He is the Gift

Good morning my friends! I am currently sitting on the peer on this
bright and sunny December day. I feel so blessed to have had the
opportunity to spend this Christmas as a missionary here in Sicily. On
Tuesday we were able to do a combined some Christmas party as a part
of our district meeting. The Garretts invited us over to their house.
We did a white elephant gift exchange, Christmas lunch, and testimony
meeting. It was fun to spend time with the whole zone and get an
American Christmas meal.

We wished our fruit guys a merry Christmas and as he said goodbye he
said what he usually does, "ciao sti"...we finally decided to ask him,
"who's sti? Why do you call us sti?" He just laughs and goes "sti is
dialect for "beautiful women"..hahaha it just got a little awkward
after that but we still love them.

We got to meet with Beverly's friend Selma this week! She is so cute
and really mature for her age (17.) She is a practicing Muslim so we
are just going to take everything really slowly. She is such a good
person and is not afraid to defend her belief in God in this culture
where none of the young people really believe anymore. She's really
excited to read The Book of Mormon and we hope that she will feel the
spirit and gain a testimony of Christ through this book. (To them he
is not the son of god, just a prophet like their other ones.) She's
super super cute and is so interested. She told us, "I am content in
my religion and not really searching for anything, but if I find out
that this is true, of course I'll be baptized." She has real intent
for sure.

This week's miracle was one of those little "coincidences" that led to
more "coincidences." After doing a morning of finding, we started
heading to the church to sit down for a bit because my companion's
head was hurting pretty badly (she's still not completely healed.) As
we sat down I started to make some calls. I called a new convert/less
active that we have been trying to work with but in the past few
months we've only been able to see her a couple of times because she
didn't really have much interest in seeing us or coming back to
church. I called to invite her to the ward Christmas party and she's
like "I'm sitting outside the church but no one's here." I was like
wait, we're here. I still have no idea why she came to the church but
when I opened the door for her she's like "well do you want to do a
lesson?" We had a good lesson with her then hurried home because a
half an hour of our blocked out lunch time was already over. As we got
home a new convert Cesare and his daughter Sara (the one we met in the
bar) were just about to leave (Cesare works for our bishop who owns
our apartment complex.) we were able to see her again finally and we
found out that she hurt her knee and has to stay at home for 21 days!
We asked if we could bring a treat over to her and she agreed. 21 days
is a good amount of time to teach some lessons if you know what I mean
haha.

We were allowed by our president to watch 2 movies this Christmas, one
of them being "it's a wonderful life." I'd never seen it but we
watched it at the Garrett's and its now one of my favorite movies! I
don't know if it's just because I haven't watched a movie in a long
time but I loved it so much..the only sad thing is that We didn't get
to finish it because we had to head to the church for a lesson before
it was over. Now I get to wait until July to see how it ends haha.
Our lesson was fun though. It was with this cute little 8 year old in
the ward who is getting baptized this week. Her mom wanted her to take
the missionary lessons before she got baptized even though she doesn't
have to. She is so timid but did a fun magic trick to teach the gospel
of Jesus Christ and she opened up a little bit. All of her siblings
are less active but the elders have been working with her 16 yr old
brother. He sat in on the lesson and helped us teach. it was so good
for him.

Our Christmas party turned out well. We did a Christmas dinner with
games and Karaoke and Santa! Unfortunately it started an hour and a
half late (...welcome to Sicily) so we only got to stay for the 1st
course of dinner-which was lasagna and tasted delicious (my first time
trying it here)!! But we did get to meet some cool people. All of the
members invited their friends and tons of nonmembers came! Alessia
(our new convert) brought the cutest friend so we sat with them to
eat. She was super cool and said that she really liked our church
because she felt a good vibe there. We started taking and at the end
(before we had to leave) gave her a book or Mormon. Alessia was pretty
excited and told us that next time we see each other she bring her
friend to the lesson! Yess!

On Christmas Eve I got to skype my cute family ❤️ That night when we
got home the p2 sisters had set up some decorations and put all of our
beds in the main room to sleep together. We shared stories and
memories and enjoyed each other's company.

Christmas morning the we had chocolate chip pancakes and fruit for
breakfast. While we are we opened presents (we each got one for our
companions and then one person in the house.) the Garrett's gave us
"stockings" (fuzzy socks filled with goodies) and cinnamon rolls. It
was small but all the more enjoyable.

