Cagliari Transfer 2, Week 6!

Ciao raggazzi!

Hey ya'll it's your Italian missionary here! It's been another pretty

great week here in Cagliari and I'm a little sad that I will most

likely be losing my companion next week :( Transfer calls are next

week and so we are both super bummed! But I am also super excited to

be getting a new companion! I hope we get along as well as Anziano

Segura and I have!

One of the things that we did this week that I really enjoyed was on

Wednesday night. We set up a movie night with the youth and the young

single adults and some of our investigators to watch the movie "17

Miracles" and we bought popcorn and Aranciata (Fantaish) and the

sisters made banana bread and we had about 20 people come! It was

really cool!

For those of you who do not know the movie is about a handcart company

that traveled to Salt Lake City from Nauvoo in the 1800's. They were

being persecuted in the East and needed to escape and had to do so in

the Winter. They fought many hardships and many many people died, but

they recognized 17 incredible miracles that showed they were doing the

right thing in following the direction of the Prophet. These people

suffered so many hardships, many froze to death, others starved and

others got sick and suffered for weeks before passing away. But it was

their knowledge of the Plan of Salvation that helped them to persevere

and make their way to the Salt Lake Valley. It was also their faith

that helped them to know that their families would be blessed for

doing what the Lord had asked. This was a really good time for

reflection for me on the amount of faith that I have. The decision to

serve a mission was obviously not easy. However, I have plenty of

food, health care, and as I write this email on an iPad I understand

how blessed we are to be missionaries now and not pioneers 150 years

ago. Our faith can be measured by our action. So my invitation to you

all this week whether you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints or not is to reflect on your own faith and see

how much faith you really have! Maybe you will surprise yourself,

maybe you will find some room for improvement! Then take that faith

and put it into action. Ask the missionaries for a copy of the Book of

Mormon and write your testimony in it and prayerfully choose someone

to give it to. If you aren't a member of the church but would like to

learn more talk to my family and get a Book of Mormon from them and

read it! If you haven't read your own copy of the Book of Mormon in a

while pull it out and blow the dust off and search for some answers

and remember the promise in Moroni 10:

3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if

it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember

how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the

creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these

things, and ponder it in your hearts.

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye

would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these

things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with

real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it

unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

God will answer! He always does, not in our own time but in his! So

there's my little plug for missionary work! Just as I'm out here in

Italy there are missionaries in every one of your hometowns looking

for people to invite unto Christ, give them a hand! 😃😃😃

On Thursday morning we went to this park and we saw this cave so we

thought we would check it out. Turns out they had turned it into a

museum. The cave was man made and housed many people during the Second

World War. Like I said it is now a museum and art gallery. It's free

and open to the public and we talked to the lady that was working

there and she was super nice. She said she was atheist which most

people I have noticed here don't really understand. They say atheist

when they mean agnostic... So after she said she was atheist I said

"So you don't believe in God?" And she said "Well of course I believe

in God I just don't believe in any one Church." AKA Agnostic... But

she was really nice and said that she would love to attend our English

Course!

Saturday we spent the morning baking... Well I baked and my companion

made phone calls. We have been going through our area book and calling

people who have been interested in the past and so he made a lot of

phone calls while I made banana bread and homemade brownies! They both

turned out really well and we brought them to our investigators and

the families that we home teach! They were all so impressed that we

could cook haha apparently the young kids in Italy aren't interested

in cooling especially the guys (Ragazzi) we had some really nice

visits especially with our less active families that we home teach!

Sunday is always a wonderful day! Sorella Cabras actually called us on

Saturday and said that the Ravioli we had last time was store

bought... I wasn't even mad because they were soooo good anyway! But

they had spent Saturday evening making homemade pasta and homemade

ravioli for us! Some of them with just normal ricotta cheese filling

and others had spinach in them! They were so amazing and they had

lemon in the filling which was really different but definitely a

positive thing! So I was excited for Pranzo all the way through

Church.

We had a really good Gospel Principles class on the role of members in

the Family. It was really interesting to liken our parents to our

Heavenly Parents and see how we as both Children of God and Children

of our wonderful parents should act in accordance with the Gospel. It

was also interesting to discuss how one day we will be parents and

should do so in harmony with the Gospel. It was a great day full of

the spirit. None of our investigators came to church after all of them

promised us they would but there's always next week right!

Today has been a really great P'Day! We were supposed to go hike this

trail called Devil's saddle but we took the wrong bus and ended up on

the other side of the peninsula. So instead we explored the ruins of a

bunch of old castles and bunkers and had a picnic with all the other

missionaries! It was really fun and the whole time we played the games

like "If Anziano Bellucci was a car what car would he be?" we decided

on the Porsche Cayenne... Which I am totally okay with! Parents if you

want to get me a car when I come home there's my top pick! Now it's

email time and we are chilling at the church and talking to our

families! Hope you all have had a wonderful week!

Love,

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

P.S. There's still the blog that Jill is doing and you can always send

me an email or a voice recording and I can look at them throughout the

week!

Cagliari Transfer 2 Week 5

What an incredible and spiritually exhausting week! The week went by
even faster than usual with an amazing trip to Rome from Wednesday to
Thursday! But before we get to that we had a really interesting lesson
on Tuesday!

