Cosenza Transfer 12 Week 5

Walking, bomb lessons, and now I’m sick... but probably one of the most successful weeks in my mission!

Monday evening was still a little slow... we still had our toes wrapped up and a sandal and it was pouring rain but we tried to go and visit this family. Apparently his wife is still in Sicily which is what he’s told us every time we go... but this time she said that she comes back on Saturday so we’re going to go over tonight and try again!

Tuesday was better, we took the huge wrappings off our toes and just put a nice little bandage on so we can be a little more normal! Actually put a shoe on and it wasn’t too bad. We went around to a bunch of the cafes and bars (bars in Italy are like cafes not like bars in America) and asked to out io English Course Posters. It was actually really cool, we had some good conversations with some of the people that were working and this one little miracle. This one guy was just being a jerk and basically telling us to go you know where... and this guy was getting a coffee and he was like “Follow me, you can put a couple up in my restaurant while you tell me who you are!” It was a solid morning! In the afternoon we did a little bit of finding and Anziano Youngblood stopped this couple and they knew the missionaries from when they lived in Gela which is a tiny city in Sicily and there are no missionaries there anymore so they lost contact with them. They have 8 kids... how cool would it be to teach a family of 10! Then we finally got to meet with Francesco before English Course. He’s a super cool guy, he’s 40 years old and a pediatrician and he speaks English pretty well. We taught him the beginning of the Restoration and it went pretty well, he asked a lot of questions. Then at Corso we had a bunch of new people finally so I was pretty stoked!

Wednesday was cool, we had District Meeting over skype this week which actually worked out pretty well, it’s still not like being in person but it’s good because it takes 4 hours in travel round trip for us but this week we were able to go out and do some finding after which was nice. Then lunch and everything and in the afternoon we were supposed to meet up with some of the African New Converts here but they didn’t show up... grrr... then we had dinner with this couple Simone and Roberta... Simone is from the North but he served his mission here and met Roberta. They got married in July so they’re pretty newly weds! We had a really good time, ate dinner and shared a cool thought from Alma 5:26 about repentance and sharing the feelings we’ve felt with others, inviting them to invite others to come to the Activity next Saturday!

Thursday was pretty full as well, we spent the morning doing some service with one of the members to organize the storage room in the Church and then organizing for the Activity. I accidentally wrote October on all the invitations so I had to print them out and cut them up again! Went to this neighboring city called Rende and we found this huge outdoor market and talked to some cool people. Then we talked to this lady that said “I know someone who is Mormon “Simone and Roberta!” What a coincidence! She gave us her number and so hopefully we can meet with all of them together! After lunch we met up with this guy named Massimiliano and he only had a few minutes so we set up an appointment for Friday saying he had read the Introduction of the Book of Mormon but he didn’t understand much. Then we had a bomb lesson with Francesco again and finished the Restoration. He said he would read the Book of Mormon and then he sent us a text that said “I started reading your book today!” We had English Course and for the spiritual Thought I noticed that there were a bunch of new people and so I decided to do a little Church Tour and it was so good! People asked questions and said they would like to come sometime.

(Anziano Anderton says “Ciao”)

Friday was a Mormon of getting stuff done! We started by taking our car to get new tires and everything went well... except the credit card didn’t work! Haha it all worked out though. Then we headed to the city offices to try one more time to get the permission to do street displays... person wasn’t there so we left it with the secretary, we’ll see what happens! Then we went to the University to see if the teacher we had talked to could help us. The head of the English Department emailed us back and basically said it’s a complicated process to get a University club and that she wasn’t willing to work with us. Kind of disappointing but we will still do something! In the afternoon we had such a good lesson with Massimiliano. He understood so well and was explaining our doctrine back to us. He asked us when we could meet again and he said maybe next time we could meet with his family! Then the coolest thing happened... remember that couple with 8 kids? Well we went over to their house and it turns out all 8 kids, the parents, three spouses of the children and 5 grandchildren all live in the same house! You do the math but there was a ton of people there and it was craziness! They are a pretty poor family and they don’t have a lot, kind of stuck in the cycle of poverty but we are going to try to teach the parents and see what we can do to help them! We were able to share a little spiritual, we talked about prayer as a family and set up an appointment to come back.

Saturday we weekly planned and then in the afternoon had a lesson with a less active and then we got to visit Emilio and read the Book of Mormon and it was really nice, he would stop and explain what he was reading and ask questions and the spirit was definitely there!

Sunday was really good, we had a really nice Church Meeting and then we went and visited a few members who didn’t come to Church today... we had some really good gospel discussions and most of them didn’t come for legit reasons but it was a solid day finished with finding and studies!

This week I really felt the blessings of our members at the temple we saw so many miracles and so many blessings! If you have the possibility to go to the temple, get there as often as possible and as often as you can! I love you all!

Love,

Anziano Bellucci