Our sacrament meeting was ran completely by the missionaries. On
Friday night they asked 3 of us (including my companion) to speak and
all of us to do the musical number. It all turned out so well. The
spirit was strong during the whole meeting. We had a missionary who
finishes his mission today speak, someone in the middle (my
companion), and a brand new missionary. Each one bore their own
testimonies of our savior and each one was equally spiritual even
though their skill in the language varied so much. We sang Oh Come All
Ye Faithful for the musical number. The first verse in English, second
in Italian, and the third we had the congregation join in with us. The
spirit was so powerful that at the end everyone was in tears. I could
feel the love that each one of these Italians had for their savior
Jesus Christ. It was a special experience.

Sorella Frogley and I got to go to Katia's for our Christmas lunch. It
was fun spending that time with Anna and Francesco and what made it
even better was that Katia had invited over a couple who are not
members! We were able to talk to them the whole time about Christ
because it was Christmas! They're a sweet couple who are definitely
potentials.

That night we four sisters went with a member to visit an old man who
doesn't really get out of his house. He just opened up his window and
we stood there on the street and talked with him. He didn't really get
to celebrate Christmas so we sang a few Christmas hymns for him. As we
sang the spirit filled that little street. All of us felt that we were
not the only ones singing that night. As we sang Silent Night I looked
up and saw tears streaming down his face. We shared a message of
Christ with him and just kept him company. It was the sweetest
Christmas experience that I have ever had. This Christmas I think I
finally learned what "the true meaning of Christmas" really is.

That night we read Luke 2 and had a fondu party with the sisters. It
was fun to sit there and talk to them about our impressions from the
day. I started thinking about it and realized just how weird this
situation seemed from a worldly point of view. We were four 19 year
old girls sitting in a different country, thousands away from our
families, on Christmas, talking about Jesus. Yet this was my most
favorite Christmas that I've ever had.

I love service, I love Jesus, and I love you!
Keep the spirit of service and Christmas all year long!

With love,
Sorella Bonzo

Christmas party


Ward christmas party

Christmas lunch

Today at the peer

BUON NATALE 🎄

Buongiorno my dear friends!! BUON NATALE! 

Mamma mia I cannot believe that this week has come. Before we get too excited about the upcoming week though, we can't pass up the amazing week that I just had. 

It all started with Tuesday which was the festa ARANCINA DAY here in Palermo! Every shop was making like only arancine and we had so many people offering them to us. It's for some saint or something and they are only allowed to eat arancine the whole day. So they was delicious!

Unfortunately Beverly's friend has been sick all week so we weren't able to meet, but I talked with her yesterday and she still really wants to meet with us, it will probably just be after the holidays. 

This week I got to do an exchange with sorella Ferre! She is doing so well. She has so much drive and determination to do this work. We were doing finding all morning and she was just ready to go and talk to everyone. We saw so many miracles including a woman named Margarita. We walked up to her and asked if we could show her our video (sii una luce.) She said no. I felt prompted to keep talking to her rather than just accepting the rejection and walking away. As we kept talking she told us that she was catholic and said that we probably believed in the same things. Then she stopped and said, wait, what religion are you? She hadn't ever heard of us. She then asked, "do you do prayer meetings?" I explained to her a little bit of what we do during church and invited her to come. Then then the words came out of my mouth asking if we could pray for her before I could even think about it. She burst into tears and began to recount to us all of the difficulties in her family right now. We asked the names of her children, then Sorella Ferre offered the prayer, asking for their specific needs by name. Margarita could not stopped the tears from flowing. During that beautifully simple prayer, the spirit touched each one of our hearts. Margarita agreed to see us again and we were able to get her phone number. 

I have been trying really hard this week to rely on God. To always ask of his approval for everything that I do, then following the spirit instead of my own instincts. My first thought when someone coldly rejects our offer to watch a video is to either switch it to English Group, or leave them a bigliettino and move on to the next person. I know that God knows Margarita, he knew that the video approach wouldn't have worked with her, but he also knew that she really needed to feel of his love that day, and I am grateful that we were able to help him do that. 