We have an investigator that is struggling to keep some of the
commandments but he really wants to be baptized! He said "I want to be
baptized in the way that Jesus Christ was baptized" So we have been
working with him and he came to us and said that he had been
thinking... He said "There are other churches that will baptize you
without keeping these commandments so I was thinking maybe I could go
get baptized by them and then continue to study the Book of Mormon
with you and when I am ready to obey the commandments I will be
baptized in this church with the real authority. I would prefer to be
baptized here because I know this is the real church but I really want
to be baptized." It was a really cool experience as my companion and I
testified of 1: the authority that John the Baptist was given to
baptize Jesus Christ and 2: how keeping the commandments before
baptism is for our benefit. If we enter into that promise of baptism
without obeying the commandments we aren't holding up our end of the
deal. The promise is broken before it's even made! It's really
interesting, I have never desired something so much. More than
anything I look at my investigators and all I want while I look at
the, is for them to act in faith. I don't want them to be baptized, I
want them to have the same knowledge that I have of this Gospel and
that will lead them to want to be baptized. Everyone always says "You
will learn to love the people of your mission" I am starting to
understand that more and more everyday. I love the people of Italy!

That being said there is a stigma for European missions... Most
everyone I talked to about where I would be serving my mission said
"Well you'll plant a lot of seeds, but don't expect to baptize much"
or something to that effect. Which basically means no one is going to
accept the Gospel, you'll just be planting seeds for people to harvest
later. I wanted to share with you all that our mission last transfer
which is 6 weeks long had 16 baptisms! We are a European Mission and
we baptize! We are in the heart of Catholicism and we baptize! So I
want you to take two things from this... 1. Don't ever tell someone
that is going on a mission that they will not baptize or that they're
mission will be harder or easier than others. 2. In any given city at
any given time there are at least five people ready to receive the
Gospel and the invitation to be baptized. We just have to go out and
find them!

Public Transportation is useful but it's kind of annoying sometimes...
We took a bus, a train, a plane, another train, a subway and another
bus as well as walked about a kilometer to get to the Rome 6
missionaries apartment on Wednesday night! We left our house at about
3 PM and got to their apartment at about 10:30 PM and we were all
exhausted! Up and out of the house at 7 AM to head to the church where
the conference would be held. There were about 150 missionaries coming
in from allover the Southern half of the country. The day before they
had done a conference with the Sicily missionaries but the rest of the
mission was gathering in Rome! With 150 missionaries using public
transportation to the same place to be spiritual edifices Satan is
bound to try to mess things up! We made it to the conference just fine
but they shut the metro down at about 8:30... Leaving about 30
missionaries stranded in Rome without transportation in the pouring
rain. A few buses and some missionaries being shuttled in the mission
van later and all the missionaries arrived safely, some a little
soggier than others!

The conference itself was amazing! As always we were told to prepare
ourselves spiritually and bring questions that we want to be answered
by the spirit. President Keuron is the President of the Europe area,
he presides over the churches affairs in all of Europe and he is an
amazing man. A convert himself he loves missionary work! He was
baptized at the age of 26 and has been an incredible leader in the
church since then. The spirit was so strong in that meeting, all my
questions were answered in a matter of minutes when he began speaking.
He brought up three major points that I would like to share with you
because I think they can apply to all of us. The first is:

"Stop worrying, just work hard!" He said we see more and more
missionaries going home for anxiety and stress than almost anything
else. We don't have to know everything, we just have to work hard and
the Lord will provide. I think it's very similar in life, obviously we
have responsibilities that we have to worry about but most importantly
if we work hard, do what we are supposed to and are obedient, Jesus
Christ makes up the rest!

The second is to "Be the message!" Do people know immediately that you
are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? He
demonstrated this with a role play where he had two sister
missionaries approach him without smiling, without being excited and
it was not obvious that this message had changed heir lives so why
would he want to listen to it??? He then had them do it again with
smiles and excitement and a convincing message that we know this is
the true church! We need to be the message all the time whether we are
missionaries or not. People need to see the light of Christ in our
lives!

The third thing was to find strength in the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love each one of us, without a
doubt. When things get hard or difficult that is when we need to reach
out and lean on them.

So the conference was incredible and we're all on a little bit of a
spiritual high! We flew out Thursday night and our flight was delayed
so we didn't end up getting home until about 11... So tired.
Spiritually exhausted and physically exhausted from traveling!

Pretty low key weekend as we got back into the normal groove of things
and prepared for Sunday. We had a great Sacrament meeting and Gospel
Principles class and I even had enough energy to pay attention during
priesthood... I'm understanding more and more everyday and I'm
noticing that I have to think about it less and less as I listen to
people speak.

As always I hope you all have an incredible week! I can't wait to hear
all about it! Also I'm sending the pictures of when I went to the
Colosseum when I first got here! They will be on the photo stream so
Jill should have them up on the blog soon!

Love,

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

Cagliari Transfer 2 Week 4

Good morning America!


This week has been a whirlwind of travel and new cities and meeting
lots of people and so many blessings!

We started off the week with Family Home Evening in the park and only
three people came so it was kind of a bust but we had a good time
anyway and we decided to teach them how to throw a football which none
of them have ever seen before. Then we were playing catch and there
was a group of ragazzi (young people) behind me so I "accidentally"
let the football go behind me and into their group of people. I ran
over and they tossed it back to me and I asked them if they had ever
seen a ball like this and they all said no except one. He said C'è un
futbol americano! So I tossed it to him and he threw it back with
almost a perfect spiral. So we invited the group to come and play
catch with us, it was a lot of fun! So we've started carrying a
football around with us sometimes when we do finding and seeing who
will play with us! It's worked really well!

