Cosenza Transfer 13 Week 3

Luke 2:11-12,14

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

It’s Christmas! What a great time to be a missionary and what better message to share than the message of the restored Gospel! He lives! If it wasn’t for the events of Easter we wouldn’t celebrate the birth of Christ so in this next week I would encourage you all to think about what Christmas means for you. Why do you celebrate Christmas?

Alright on with the week... once again it flew by! 

Monday night we had some good finding going on! We are still trying to #LightTheWorld or #SiiUnaLuce so we spent some good time on the streets just talking it up about Jesus!

Tuesday morning we had some errands for Zone Conference to do and then we got in the car to head to Taranto! We picked up the Anziani from Catanzaro on the way and had a pretty uneventful almost 3 hour drive to Zone Conference! When we got there we got the Chapel set up and then President and Sister Pickerd got there with the Assistants and we started interviews right away... then we planned our training with the Sister Training Leader Sister Barnes. It was a good day but we didn’t have much time to go finding or talk to people on the street so it was kind of boring. 

Wednesday was the conference and it went super good! Technology was not our friend though... it went well without it though. Anziano Ruiz and Sorella Barnes and I gave a training on leaving people with commitments, inviting people to change and how important it is. I got to share a little bit of my Mom’s conversion story which brought the spirit really well. I’ve been thinking a lot about my Mom’s conversion and where I would be if it wasn’t for some 16 year old Mormon boy that brought my Mom to Church. A lot of things would be very different! After the conference we did a nativity scene as a Zone... I was a sheep... it was hysterical and so much fun. We were also so blessed to have Sister Pickerd with us this round of Zone Conferences for the first time in like 6 months. She’s doing well and I’m so glad to have her back! She keeps President Pickerd on his toes! One of the families in our branch lives like an hour away from Cosenza and so we went to visit them on the way back from Taranto and I thought it was going to be just off the freeway but I was wrong... we ended up getting there at like 8:30 which is when we would have had to leave to get home on time. So we shared a quick thought and were on our way! 

We brought the Taranto Anziani home with us so we could do an exchange with them on Thursday. I got to work with Anziano Tucker which was way cool, the last exchange I did with them was like his fourth day in the mission and he had no idea what was going on back in Napoli. He’s much improved and doing really well, we went to the University and had some really cool conversations! Got some phone numbers and then we went back to Cosenza, grabbed the other Anziani and went to Sorella Spizzirri’s house for lunch! It was pretty good, Italians like to cook with pumpkin so they made this risotto with pumpkin 🎃 and then like a roast with some dang good sauce. We laughed a ton and had a really good time. Then we read the nativity story together. Finished off the day with some finding and a bomb lesson with one of our Investigators Nelson and then panzarrotti (pizza rolls) from this ghetto shack! 

Friday was taking the Anziani to the train station bright and early and then weekly Planning, we went to do some service for a member and carried a new closet thing upstairs. We took some cool pictures while we waited for her. Anziano Ruiz made us a bomb ragù for lunch and then I was dead tired... I haven’t taken a nap in like 4 transfers but I snoozed for 20 minutes before jumping back in to the work. We brought Nelson some clothes so he could come to Church with us yesterday and then we did some more #LightTheWorld finding! 

Saturday we did some finding and made some homemade chocolate chip cookies for the Christmas lunch yesterday at Church. We also went and saw Sister Filipelli who is now in the hospital. We gave her a blessing and she was really happy to see us. We did some more finding and that was the day.

Sunday was ok, we went to get Nelson but he was “sick” and couldn’t come to Church. I was bummed... but the Heymans were visiting in our Branch yesterday because they called Anziano Heyman as a high councilor. It was good to see them, they’re pretty great! We had two of our 4 new Converts come to Church and we had a bomb lesson about the Book of Mormon and they were testifying to the investigator that was there and the spirit was so good! The lunch afterwards went pretty well, not very many people stayed around which was a bummer but little by little we’ll get there! We visited a couple of members in the afternoon and brought the sacrament to Sorella Filipelli in the hospital. 

Today we are doing some Christmas shopping for each other and then we are going over to Sister Spadafora’s house for some cooking lessons! I’m pretty stoked! It should be a lot of fun and she loves having us help! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week before Christmas, remember the reason for the season and share the light that you all have! 

Love,

Anziani Jacob Bellucci