We also brought some Christmas to a very crabby member. She always wants all of the missionaries to come to her house to do service for her. This was my 3rd time over there and I've tried to loosen her up every time but every time I try to tell a joke or something I get shut down so hard. Also, she never lets us do spiritual thoughts with her so my companion was brilliant and while we helped her iron some stuff she started talking about the light the world campaign that the church is doing. We told her that that day we were supposed to worship through song. She goes "I actually really like singing" so we were like "do yo want to sing?!" We spent the rest of the time singing Christmas hymns! And she had a smile on her face!! It was a Christmas miracle!!

The work is kind of difficult around the holiday season because everyone is too busy to meet with us so we decided that since we have so many friends in all of the little shops by our house, we'd make cookies for all of them as a little Christmas gift. It was a blast going around passing out cookies to all of our friends with our Christmas pass-along card attached. It reminded me of home, when we pass out our "neighbor gifts" each year and how we were practically doing the same thing! We were able to show all of these wonderful people that are so good to us (most of them give us free food) just how grateful we are for them and introduce them to a little part of the gospel as well! 

On Friday Palermo had its annual street food fest. The best Venders from all of Palermo came and set up their booth down this one street. Street food is a huge thing here and it was fun to see all of the different Types all in one place. We went with the young single adults for a family home evening activity. 

On Saturday my companion and I threw a youth activity (with the help of some of the elders) to start working with the youth more! They don't do mutual here so they never have activities like this. We were hoping that they would bring their friends, but it was only members who showed up. But we did have some less actives come and they came to church the next day and brought their parents!! And we had tons of fun with the youth so now we're better friends and we're really hoping to start working with them and building up their program. right now there is only 1 active young man and 2 active young women (one of them is Beverly our new convert.) So obviously they have friends who are not members! 

On Saturday night I was called by a member in the bishopric and asked to give a talk the next day in sacrament meeting. Haha. I got to talk about missionary work though so that was exciting! In the end the other speakers took too long (Italians could literally talk forever. If they wanted, they could just assign 1 speaker to take up the whole meeting) so church was supposed to be over by the time it was my turn so I just bore a short testimony kind of summarizing what I had prepared to say. I don't know how much longer I will be in this ward seeing as I've been here since July, so I was grateful for the opportunity to stand before them and thank them for all that they have done for me. 

And when the bishopric member called me I think he felt bad that it was last-minute so he also invited us to lunch at his house! We had the best pasta I've ever eaten with spinach and ricotta. Mmmmmm.. but they're the kind of family that just keeps feeding while giving themselves nothing---they cook for the correct amount of people (there were 6 of us) then give themselves less than a half a portion while they give their guests like 2 portions---sooo we were really really full afterwards. But it was worth the pain because it was the funniest meal appointment that I've ever had. Their son and his girlfriend came to bring them some water and they just had them stay for lunch. They're the cutest funniest couple ever and they're both nonmembers! It was such a good time with lots of laughs and teasing. They made us feel at home which was so nice.

I hope that you have a great week and a merry Christmas! Don't forget to be a light for all those around you by doing the little things that Christ did every day!! 

With love,

Sorella Bonzo

Arancina day! 

Christmas cookies 

Youth activity 😂 my companion is such a good sport

Lunch with our favorite family.. and their creepy statue 

This is my favorite little guy in the world. We bought paintings from him last week and today we were near his shop so I went in and started talking to him. He gave me a free little gift just because I am nice. He said that he sees so many people who won't even smile these days and it makes him so sad. He also showed me pictures of his wife and him when they were young and when I asked if we could take a picture he said "come take a picture with grandpa". ❤️ he's the happiest most kind old man that I've met here. 

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She's fallen and she can't get up

My companion had to stay in bed all week which means that I was inside all week as well..so let's just say that our house is really clean..

Some highlights were:

• we got to skype into district meeting..then it didn't work so we did it over the phone which was kind of difficult..so yeah that actually wasn't a highlight. 

• on Wednesday I got to get out of the house and do exchanges. In the morning sorella carver and I went and taught English to these "troubled kids"..it was really hard because they were really rowdy and speaking mostly in sicilian and also saying a lot of vulgar things so I didn't understand a lot of it... but hey, they just need some love and we tried to show it to them. The more they get, the more they'll behave hopefully.  