Tuesday we had our District meeting as usual with the Elders from
Oristano, we talked about how we were specifically called here for a
reason and that there are people that only we can help. It made me
think of a lot of missionaries that I know and have spent time with
over the years. Many of them have impacted my life so much and I know
that they were called to the New York Utica Mission to help me get to
where I am today. So shoutout to all the missionaries that helped me
from way back to Elder Clark and Elder Scott all the way up to Elder
Lamb and Elder Geilman, I love you guys! I hope to be able to help
people here in Italy have the same change of heart that I have had and
gain a testimony of the truth of this Gospel through the power of the
Holy Ghost!

After District meeting we went to McDonalds and as we were leaving
Anziano Larussa said "I forgot we have an investigator meeting us here
in Cagliari at 6 and we're supposed to be back in Oristano for English
course at 7... Anziano Bellucci are you up for a last minute scambio
(exchange)? How fast can you pack your stuff?" So I packed a change of
clothes and we hopped the next train to Oristano!

Oristano is beautiful, it's one of the smaller cities on the island
and its a little more out in the country so the train ride up was
beautiful for me, I finally got to get out of the city for a little
bit and see some of the country side. Olive trees are way prettier
than the way that olives taste... (which by the way olives don't taste
any better just because they're in Italy, still tastes like rubber, I
tried!)

We did English course and it was so fun! There was three people there
that were pretty advanced and then about five or six who barely knew
how to say hello... So I stood up after we prayed and said "Anyone who
wants an advanced course, come with me!" Because it's very difficult
to teach basic English in my opinion and when you do the advanced
class you mostly just talk with them! So I left Anziano Larussa with
the basic group and we went to another room. I had a such a good time
talking with them, and just like it's really good for me to hear
native Italians it's really good for them to hear native English
speakers so I spent a lot of time talking and telling stories. We had
a really good time and two of them asked me if I was going to be there
on Thursday... I had to tell them no but it made me feel good to know
that they enjoyed it!

The next day it was interesting to be in a different city with a
different companion, I felt more confident and ready to go to work
than I have felt the last few weeks. Anziano Larussa said that they
want to build their English course back up so we grabbed about 100
English course pass-along cards and we just went crazy and I felt so
confident and ready to talk, I was understanding and actually a couple
times when we were in the park we would split up and I would talk to
other people and I wasn't worried, I was understanding everything. The
gift of tongues is so real! We handed out about 75 of them in two
hours and we had to head back to Cagliari soon so that was the end of
it but I definitely had a lot of fun!

Back in the beautiful city of Cagliari! It's finally starting to cool
down a tiny bit... It's still really hot in the afternoons but it's
cooling down a lot at night and this week it rained quite a bit which
was nice.

One of the first families to be converted in Sicily is the Simoncini
family and they were baptized back in the 60's! They are serving as a
senior couple for the Rome mission and they are in charge of keeping
the missionary apartments maintained. They are super nice and brought
us lots of new stuff and installed some new appliances in our
apartment. Being from Sicily they speak almost zero English and their
accent from Sicily is ridiculous! When I talk to people here in
Sardegna I understand almost everything. When Anziano Simoncini talks
I get maybe every 10th word! Anziano Segura says all the Sicilians are
like that so I'm super glad to not be starting there! It would be like
trying to learn English in Dublin or something... I don't know how to
explain it but they slur their words together and it makes no sense to
me whatsoever!

Friday we had a great lesson with one of our investigators, she is the
referral from America that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. We have
been teaching her quite a bit and we felt like we should invite her
family to learn more about the church. She accepted the invitation to
talk to her family and invite them to learn more! It was a really
interesting lesson to me because I thought about the importance of
families in the gospel. One of the first points in the first lesson we
teach is that the Gospel Blesses families, and it's so true! The
Gospel brings families closer together and blesses our lives as we
strengthen our families!

Saturday we had a Pranzo appointment with this family that we have
been teaching, the wife is from the Philippines and the husband is
Italian. They are the nicest couple and we walk into their house and
there are ten place settings around the table. We both looked at each
other and Ruth came out and said, "we invited some friends, I hope
that's okay!" Which for missionaries is like a Heaven sent gift! We
got to share a spiritual thought with them and set up an appointment
to return and teach them more! Plus we got an awesome
Philippino/Italian meal! It started with Lasagna and then they did
this meat and vegetable stir fry type thing that was so good! Followed
by salad (it's still weird for me that they eat salad last) and then
this mint and coconut cake with gelato that we made with them! So
good...

