Ostia Transfer 15 Week 6

This last P-Day was so fun! We went to Villa Borghese Which is a pretty famous park in Rome, it’s about half the size of Central Park and we played frisbee with pretty much the whole zone! It was a blast and this kid that is studying abroad came up and heard us speaking in American English and he joined us. Then we came back to Ostia to email before heading to dinner with the Cavallos’. We had some time before dinner was ready and so we played with these block things and Abraham who is 4 years old had so much fun destroying everything I made!

Tuesday was District Meeting! Sister Adams finishes her mission today so she gave the training to share her wisdom with us. She did a great job! We talked about being successful missionaries and feeling the spirit as we work. I think she really helped our district to feel successful. Then we took some funeral pictures (When missionaries finish their mission we say they “die”) We did the stacked chairs but I couldn’t sit on mine because the chairs would fall when I sat in them because it was too high! We photo shopped it though so it’s fine. I made some real good chocolate chip banana bread... the first batch I cooked in our apartment, our oven is broken though so you can’t adjust the temperature it’s just like 450 or nothing so it burnt but was raw in the middle. So I made another batch and we baked it in the Church during District Meeting. It was to die for... (Pun intended... get it because Sister Adams is dying!) Then we grabbed some kebab before we started our exchange with the Ladispoli Anziani! This time I went to Ladispoli with Anziano Dunn. We had a good time! We ate some kumquats off a tree, went and played catch with a football downtown and we got some people playing with us. We actually got some of their numbers so that was cool! Had English Course and got pizza after!

Wednesday we went finding and there was not a soul on the streets. It was pretty rough but we made the best of it! Came home had lunch and got on the train back to Ostia! Anziano Empey and I did some studies and hit the streets again before heading to dinner with the other Cevallos family! Sister Cevallos is back from Ecuador and she brought so much food back! So much candy and goodies, she stuffed us! They were pretty good for the most part... some of them weren’t my favorite but they weren’t too bad! We did the pictures with the white board with them too which was really good. 

Thursday we had a lot to prep for the activity! We went and got the Church set up in the morning, got decorations and stuff hung up/made. We them did some finding before lunch. We are real quick and then did our language and companionship study before heading back to the Church. I made strawberry shortcake for the Activity and we finished getting everything ready. This was a culture night so the members are from all over the world, we have a lot of South Americans and different places in Europe and then us in America. It went off so well, we had so much fun and there were a lot of people. The American family from Idaho came and made “Funeral Potatoes” and they were sooooo good! They’re just like a cheesy potato casserole but they’re really good. Unfortunately none of our investigators came :( 

Friday we headed to Campo Di Carne to visit Sister Gallé and do some yard work! It was fun, her driveway is like a criss-cross pattern with just dirt in between so there are these little squares with giant weeds. I would probably hit the whole thing with some round-up and call it a day but we dug out each hole individually pulling out the weeds for about two hours. I actually enjoyed it but by the end my knees were done! Then we had lunch, she made ravioli that were sooo good! Headed back to Ostia and had a pretty normal evening... almost. It was raining... again. We went to visit a member and her son. We were setting up her phone so she could watch General Conference. Her husband is totally against the Church and he came in and started screaming at us and kicked us out! It was really intense! 

Saturday was kind of a weird day because today we don’t really get a preparation day because of the service activity. So we had to go grocery shopping and I had to take my pants to the seamstress to get the giant hole sewed from when I jumped the fence a couple weeks ago :/ We did do some finding along the way though. Searched for some white eggs so we could dye them for Easter. All eggs are brown in Italy. There’s this place under our house that sells white eggs so fortunately we didn’t have to search too hard! Saturday afternoon we got to watch conference! We met before and made homemade pizza with the Sisters. It was actually really good! We have to work on our dough stretching technique though... Conference was great! We were so excited for the solemn assembly and the calling of two new apostles.i know that President Nelson is a prophet of God, and I know that Elder Gong and Elder Suares are called of God to be Apostles. 

So much food was eaten on Sunday. So. Much. Food. We started off going t9 the Church to watch the Saturday afternoon and priesthood sessions. They were so good as well! I think the change in Priesthood quorums will be really beneficial in Italy to unite the different age groups. Then we got picked up by Davide a member and we went to the Modugno’s house! We played archery with little rubber arrows while they continued to cook. She made the best homemade lasagna, homemade including the noodles... best lasagna I’ve ever had in my life. It actually wasn’t the biggest lunch ever but the desserts were plentiful! So much chocolate I thought I was going to die. Then they brought us to the train station so we could head to the Cevallos’ again. We watched the Sunday morning session with them and then ate a huge Ecuadorian dinner! I couldn’t even tell you what it was, other than that is was like a chowder with everything Ecuadorian you could possibly imagine! 

That was the week! I hope you all enjoyed Easter and were able to watch General Conference! It’s so amazing! If you haven’t seen it or you want to listen to a prophet speak go to LDS.org and you can rewatch the sessions under the tab “General Conference.”

Have a great week!

Love,

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

P.S. Today we are doing a huge service project so I will be emailing tomorrow morning probably not tonight!