• That night sorella Ferre and I did service for one of our members. She asked us to help her organize her house.lShe basically just ran around yelling at her maid and we didn't really let us do anything but hopefully we brought some needed joy into her life as well. 

• Thursday morning sorella Frogley came with me to meet Beverly's mom and get her signature on her baptismal record. Just walking to the church was really rough for her. It's been kind of a hard week for her to say the least because she is the kind of person that likes to stay busy and she couldn't even read or write without getting a headache. I read to her and she listened to a lot of talks and slept and that's basically how she passed her time. Italian has also been very hard to get back right now. It gives her too much of a headache to try to focus enough to understand them or speak it. Little by little though she'll get it all back though! We're praying a lot for her. 

• Friday sorella Ferre came with me to visit Maria (the excommunicated member who was recently rebaptized.) She had her house all decked out in Christmas lights and was filled with that joyous Christmas cheer. She's as happy as can be and is now working to go to the temple with the ward in April, taking family names to do baptisms for the dead. 

• Afterwards we went to family home evening with the young single adults. We went caroling at a rest home. It was so much fun. There were some who sand with us and others who were brought to tears. Afterwards we went and talked with all the little old ladies. They were so grateful for what we did. I don't think things like that happen very much around here. We made some cute friends and they want us to come back. I hope they we get to :) Afterwards we went back to the Garrett's house and had "Christmas breakfast." It was a good day and it felt so nice to get out of the house and speak Italian and brighten peoples' days!

• On Saturday--- BEVERLY WAS BAPTIZED!! She asked me to give a talk on Jesus Christ because she was invited a lot friends who were atheist. 7 friends of hers came! During the whole thing I just kept thinking about how much our young women's programs (with only 1 active young woman) needs them. Afterwards I was able to talk to one of them for a while, invited her to our youth activity that we'll be putting on next week, then asked if she'd like to meet with us. We're meeting with her this week and our cute new convert Beverly is coming as our member-present. 

• Yesterday sorella Frogley and I got to set up the Christmas tree for our apartment complex (because our bishop owns it.) it was fun to at least get to set something up this year. 

• Then we went caroling with the young single adults in town square. While we were singing we'd take turns as missionaries to talk to the people that stopped to listen to us. I had noticed that One lady had been listening for a few songs. I wanted to go up and talk to her but decided to wait until we finished the song. As soon as we finished she came up to some of our members-new converts actually-and asked who we were and why we were doing this. They were such good missionaries explaining what we do as missionaries and they even invited her to take the lessons!! I was shocked because usually when you do a street approach you kind of have to help them get interested before you just ask them if they want to meet with us regularly or else you scare them away..but this lady's (Rosalba) just like okay! I'm busy right now during the holiday season but give me a call after Christmas. And like that we exchanged numbers and we have a new potential investigator. I love the boldness of these Italian people..I strive to be more like them in that sense every day. 

Lastly, I decided to study humility. The more I studied, the more I was confused as to what I needed to get out of it.. I'm not saying that I'm a completely humble person or anything, I just felt like I was kind of going over things that I already knew. Then one night, while praying, I asked God to help me to become more humble. In that instant, a thought popped into my head. I remembered a line in preach my gospel that says; "When you humbly trust Him and acknowledge His power and mercy... you are confident that you can do whatever the Lord requires of you if you rely on Him." And then the line came into my mind: "Are you HUMBLE enough to work MIRACLES?" I had to pause and think about that. After I concluded my prayer I continued to ponder that phrase for the rest of the night and the next morning during my studies. I realized that humility is not only giving all of the credit to God, but it's also trusting that he is all powerful and can literally work miracles through us if we let him. If we lovingly and ungrudgingly give our will to him, just as Christ did, he will be able to work miracles through us because we have the complete faith that God can do anything. 

I love you, I pray for you. 

Buon Natale. Sii una luce. Vi voglio bene. 

Love, sorella bonzo

Beverly's baptism ❤️

Caroling

The cutest little painter man we met today 

The best pizza place 

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I'm never mopping the apartment again...

Beverly is an angel..literally the most golden person I've ever worked with. We met with her every day this week to finish the lessons then she had her baptismal interview on Saturday and she passed! My district leader said that she is so prepared. She's so mature for her age it's amazing. So she's getting baptized this Saturday!!! Woooh!! We're super excited. She can't wait.