This weekend was also stake conference! The Stake that we are in is
the Rome West, it covers part of the mainland and then all of
Sardegna. So the Saturday session was broadcast down here to Cagliari
but held in Sassari, the northernmost city in Sardegna. Then yesterday
everyone here met as a ward and they rented a tour bus to drive to
Sassari for the session. They had more people that wanted to go than
the bus would hold so the four of us missionaries drove our car the
three hours to Sassari! It was a really fun drive and made me miss
road trips! The conference was amazing, and President Pickerd and his
wife flew in to be a part of it, so we got to hear them speak as well!
As most of you know the Rome temple has taken way longer than
anticipated to be finished. The area leaders released a statement that
said "The Rome Temple will not be finished this year, but we as the
people need to be ready this year, and right now we aren't. The temple
will not be finished until we are ready" It was a huge call to the
members to get working on some missionary work. There are not enough
members here to keep this temple going once it's open, and missionary
work is the responsibility of members! We as full time missionaries
should be teachers and the members should be doing the finding! So my
invite to you all is to get out there and find someone you can share
the Gospel with! It's going to be a little awkward because you've
never done it before. But we have a promise from Heavenly Father that
if we open our mouths the Lord will fill them with the words we need.
So get out there and do some awesome missionary work!

Also my Mom says I should include some Italian vocab at the end of my
emails... Sooooo today's word is "mozza fiato" which means "breath
taking" hope that's useful! Haha

Until next week!

Anziano Jake Bellucci

I ate Homemade RAVIOLI

Forza Cagliari!

Another great week here in the beautiful land of Sardegna! It has been
sooooo humid though! I thought I knew humidity from the East Coast but
it's a little different when you don't have an air conditioned house
to go home to and dry out! We have been showering 2-3 times a day so
we don't smell and aren't dripping... I know gross. On top of that its
been in the high 90's so it's a real pleasant climate. One good thing
has come out of it though, I've learned how to sleep when it's really
hot and we bought fans for each of us so we can sleep with it pointing
right at us. I have been waking up at 5:30 every morning because we
sleep with our windows open... We live next to a market which I think
I told you all. The city workers don't seem to care what hour it is
they empty the huge glass dumpsters at 5:30 and there's like 10 of
them so it is sooo loud and not what you want to wake up to!

We're going to Sassari this weekend for Stake Conference which is on
the other end of the island so we're driving up Sunday morning and
coming back down that night so it will be a long day but it should be
fun!

We had an awesome Home Evening on Monday and we played the human knot
game to demonstrate how prophets guide us out of problems that we may
not fully understand or comprehend... It was a really great lesson
given by our sister missionaries! I added a lot of photos to the
photos treat so hopefully my wonderful sister will add those to the
blog :)

Tuesday in District Meeting I was asked to give the addestramento
which is like the training or spiritual thought and it's usually about
a half an hour long. I wasn't given a topic so I decided to talk about
relationships. Specifically our relationship with Heavenly Father and
Jesus Christ and how when we grow closer to them our relationships
with other people flourish and we all grow together. I outlined it
like a triangle with Christ at the top because he is omniscient and
omnipotent, he never moves or changes. Then we are in one of the
bottom corners and whoever we are talking about is in the other corner
whether it's your companion or your wife or your brother etc. As we
both grow closer to Christ we grow closer to each other and the
triangle gets smaller. We then had a group discussion on walking with
God and how we can grow our relationship with Jesus Christ to also
grow our other relationships! It was a really great discussion and the
spirit was so strong!

Wednesday we tried to do an activity with the youth and it actually
turned out pretty well! We met and played ping pong and fooseball
(which almost all of the churches in Italy have because their chapels
double as a cultural hall so they don't have basketball) and we
ordered pizza and played volleyball. In Italy putting pineapple on a
pizza is like the gravest of sins... You just don't do it, no one even
thinks of it because it's just or something you do. So we bought some
ananas (pineapple) and cut it up into little chunks and we made all of
the youth try it on their pizza and they were all freaking out and
calling us weird and saying "Che strano!" But we got each of them to
try it and they all said it wasn't bad! It would have been way better
if it was actually cooked in their pizza!

That's about all the exciting stuff that happened during the week but
now you have to hear about Sunday! So Sunday was really great! It was
fasting testimony meeting and the bishop in the ward has been working
on getting people to just bare their testimony instead of just telling
a story. Italians like to talk so it hasn't been easy but it was such
a good meeting. Everyone only spoke for 2-3 minutes so we got to hear
from a ton of the ward and the spirit was so strong! Plus one of the
first things you learn in the MTC is how to bare your testimony so I
understood everything! It was our companionships turn to teach Gospel
Principles so I was pretty excited! It brought me back to teaching in
Potsdam when I was in Hugh School. Next to being a missionary teaching
gospel principles was my favorite calling! Except there's an added
factor teaching here... A slight language barrier... So usually when I
speak in front of a group I give like a little disclaimer for the
language like "Please bare with me, I'm learning, be patient etc..."
But this time I just decided to go for it. The gift of tongues is
real! I for sure was not speaking perfect Italian and I messed up many
things but the spirit was there and all I had to do was try and it
went really well! The lesson was about obedience... It was a really
interesting lesson and I talked a lot about the promised blessings
like in D&C 82:10 "I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say but when
he do not what I say ye have no promise"

Pranzo... One of the first things I thought about when I opened my
mission call to the Great Italy Rome Mission was eating homemade
ravioli... Well my dreams have come true ladies and gentlemen.

ROUND 1! HOMEMADE RAVIOLI! It was so good! A little different than the
ones in America but mostly because they are just better! Don't worry I
got pictures!
Round 2! These giant steaks that they grilled on this open flame in
their house... It's what Italians call a barbecue and it's just
basically a fire place. Next time we go there I'll take a picture. We
ate so much meat though! I'll send pictures of that too! With lots of
home,are garlic bread which when they do it they put cloves of garlic
in the oil and let it sit to soak up the flavor then they pour it over
the bread and grill it... Heavenly.

