Cosenza Transfer 12 Week 3

Trains, Rome, and lots of errands...

This week was a good week of reflecting for me, I thought a lot about the future, what I’ve done in my mission thus far, what I would still like to accomplish, and how I’ve changed. It’s been really good, and I’ve felt Heavenly Father’s presence a lot as I’ve been thinking.

I’ve also been thinking about all the things that will be weird to me when I come home because I’m so used to Italy. I was thinking about taking a train from Logan to Ogden the other day and that made absolutely no sense!

Monday was pretty chill, after P-Day we did some finding and then drafted a letter to the English Department at the University.

Tuesday (Happy Halloween!!!) we had Mission Leadership Conference over skype at 9 AM but they had told us that it was going to be at 8 so we were up and ready to walk out the door at 7:15 when they called and said it wasn’t until 9! It was really good, this last month our mission had 17 baptisms and 329 new Investigators so we are almost to our goal of 20 baptisms and 350 new Investigators. As a council we decided to leave the same goals and push ourselves to hit it! So we made cookies for Lina one of the members here and she brought us our container back with homemade chocolate chip cookies! You could tell she lived in America for a while, they were so good!

We went and met with the Lopez Family, Sister Lopez had to go get one of their friends daughters from school and so she came back and we were talking about Alma 5:26 and talking about receiving their testimonies and if they still feel now the same way that they did 30 years ago when they were baptized. Their friends daughter Maria Francesca was listening, she’s 15 years old. She asked us what s Temple was and we started talking about Eternal Families and the spirit was so strong! She kept asking questions about what you have to do to go to the temple and she just kept saying “Che bello!” (How beautiful!) I really hope to start teaching her and her family! We tried to get a permit to do street show like the sheet and chalk thing and they sent us all over the place. We talked to 7 different people in 4 different buildings... we have to try again on Thursday because they’re closed. After lunch and studies we went tire shopping... one of our tires is pretty much straight bald... they’re getting changed this week! Snow tires so we can legally drive through the mountains to get to District Meeting. We taught about Halloween at English Course, Halloween exists here but it’s very small... pretty much just the night of the 31st, there’s no real parties, only the kids dress up... we had fun though!

Wednesday was a bunch of errands in the morning, ran home and I made 🌮 tacos for lunch that were pretty good! We got all of our stuff together and then drove about 40 minutes to Paola and jumped on the train to Rome for the mission tour! We pulled into Rome at about 6:30 and headed to the mission home. They had some sandwiches for us and then we hit the streets to do some finding! There’s a missionary in Cagliari in the same companionship that I was trained in that’s in his 2nd Transfer and his name is Elder Empey. He has a super similar story to the Elder Empey that served in NY! He’s a Convert, has almost graduated college with his accounting degree and now he’s on a mission! We got along really well, he’s a cool guy.

Thursday was the mission tour! We woke up at like 4;30 to get showered and leave by 6:30 to make it to the Church on the other side of Rome! All went well and the conference started on time! #ModernMiracle

The conference was great, Elder Engbjerg (I think that’s how you spell that but it’s pronounced Ingbeow) was the visiting General Authority. He was the only new Area 70 called in this last General Conference so this was his first mission tour! He and his wife are both from Copenhagen Denmark and they speak English very well! They shared so many faith promoting stories and it was super uplifting. One of my favorite things that we talked about was the idea of ministering to the one. He shared Elder Bednar’s song “One by One” which we sang for Elder Bednar about a year and a half ago in the MTC! This time it was a rendition done by Paul Cordell and sung by Nathan Pacheco, it’s sooo good! You should all check it out, you should be able to find it on YouTube.

It was great to see President and Sister Pickerd as well. Sister Pickerd is doing well, she’s so strong and is still doing so much for us even though she is going through chemotherapy. After the conference we had a few minutes to socialize and then everyone but he Zone Leaders and Sister training leaders headed out to go back to their areas. We were staying another night in Rome for a missionary leadership council with the area 70. So they had us go out and do a gesso in Rome. We had a pretty big group so we split into two but we were still pretty big! We had some really good success and I talked to this family that were so open to learning more and we all had a lot of good contacts come out of it. We packed up and headed back to the mission home for dinner. We had salad, lasagna, and gelato! Classic mission home dinner! Then it was off to bed!