A new convert, Cesare, told us that his 21 year old daughter just moved in with him and is working at a bar by our house and he wanted us to introduce ourselves so we went to go find her and she was so sweet! We walked in and we're just kind of looking at the pastries, because we didn't even know who she was or what she looked like and she came up to us and after seeing our tags said, "I'm sure that you know my dad." We bought a little pie and talked to her while eating. She was so sweet and excited when we invited her to English course and the ysa family nights. We're hoping to start working with her soon! She just works a lot which is the only problem. We also met tons of workers in that bar who all wanted to come to english course so that was cool! 

Carolina got baptized about a week ago by the Anziani but we're doing her new convert lessons. We had our first lesson with her this week. She's so cute and is the strongest new convert that I've ever met as far as her testimony goes, she's so solid. She asked if she could come finding with us some time! She's 20 so fingers crossed that she serves a mission!! 

We had Zone conference on Friday! It was great as always. Our zone is on fire, I love serving here. Something I loved that President Pickerd said was, "Nothing's too hard for the Lord, no matter where you are, nothing's too hard for the Lord." We all know that that's true, but do be truly BELIEVE it? I hope so. 

That night Francesco was baptized!!! It was so cute, the Anziani we're like, "Francesco, how did you already know all of the lessons before we taught them?" He's like "the sisters taught me well." It was touching to know that although Anna didn't get baptized back in September, we were there to help Francesco prepare for his baptism. It has been such a miracle to see him grow and change and mature over the past month. He was so brave because he too is afraid of water so right after the baptism he ran out of the font, but the man baptizing him didn't say the prayer correctly so he had to do it again. We all feared that he wouldn't come back out, but he bravely got back in the water and did it again. He was so happy. 

As I looked at Anna, I noticed that she was in tears. I worried that she was still feeling ashamed about her baptism so I asked how she was and she said, "good, I feel the spirit." That sweet little girl bore her testimony is sacrament meeting yesterday (which was also the day of her brother's confirmation) which surprised me so much because of how timid she is. She said, "Cari fratelli e sorelle, so che la chiesa è vera. Amo la mia famiglia. Sono felice che mio fratello si è battezzato. Nel nome di Gesù Cristo, amen." (Dear brothers and sisters, I know that the church is true. I love my family. I am happy that my brother got baptized. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.) Her sweet little testimony brought me to tears. She told me afterwards that she was so nervous, but she did it anyway!! I complemented her on how brave she was. With all of this happening, we want to talk to her about baptism again. We pray that her desire to be baptized and her newfound courage will motive her to try once again. I love that little girl so much. 

After church we had a lunch appointment with a sweet lady in our ward who also invited Katia, Anna, and Francesco. It was really good but sooo much that I felt like I'd throw up again haha. My companion and I just kept looking at each other as the courses came out, remembering what happened at the last appointment haha. Luckily we didn't vomit, unluckily, we were also scheduled to have a dinner appointment. We are a late lunch, we didn't start until around 3, so by 7 (our dinner appointment) we were still stuffed. We had tried to do jumping jacks and crunches and even drinking water a bunch of water to make the food go down haha but we just ended up with a side ache.. but then, god answered our prayers because the lady who was supposed to make us dinner forgot to buy the food for it so she didn't make it!! But she wouldn't let us leave without giving us something.....so we made this less active sin because it was Sunday she went to the store to buy stuff to make us hot chocolate and cake while we helped her daughter with her English homework. When she came back to the house with a grocery bag my companion and I just looked at each other like what did we just see..Hahaha....so we're basically the worst missionaries ever.

What did we did for pday? We've spent the whole day in the hospital! At about 7 o'clock this morning after I mopped the floor Sorella Frogley slipped and fell backwards. She landed right on the back of her head. She laid on our floor for about an hour and a half, unable to move because she had a lot of nausea and terrible head pain. Our zone leaders came over and gave her a blessing, squatting down to put their hands on her head and she lay helplessly on the floor. Then we helped her scoot to her bed because the nausea was too strong for her to get up completely. She has had a concussion in the past, and said that this felt even worse than last time. The mission nurse asked us to go to the hospital so our senior couple came and picked us up and helped her down the stairs to the car. We've been in the hospital now for more than five hours just waiting for someone to help her. When they checked her in they just checked her pulse and then put her in the "green" zone meaning that she wasn't serious and was pushed to the back of the line. Now every time someone comes in that is in the yellow or red zones, they get put before us. The headache and nausea were slowly getting worse because the room was really bright and there was tons of commotion and noise in the waiting room. We asked a bunch and she finally got a gurney and we were moved to a room with less people and noise. 