Figs are amazing... They're in season right now so every time we go to
Pranzo at this families house they put a giant plate of them in front
of us. And apparently it's rude to not eat everything so we put them
down no problem. On Friday we were at a members house and they brought
out a plate of figs and we were eating them and Anziano Segura put
half of one in his mouth and his face went white and I looked at the
other half and it was FULL of worms... So gross! He already swallowed
it so it was too late! Worm cheese round two! The member said that the
worms they use to make he worm cheese are the same ones in the fruit,
yuck!

We also had a really good discussion on a couple things that people
like to find fault with in the church such as seventh day worship and
prophets. There is a really good story in Luke Chapter 16 about a rich
young man and a beggar named Lazarus.

19 ¶There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his
gate, full of sores,
21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table:
moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the
angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send
Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my
tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now
he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither
can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest
send him to my father’s house:
28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they
also come into this place of torment.
29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from
the dead, they will repent.
31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

The bible testifies that God will reveal nothing unto his children
save he reveals it through his prophets. Im so grateful to have a
modern day prophet and to be guided by Thomas S. Monson. Just thought
I would share that short little thought and remind you that GENERAL
CONFERENCE IS ONLY FOUR WEEKS AWAY! So make sure to tune in and make
it a priority! We are so blessed to be able to hear from modern day
apostles and prophets so do what it takes to get there and watch it!

Today has been a great P-Day! We got to go to a Cross-Fit gym this
morning to buy some T-shirts and it was really cool! It looked so
American! We then did a picnic with the Sister missionaries at this
new park we found and played some volleyball and ultimate football! It
was so fun! It was so nice to be able to relax with some awesome
people, it reminded me of some picnics and things that we did in
Logan. I love Logan and I miss it! But Italy is cool too... ;)

That's about it for the week! It's been another great one, I hope you
have a great week and remember how much I think about you all! Keep on
keeping on!

Love,

Anziano Bellucci

Cagliari Week 13

Good morning America!

This has been such a great week! I have had some great experiences and
Mom you'll be happy to know that I took a lot of pictures this week!

Good news, all the missionaries in Italy are safe from the earthquake
that happened earlier this week. Unfortunately it was a terrible
earthquake as I. Sure you've heard and over 290 people are dead. So
thank you for your prayers on behalf of the Italian people, i know
they are appreciated. We here in Sardegna didn't even know there was
an earthquake until we got an email from the mission president as well
as all the emails from back home about it.

Big news! We're going to Rome in a couple weeks! President Keuken is
the head of the European area of the church and he is coming to the
mission to give a training and they are flying all 16 missionaries in
Sardegna in for the conference! We're all pretty excited to go to the
mainland and to learn from our inspired leaders!

So Monday after we emailed we had Family Home Evening at the park with
quite a few people, it was super fun and my companion and I were in
charge. So we wanted to make it a little more fun and upbeat than
usual. For those of you that don't know the church has set aside
Monday nights as a night for all members to be with their families.
There are no church meetings and it leaves the evening open to spend
time together as a family doing what we call "Family Home Evening" or
"FHE" so every Monday night we get together in the "parca della
musica" to meet with the single members of the church as well as the
people that we are teaching so they can meet members and see what the
church is all a about... Families! Anyway, we decided that since we
are in the land of Gelato we would try to make some homemade ice cream
with everyone! So with some rocks alt, some ice (which is a giant pain
in the butt because if you can find bags of ice in Italy it's like 4-5
€ which is almost $6 for a tiny bag so with some Tupperware containers
and a hammer we made ice) some milk, sugar, and vanilla we attempted
ice cream! As we shook these bags everyone kept commenting on how cold
their fingers were and how it was almost painful because of how cold
it was. We brought a couple of towels but for sure not enough for
everyone. So we would let everyone use them one by one but only when
they would ask for it. At the end everyone enjoyed their ice cream and
said it was for sure worth it! We shared a scripture about being
patient in your afflictions and enduring to the end to get the
goodness and the sweet fruit of the gospel. We also tied into the
atonement with the towels, the atonement gives us relief from our
afflictions but only when we use it, only when we ask God for help! It
was a cool spiritual thought and a really fun activity!

Tuesday seems like a long time ago... We did a Family Home Evening
with the Cabras family, the one that always has us over for Pranzo
because they're amazing! So we were in charge of it and we decided to
do a little Fear Factor experiment... So we got ten little cups and
put a bunch of random little things in them. We had olive oil,
aranciata(like orange soda but way better), chocolate mousse, baby
food, fish paste, beans, lemon juice, and vinegar. Some good things
and some... Not so good. Everyone took turns, everyone else would look
at what was in each cup and then the person would have to choose a
cup. All the people who knew what was in each cup tried to get them to
choose a different one. Number 3! Number 7! We then likened it to the
Gospel and how Joseph Smith wasn't sure which church to join in 1820,
most of them taught good things and correct principles, some of them
were a little off (lemon juice) but they were all claiming to have the
truth and saying "Choose this church!" "No, choose our church!" But
none of us had the correct authority to tell them which was correct
but Christ does have the authority and so Joseph went straight to the
source and received his answer. Again another really cool lesson that
was simple and easy to understand.