Friday was the MLC and it was different than anything I’ve ever done. He gave us three questions to respond to

What did you learn from this conference?
What are you going to do differently as a leader because of this conference?
What have you learned from President and Sister Pickerd that you are going to take with you for the rest of your life?

He put the song one by one on repeat for about 10 minutes and he told us to just listen the first time through and listen to the promptings of the spirit to help us answer these questions, then the rest of the time to write them down and answer them.

Then for the next hour and a half or so we went around and each took a few minutes to share our responses. The spirit was so strong and I think the last question was really meant to help President and Sister Pickerd. They were both pretty emotional but I think it was a good experience. I know I’ve learned so much from both of them, it was hard to choose what to share!

They closed the council sharing some final stories that really showed the power of ministering to the One, just as Christ did.

Afterwards we grabbed a sack lunch and headed for the train station for our train at 2:30... it’s a long train ride. We pulled into Paola at 8:15. Then the drive home put is at 9 and we grabbed a kebab on the way home,  to sure if we were more tired or hungry...

Saturday! We had to do our weekly Planning in the morning and it took a little longer than we anticipated but it was good. I made lunch and Anziano Youngblood rearranged things in our apartment. Haha it looks better now though, I like it.

We did some finding in the evening, I saw this really cool Fiat 500 from who knows what year but it was old and tiny. I asked if it was one of the guys standing around it and he told me I could take a picture and then we ended up teaching one of them named Rinaldo. We taught a good amount of the Restoration and he said he didn’t want to give us his number but that we could meet again in the same spot. :/ We said a prayer with him on the street and there were tears in his eyes. He said he was going to go home and tell his wife he had met some of the Lord’s servants and he felt so much better. #OneByOne

Sunday was beautifully hysterical. So not much happened before Church, we were getting the translator hints ready and Anziano Youngblood was wearing a suit from the dead closet (A closet in missionary apartments where people leave stuff they don’t want) well the missionary he got it from had some much smaller legs... he went to put the translators on the floor in the Chapel and he bent down and wrrrrrriiiiippppp! He split his pants from knee to knee crotch and everything... 2 minutes before Sacrament started! We stayed long enough to take the sacrament and then we booked it home (through downtown Cosenza) to change. Many people saw a lot more of my companion than they wanted to... so funny.

The Lopez family invited us to lunch along with the two high councilmen that were visiting from Taranto and Bari. It was great, so they have two foster daughters and they’re super nice. They grew up in a convent so they talk to us like we’re nuns. In Italian there are two ways to say “you” depending on if you are talking to one person or more than one. It’s like in English we say “You Guys” or “y’all” well instead of saying “Come stai?” For “How are you?” Or even “Come sta?” Which is the respectful form they say “Come State?” Which is like “How are you guys?” When they’re just talking to one of us... it’s funny. They’re 12 and 14 so I picked on them for it... haha

We got to go see Prince and Comfort and their two kids Desmond and Marvelous... (Yes they are African...) and we read the story of Enos from the Book of Mormon. 8 gave Desmond (3) my iPad with the drawing app open and he drew on it for like 2 seconds and then found the music app and started playing The Nashville Tribute while we were trying to read. I got him to give it back to me and I pulled the “Look at that!” And then stuck it behind my back... he looked back at me and his eyes got real big and you would have thought I just kicked a puppy... he looked at me like I had crushed his world and then he cried. It was sad. My children are going to live like the Amish, no technology! Haha

Ok I’m going to stop writing because this email is way too long and I’m real sorry about that! Today has been chill, third week in a row that it was poured on P-day so not really much to do :( Next week we are going to do something fun though!

Have a great week, I love you all!

Anziano Bellucci