you all is to think about your will or your desires and consider what you can do to align your will with that of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

We went home to work on some more packing for a few minutes and then went to English Course, it was really sad to leave everyone! I’ve made a lot of great friends in Napoli especially in our English Course, I will miss them for sure! Pictures were taken, goodbyes were said and it was a good night!

We had the Battipaglia Elders coming to our house on Tuesday because we went to Rome on Wednesday for a conference with Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles as well as Elder L. Whitney Clayton on the Presidency of the 70 and Elder Massimo DeFeo of the Europe Area Presidency, who is actually Anziano DeFeo’s Uncle who is Italian, as well as their wives. It was such a beautiful conference and it was so geared towards us as missionaries, making us feel inspired to go out and do the Lord’s work. It was also so cool to see how an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ acts outside of General Conference. They are so in tune with the spirit but they are also ordinary men like you and I. Yes they have a sacred calling but they are allowed to joke around and have fun and that’s exactly what they were doing. Elder Ballard talked about a Pentecostal like opportunity in our mission and how there are so many Italians that are waiting and ready to receive the restored Gospel. Elder DeFeo talked about how when the Lord says many he envisions millions. There are 10 stakes in Italy and there could be 100 within my lifetime but it’s going to take work to share the restored Gospel.

The conference only lasted about an hour and a half and afterwards we went out finding in Rome for about an hour and then we came back to get flu shots 😞 but it went okay 👌 We had a few hours before our train so we took some Pass along Cards and got off the metro near the Fountain of Trevi, took a few pictures and then headed to the train station. While we were waiting for the metro 🚇 we started to talk to this girl named Lucia, it turns out she works for the American embassy in Rome and so she speaks English pretty well! The metro was soooo full, three of them passed and there was no room to get a group of 17 missionaries on all together and so Lucia was like “Let’s walk, I’ll show you the way!” And so we did! It was really cool because we were going to meet a few of the Young adult members from Rome at the station and so we got to introduce her to them and the missionaries there too which was way cool! Other than that pretty uneventful ride back to Napoli except we got bumped up to First Class and they gave us snacks... haha (It’s the little things in life) I had to get one last Napoli pizza but I wasn’t very hungry so I split one with Anziano Compas.

Transfer day went well! I need to get rid of some stuff though because my bags are WAY too heavy! The train followed the coast and so there was a beautiful view of the sea. Anziano Youngblood picked me up and we drove back to Cosenza (I’m back in a car city!) I got unpacked and we did a little trip around the city on foot talking to people about the Book of Mormon and then we had English Course. Our English Course is like 10 old people so we’re going to be working on that! We gotta get it pumped up. We had fun though, I taught basic course.

Friday we had missionary leadership council over skype and it went really well. The Sisters that I came to Italy with go home this Transfer in like a month which is so sad but they shared their testimonies at the end. After that I realized that there was no information in our area Book... apparently the missionary I replaced didn’t like to put anything in and Anziano Youngblood’s tablet has been broken. So we spent the morning getting that up to date. PB&J for lunch and then weekly Planning in the afternoon followed by some solid finding. We stopped this couple and she was like “I’m Christian, he’s Muslim, we just don’t talk about religion, try someone else.” With the help of the Spirit and some sweet talking we were able to share a video with them and leave her a Book of Mormon. Just goes to show how important it is to make them reject you twice before accepting it.

Saturday we went to Sister Spadafora’s house and she is the best! She literally bakes all the time and she makes us homemade peanut butter... we did some service  cleaning up her yard and outside her house. I asked her how long she’s been a member and she started in on the story. She told us her life story and how she came to know the Church. It was absolutely beautiful and the spirit was super strong!

There is a huge American like a University here and so we went to do some English  Course publicity but turns out Saturday is not the day for the University... so we came home, ate lunch, made brownies and went to Crotone for a baptism! It was so cool, we went early so I could introduce the Anziani there to some of the people I taught while I was there and it was so cool to be back! I got to say hi to a lot of members and non members which was really nice. The Branch is still struggling but it will get better! There is a senior couple there helping out and they are doing a great job. I think the baptism really got them excited which is good!

Sunday was Church of course which was really nice, it was nice to feel really useful during Church. I said the opening prayer, blessed the sacrament, gave one of the talks, team taught Sunday School with my companion and translated Priesthood! Church can be exhausting sometimes but it’s always so good!

We did some finding and then we were about to head home and I saw this guy that I had seen on a bench following us and so I turned around and asked him a question and it turned out he was going through a really hard time and he just felt like he needed to talk to us. We were able to teach him the Restoration and we’re going to teach him again on Wednesday!

The apartment here in Cosenza isn’t the best but worse is how gross it was... so we spent the morning cleaning. It was really rewarding though because it looks so good now and I’m definitely happier! We went grocery shopping and it’s been raining all day so I don’t think we are going to do much else, just relax!

I hope you all have a great week! Remember to continue going over The addresses from General Conference, they’re all available in lds.org! Love you!

Anziano Jacob Bellucci