Wednesday we planned an activity with the youth and the Young Single
Adults because they don't have a weekly mutual activity like the youth
in America do. We went bowling! It was a little bit different than in
America, the approach is shorter, the actual lane is shorter too and
no one in Italy really bowls so they aren't very good. Sorella
Hatfield won by a landslide with an 86 and I was second with a 75.
Anyway, we had a couple investigators come and it was really cool to
see the members bring them into their friend group and fellowship
them. We got index cards and drew bowling pins and a bowling ball on
one side and then the sister missionaries wrote a scripture on the
other side.

41 O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One.
Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is
narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper
of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant
there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he
cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name.

Creative way to stay on the straight and narrow and tie in a fun activity!

Thursday we got all our IKEA furniture! So we drive a Toyota Yaris...
And we have a lot of faith but we also had a lot of furniture... So we
got there and they brought out these two hugs carts with some big
boxes and I was with Anziano Chugg to pick it up and we both looked at
each other and said "There's no way that's going to fit in our car."
So we called Fratello Sanna who is an absolute Saint and he helped us
get the stuff home in his car and we spent most of the day putting it
together and getting our apartment organized. I'm pretty sure my
companion and I could work for IKEA, we are pros at putting together
closets and dressers. We did a little bit of finding and then English
course!

Friday turned into weekly planning, more furniture putting together
and a trip to the pizzeria down the street which is Heavenly. Side
note about pizza... They have like their individual pizzas bit then
you can go to all these pizzerias and get it by the slice. However,
their sliced pizza is like a sheet pizza that they cut into squares
and fold them in half and hand them to you wrapped in like wax paper.
There is this one right by our house called smile pizzeria and we go
there all the time. It's absolutely amazing and so quick.

Saturday
I'll be honest I don't remember exactly what we did most of the day
but we met up with the sisters to do a Gesso in the shopping centro
with a few members that want to serve missions in the near future. One
of them brought their little sister who is 12 and we gave her some
English course pass-along cards and some that have the date and time
of our sacrament meeting and she was going crazy giving them out to
people and no one wants to reject the 12 year old so people would talk
to us! It was really cool! We also taught a lesson to an investigator
who is having a problem with the Commandment to obey the law of
chastity. So Friday morning Anziano Segura and I studied up on
everything we could find on chastity. He had a repertoire of responses
for why he should be the exception and should be able to be baptized
without obeying the word of wisdom. He was slightly defensive and said
"This is what's wrong with all you churches, you find someone who
wants to be baptized and you won't let him because he's not perfect"
which gave me an incredible opportunity to bare my testimony about the
power of the atonement and explain that we have these commandments and
these requirements before baptism because when we enter into the
waters of baptism we covenant or promise to obey them. If we were to
be baptized without any intent to obey the commandments then we would
be so miserable as we didn't hold up our end of the two way promise.
Afterwards he seemed to understand and he asked if he could take a
week or so before he decides if this is still something he wants to
do. It was the first time I had been able to turn a negative
experience with an investigator around. Usually I can't think of the
words or explain it to them but as I shared my testimony it was
amazing to see his perspective change.

Sunday
There was another American here! So we got to church yesterday and I
saw a blonde... Italy is lacking in the blonde department so I wasn't
sure who it was. So the sisters went and talked to her and turns out
she is from Salt Lake! So she plays violin in the Orchestra on temple
square. She is here to learn from some lady from France how to be a
better violinist so she is here for a week and she looked up the ward
and decided to come! So we decided afterwards that we should take
advantage of those musical talents while we have them. So we got her
number and told her we would text her and see if she was free to do a
Gesso with us. Well our phones wouldn't send her a message probably
because it's not an Italian phone number... But the sisters remembered
the hotel she was staying at. So they went to her hotel and talked to
the guy at the front desk who was a little reluctant to let
missionaries bother his guest but they must have batted their eye
lashes or something because he let them in and they asked her to come
to another family night that we had last night at a park. We sang "I
know that my redeemer lives" with her playing the violin and it was
really cool! I got a video and some pictures that I'll attach but
you'll probably have to get the video from the blog :)

P-Day is here, it always goes by faster and faster but we haven't done
anything too exciting! We did some grocery shopping this morning and
cleaned the house. The other Anziani went and checked out a cross fit
gym to buy a T-shirt since we're not aloud to have gym memberships and
we stayed here to chill, we've had a pretty relaxing day!

Anyway that's about it for my epistle his week! I love you guys and I
love all the photo streams you have started with me! Have a great
week!

Anziano Bellucci

Cagliari Week 12

Caio tutti!

This week has been a really interesting week! As I mentioned last week my companion was off the Island and back on the mainland in Taranto to get his permesso so I was in a trio with the zone leaders from Monday morning until Thursday night. We would have usually both gone together but Monday was like the Italians Thanksgiving so travel was super expensive! So I stayed here and got to see how they do missionary work! It started off on Monday with all the cleaning I was telling you about and then Tuesday we went to do some finding in a nearby park called the parca della musica, any returned missionaries that have ever been in a trio will probably understand how hard it is to try to find with three people. People get really intimidated and it's just awkward. So we kind of split up and One of the Zone leaders would talk to someone sitting on a bench and I would go with the other one and we would talk to someone on the next bench. The first guy we talked to was a man who said he had seen our pamphlet on his table at home, that his wife had encountered the Sister missionaries maybe just a week ago. How perfect is that? So we sat down next to him and taught him the Restoration of the Gospel. I'm getting a lot better at switching off with my companion and being ready to speak and pick up where he leaves off. He kind of had an air of disinterest in his eyes and then I shared the first vision with him we could see his demeanor change and he began to understand as he felt the spirit that comes from sharing such a sacred experience.