I feel so bad for her. You guys have no idea what these Italian hospitals are like, especially in the ghetto Palermo haha. To give you a picture, they rolled one guy into the waiting room who I thought was dead. He legitimately looked like a skeleton with yellow skin. But he started yelling a name so I knew he was in fact alive. This lady came to his side and put his pack of cigarettes in his hand, and then he was content. 

Right now we're sitting in a room with a lady who keeps farting and groaning. Her daughter had been on the phone for like 2 hours meanwhile smoking every once in a while. My companion is so strong. I admire her so much because I couldn't deal with something like this if I was in that much pain.

But we found out how much everyone actually care about us today! I was on the phone all morning canceling our appointments so I didn't have time to eat or get ready or anything. I got to take a 5 minute shower and that was it. But the elders came to the hospital and stayed with us for about an hour at the beginning to help us figure out the paperwork because one of the has lived in Italy most of his life and the Garrett's stayed with us for a while then brought us some food. All today I've been getting messages and phone calls from ward members and investigators and missionaries wondering what they can do for us. So don't worry, family, we're taken care of here. 

Lastly, I wanted to talk about the church's new charge to us as members to #LightTheWorld but I realize that this email is long, so I'll just leave it to you all to watch the videos every day (you can find them on gospel library under Jesus Christ and holiday videos) and do the little acts of service every day to become more like church during this, his special season, and light the world!! Today's challenge is "Jesus healed the sick, and so can you." Fitting, no? Haha so call up a sick person that you know, go donate some blood, or make a meal for a family in need. Whatever it is, that little act can help others but also you feel closer to Christ today and every day this month. 

With love,

Sorella Bonzo

We told Carolina how much we like Nutella so she brought us a baby one that's used as a Christmas ornament 

Francesco's baptism

My poor companion. She's a cute little sick person. 

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Battesimo

This email's gonna be super short but as sweet as ever because I had to write my college essays today. 

This week was full of BAPTISMS! 

On Tuesday a nine year old boy that the elders have been working with got baptized. Both of his parents are members but they just never got around to baptizing him, then he turned 9 so the missionaries had to work with him. But now he's a member! woo!! His family put on this huge party after with a clown and catering and everything...it was kinda crazy but like, that's just Italy I guess. One second you're sitting in the chapel feeling the spirit, and the next they open up the overflow and you've got tons of kids running around screaming. He even played his violin for us.

Also on Tuesday the Garrett's invited all of the missionaries in the 2 Palermo districts to come over for a thanksgiving lunch. Mmmm it was just like home. We love our senior couples! Seriously, they're the best. All of you should try to be senior missionaries some day. 

Wednesday all of our appointments were cancelled so we did finding all day which was really exhausting. The harder part was that we didn't see any success that day. The next day we were so tired but found ourselves out on the streets one again trying to find those elect people. I was less than excited to be finding almost the whole day again, but we had made a goal to be diligent in our finding so despite all of the rejection we always face, we tried to stop every person. We saw so many miracles that day!! It strengthened my testimony of perseverance and how we are always blessed when we endure diligently through the harder times. 

The biggest blessing we saw was that night at English course. A new woman came to our advanced class. She told us that her friend came to our course 5 years ago and that's how she found out about it. At the beginning I decided to ask them if they had any questions (referring to English) and she said, "yes I have one, who is Mormon?" Pointing to the Book of Mormon that we sitting on the table. I told her that if she wanted we could talk afterwards and explain some more but our class told us that they were fine if we explained right now. So for the whole hour we taught our English class about the Book of Mormon. Many of them were interested, especially this woman, Valentina. She told us she asked because she was going through a really hard time in her life a little while ago and she was staying in a hotel in catania. She opened up the dresser and found a Book of Mormon. She had a question, opened the book and read, and she said that she received her answer. After that though she hadn't seen it until it was sitting in front of her on a table at a free English course. HOW COOL IS THAT?!? All of that stuff was no coincidence. 