We then had our District meeting, we did a role play about inviting people to church to "Come and see" as Christ says to his Apostles. I was paired up with the District Leader's companion Anziano Adepoju. He is probably one of the coolest missionaries ever. He is from Africa which is where he was baptized and then his family came to Italy just a little while ago. When they have people who come to different countries as refugees they have them serve in that country. He speaks very little English and even less Italian. But more importantly he knows this Gospel is true! He shared a really cool experience about how there are so many churches in Africa and they all have their little pieces of truth but when he came to the LDS church for the first time he knew that it was truly the Church of Jesus Christ. The best part is you can tell how hard it is for him to say what he's thinking in Italian but his testimony is so strong and he's going to do whatever it takes to tell you why he knows it's true. It was a testimony to me, as he asked me for help with his words that it is less important what we say than what the spirit makes them feel! After the role play Sorella Hatfield offered our Addestramento on how we can be more consecrated missionaries. It was great! And a real eye opener to how we can do better as we try to align our will with God's. We had a great rest of the afternoon, got cancelled on by everyone of our appointments so we decided to give the sisters a break from teaching English course and so the Zone Leaders taught while the sisters and I strategized some ways to help the ward. We had a pretty cool experience that night, our Mission President gave us a referral from when he served here in Cagliari 30 years ago. Of course we were on top of it, he came to English course that night and was amazed at how much the church has grown in the past years. We gave him a tour of the building and set up an appointment to meet with him!

Wednesday was an early day... I told you that we were getting transfer calls on Monday, because President changed almost everything this last transfer he didn't change much with our zone here on the island. So there was only one transfer in the whole zone! Sorella Hills (the really tall one) was transferred back to the Mainland and she had a 7AM flight... The Sisters don't have a car so if they were going to go to the station in time for her flight they would have had to take like two trains and a bus at 4 AM so we woke up at 4:30 and went to the sisters apartment and brought her to the airport. We show up at their apartment at 5 and they meet us in the parking lot with fresh baked banana bread that they had made that morning... We have the best sisters in our area... So we get her to the airport and come home, sometime between 4:30 and 5:45 AM someone stole our parking spot right next to our apartment and so we had to park like a 10 minute walk away AND it decided to rain for the one and only time I have ever seen it rain here. It poured while we walked home at 5:45 in the morning. We got back and Anziano Chugg said "Let's do some Johnson and Johnson workouts!" Anziano Blocker and I glared at him and collapsed on our beds. Basta.

We did some finding and then the Sisters called us and said "We made lunch, come to the church!" So we did, again we have the best sisters! We ate and talked with them for a while and then one of the sisters that served here about a year ago showed up with her whole family visiting from Washington State! So we spent some time visiting with her and she gave us the name of some old contacts that we should try. We sang the Linea di Roma with her (The mission fight song I told you about) and her family and it was so fun!

We are planning to do a ward activity in a few weeks where we put on a little play for the Restoration and do a ward barbecue! So we spent some time talking about it and making plans for how to get he ward involved. We picked up my companion at 6:30 and went back to the house, he was so exhausted and passed out at 8 until the next morning at 6:30 AM... Sometimes I forget how exhausting traveling is...

Not much happened on Thursday, my companion and I taught English course which was pretty fun, we met some new people and invited them to learn more about the church. So we have some appointments this week with new investigators!

Friday we weekly planned, and taught some lessons with our investigators and well we were waiting for one of our investigators a man pulled into the church on his motorcycle and said "I used to meet with the missionaries a long time ago but I wasn't ready to change my life back then, I realize now that it's time to change and I miss the way I used to feel when I was meeting with you and I want those feelings back!" How cool is that?!?! That night we had a dinner appointment with the Sanna family. They are a super strong family, he used to be the assistant to the mission president but President Pickerd released him when he first got here. We shared a spiritual thought about how Satan can counterfeit things. We took a 5€ and then we tried to draw a 5€ and we talked about what are some of the obvious things that are different and how we can tell the difference between things that are of God and things that are not and it really for the most part comes down to being worthy and being in tune with the spirit. It was a really cool spiritual thought! For dolce after dinner they made like a peach cobbler pie and it was soooo good with some amazing Italian Gelato... It was heaven.

Saturday we spent painting again, lots of fun and then they made us Pranzo, we started with Spaghetti, then onto an eggplant bake which was soooo good! Anziano Segura loves eggplant, he said it would have been way better fried which I totally believe but it was good nonetheless... Round three was fish. I couldn't tell you what kind but it was dang good. Lots of these little tiny bones but the fish was really good. I took a picture that I'll send!