On Friday Maria (the excommunicated member that I've been working with for a while) got baptized and was also confirmed!!! Her confermation was the most spiritual moment. She has missed having the gift of the Holy Ghost in her life so much so it was such a wonderful thing to be there when she recieved it again. She also got to take the sacrament for the first time yesterday in like 10 years. She was bawling and hugged me so tight after church. Such a cool experience to help someone come back.

The other set of elders also had a baptism later friday night. Her name's Carolina and She's super cute. they're going to pass her to us to teach the new convert lessons so im excited to work with her. we also met tons of her friends and family who were at the baptism and we're hoping to work with a lot of them too!!

Saturday our ward had another Karaoke party. One of our members brought her mom and she ended up being the life of the party! She was pretty against the church when her daughter was baptized 3 years ago but we're hoping that after that activity we can start working with her. Another member spent all day making this siciliano specialty cake called cassata. It's filled with ricotta and has pistachio cream on the outside. So yummy! We made brownies of course with Nutella on top and everyone loved them once again! Woo! Go sisters! 

Yesterday at our chalk demonstration thing --I don't even know how to say it in English-- the devil literally ran down the street chanting "io dico no"  with all of his followers. Haha it was some weird protest but it basically took the spirit away and make it really hard for us to do the work of salvation. But regardless I still asked everyone if they wanted to see my video of Christ. Most people said no except one cute girl. we got talking and she was very interested. When I gave her a Book of Mormon she didn't want to accept it without paying. She said she could read it then come back in two weeks and give it back. I told her that it's hers if she promises me she'll read it. So fingers crossed for Giusy! 

All in all, 10/10 week. Love you guys! 

 sorella bonzo

Theater from last week

Maria's baptism

Inviato da iPad

When you give an Italian a kilo of lemons...🍋

Beverly is doing soooo awesome!!! We were a little worried that she wasn't understanding everything because she's only 15 and she's like sooo golden that we literally don't have to do anything she just accepts everything so we asked her a bunch of questions like "how do prophets help us get to the celestial kingdom" to check her understanding on all of the lessons that we've previously taught and she answered everything perfectly. She is so prepared! She's super cute. On Friday she brought us a bunch of "American" candy because she thought we might miss it. We're excited for her baptism on December 10th.

Maria, the excommunicated member that I started teaching back in August is getting baptized this week on Friday!! She is sooo excited. She was also really prepared and ready to come back. She's doing so well and just can't wait. We're super excited for her. She's had a lot of problems and difficulties in her life but she is so strong now and really understands the atonement now. 

We were in a trio almost all week with sorella Bellomo which was super fun. She's now in a city close to Napoli. We miss her so much! But the new sisters are great, we love them. One of them was in my MTC group, sorella carver, and she's training sorella Ferre. 

Wednesday was the funniest day of my whole mission. We had a lunch appointment with one of our members, mamma Giambona. She's so cute and has wanted to invite us over for a long time but her mom has been really sick she hasn't been able to. But we finally got to go over Wednesday. She loves cooking so she made TONS of food. It was all so good but so filling. And holy cow it was just tooonnnss of food. I was SOOOO fulll. Then she was like alright we have to do something that I do with every missionary the first time that they come to my house. She had us bring a kilo of lemons and she started squeezing them. She put about a half a glass full of lemon juice for each of us then then rest full of water then she put baking soda in and mixed it really quickly and we had to drink it all really fast she said. It's called the "autista" (bus driver) and basically when we started drinking it started fixing up and over flowing and we were laughing but I ended up drinking all of it. Afterwards we all started burping which is what's supposed to happen. It's supposed to help you burp so you don't feel so full anymore. I felt soo sick though. I felt like my stomach was inflated and it needed to pop. I  sat there and burped but it wasn't helping. We were taking a video and my companion asked if I would get up and stop it so I did, then the minute I sat down I THREW UP ALL OVER HER TABLE!!!  Hahahaa it was sooo gross. You could see everything I had just eaten. I felt so bad I just kept saying "I'm sorry!!" She's told me not to worry about it then asked what I wanted to eat since I just emptied my stomach haha. I told her that i just wanted water. Then she just gathered the throw up in her table cloth and we did the spiritual thought smelling throw up the whole time haha. Soo gross but then after we could not stop laughing about it. 