We did a Gesso on Saturday night with the sisters to publicize English course because it's getting to be the time when people are returning to their normal schedules and so we want to make the course big again! We did it in the Centro around all these stores. Sometimes I forget that I am in one of the worlds biggest tourist destinations. People come from allover to go to the beaches of Poetta and see the castles of Mussolini here on the Island and it is definitely still tourist season. Especially when you go to the centro. So most of the people I tried to talk to either responded in English or responded in some other language that was for sure not Italian. I'm pretty sure I heard Russian, German, lots of French and Spanish, some Romanian, Meldovan, some English from the UK and I met a couple people from America. Not really what we were going for but we told them where they could find LDS churches where they live. We got Gelato after because that's what Americans do in Italy...

Sunday is always amazing... I didn't understand much of Sacrament which is weird, I usually get most of it. We had a bunch of investigators in church though which to missionaries is like Christmas morning when they walk in. It's amazing the spirit they can feel when come and see the ordinance of the sacrament and see the happiness that the families in the Gospel have!

Today we went to Auchan which is Italy's version of Walmart I guess you could say... It's in a shopping center though almost like a mall. It was so nice to walk around a mall and it almost felt like America! We went to this electronics shop and it was so cool to see how much technology has changed in just the last three months! Maybe I just ever paid attention but it seems like everything is already changing! I bought a new iPad case. One thing that I've noticed here in Italy and apparently it's similar in the rest of Europe is that Apple is not Very common. You hardly ever see people with iPhones or iPads except the missionaries. Everyone here has Android phones and tablets. Just something I thought was interesting. I feel like iPhones are way more common in America than anything else.

That's about it for today/this week we are waiting for all of our new furniture to come into IKEA this Thursday so we're pretty excited!

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this email, I had to make up for last week's! I love you all and I love hearing from you! I hope you have a great week and recognize the Hand of God in every part of it! That's one thing I've for sure seen this week! Keep on keeping on, and my favorite Apostolic quote from the Mother of Joseph B. Wirthlin "Come what may and love it" the Lord provides, we can take anything that comes our way in stride.

The church is true, the book is blue, and I love you!

Anziano Jacob Bellucci

Cagliari Week 11!

Ciao Belli!

So, this week has gone by the fastest of all! Transfer calls are
tonight! Any minute now actually! I won't no anywhere because you stay
in the same place for twelve weeks to be trained but it's still
interesting to see what will happen!

Update on the Italian! I've been talking on the phone with the members
which has been one of the hardest things for me but I've had a couple
of successful phone calls where I did t have to give the phone to my
companion. Side note, no one in Italy answers their phone or shows up
to set appointments on time/at all.

So the week! Tuesday we had District meeting, we had a great training
on how our attitude effects our success as missionaries. It was
incredible to look back even just on the past few weeks and see how my
attitude has the power to change everything I do. Pranzo (lunch) as a
District made by Fratello Caravagna, one of our favorite members! We
then had some great Lessons with some great progressing investigators!
We taught both of them the third lesson that we usually share which is
"The Gospel of Jesus Christ" and I think it's my favorite, especially
to teach! I like it for one because I can explain it really well in
Italian and two because it is so simple, it brings together the
Restoration and the Plan of Salvation with the Atonement and tells you
why it's important and tells you exactly what you need to do!

Wednesday was a great day as well, we did some video finding with this
really cool video about Jesus Christ. We went to a park and found
people sitting on benches and sat down next to them with the video and
a bunch of them watched it! You never know if anyone will come out of
your efforts but you can always try!

I don't have as much time to email his week so I might leave some stuff out...

I gave a talk on Sunday! I found out Saturday night that I had to give
a talk on Sunday morning at 9, so I did the logical thing and went to
bed and said I would figure it out tomorrow. So at 6:30 I was up,
dictionary in hand writing a talk! They didn't give me a topic so I
chose to speak about how we can all be instruments in the Lord's
hands. I didn't plan to say this but at the end I asked everyone to
take out a piece of paper or their phone and write down the first name
that came to their mind when they thought about sharing the Gospel
with their friends/family and then to talk to the missionaries this
week and make it happen. Who knows if anything will happen but we can
hope right!

Today is Ferragosto which is an Italian holiday and on holidays in
Italy the whole country basically shuts down, there is no one on the
streets, everyone is, actually I have no idea where everyone is... So
we as missionaries get to spend the entire day deep cleaning our
apartment! So for us that meant some serious damage had to be done. On
Tuesday they had a senior couple of missionaries come from Rome to
inspect all the missionaries apartments on the island and ey said we
needed to get rid of a ton of our furniture and replace it all. So we
spent half of Thursday at IKEA ordering new closets and dressers etc,
and today we rearranged our whole apartment and cleaned sooooo much!
Which is why we're emailing so late, our P-Day is extended because of
all the cleaning! I'm excited for all the new furniture to get here,
it should be pretty nice!

Remember my permesso stuff with the PosteItaliano? Well you have to
renew them after a year and my companion renewed his in Taranto which
is on the main land so when it's ready to be picked up you have to go
back and pick it up in Person so at 5 AM this morning we took him to
the airport and because they don't have much notice to buy the flight
it's so expensive! So he's traveling by himself and I am staying here
with the zone leaders!

I'm sorry this email is soooo short! Like I said we spent so much time
cleaning today that we didn't get to do much p-day so next week it
will definitely be longer! I love you all, hope you have a great week
and I can't wait to hear from you!

-Jacob

P.S. If you would like to share photos with me throughout the week I
would love to see them, just add my email to a photo stream!