That night we went to another meal appointment for dinner with my favorite family in the Palermo (they're in the other sister's ward but I've seen them a lot for different reasons.) We told them the story and they were all laughing so they didn't make me eat too much and every few minutes they'd joke and be like "sister are you alright? Don't eat too much" Before we went to their house I went home and took a shower, then we walked the entire width of Palermo (it's a huge city) in the most ghetto parts of town after dark just trying to find this person's house so sorella Bellomo could say goodbye. So by the time I got to their house I wasn't too full anymore and could eat a little bit. 

That's all I've got for you. Today we toured the theater with the second biggest stage in the world. It's cool. I've already seen it but my companion and basically all of the missionaries hadn't seen it because we did that the first week I got here which was a long time ago and none of these missionaries were here. 

I love Palermo! I'm so happy to be here and know that I have tons of more work to do here. It's really blossoming. Just this week we have 4 baptisms in our district. That's crazy!! And soo cool. We have so many awesome missionaries here! Wooooooooooo! Life is so good. I hope yours is too. Love you guys!

-sorella bonzo

Last district picture

Haha sorry if this grosses you out. We had to take a pic of this memory. 

Saying bye to sorella Bellomo. 

The theater 

x

Happy, Happy, Happiness!! 😄

BUONGIORNO!!! 

Okay first, Beverly is still doing so awesome! She's so on top of it. She loves the Book of Mormon and the spirit she feels when she reads it. We taught her the plan of salvation Tuesday and we're like so where would you like to go? Of course she said the celestial kingdom. Then we asked "what do you have to do to get to there?" She's like "I have to be baptized of course!!" Right there we invited her to baptism for December 3 and she said of course she wants to get baptized!! She's only 15 though and every time she asks her dad he tells her to wait until she's 18 so we did a special fast for her this last week. She said that her mom is more open now. We are praying for her and hoping to meet them this week as well. She's so great though I love her so much! We get transfer calls tonight and I've been here since July so I might be leaving, who knows. When Beverly found this out she was soo sad. She told me that she wants to do her baptism early if I leave so that I'll be there haha but of course I had to explain that that's not really possible. She's so cute though and I love her like a little sister. I told her not to worry because we if I was to go, there would be another wonderful sister here to take my place. Which is true!,if that does end up happening.

The other night we called a less-active and we were pretty sure she didn't want to meet with us because she kept saying that she was too busy for us that week. We decided to call her one more time to t to set up an appointment and when we asked if we could see each other she's like "I can't hear you" then starts rubbing the phone on her shirt to make a fuzzyish noise hahaha it was so obvious that it was fake that we didn't know what to do and just started laughing 😂 ...it's just not her time to come back yet I guess. 

Unfortunately Alessia (my new convert) is going through a little bit of a hard time right now. the day after her baptism her mom found an antimormon website and will not stop showing her tons of stuff. It's really hard because now her mom is very against our church whereas before she was taking the lessons and about to be baptized as well. When Alessia is with us she has no problems because we are able to explain everything to her with the spirit but then she goes home and her mom shoves more antimormon articles in her face. It's really hard but we're getting through it. She's strong and so is her testimony of the Book of Mormon so I have faith that she will be alright. 

Saturday morning we went over to a less active's named Rosalba. It was really cool because usually she doesn't really care for our lessons (she's the kind of less active who doesn't think she's not active) but today she really needed us. We started the Book of Mormon over with her and read 1 nephi 1. She loved it so much she invited us back every Saturday to read together. As we were leaving she introduced us to her parents who live below her. They were this super old but really cute couple. The old man loved us. He would not stop kiss our cheeks and patting our bums hahaha. We asked if we could take a picture together and after the first one he took off his hat and smoothed down his hair all nice. Afterwards he's proceeded to show us pictures of himself when he was "young and handsome" haha so cute. He even gave us caramels! 

That night there was another baptism! It was of a man named Benedetto (translated as blessed) who is literally the most amazing person I have ever met. He found the church about 3 years ago, gained a testimony of the church and Joseph smith and everything, but then his wife was very opposed him getting baptized because she is very catholic. He has 3 kids and is the most family oriented person I've ever met. He said that he believe that God wouldn't went him to break up his family for this. So he didn't get baptized, but he continued to study the Book of Mormon and he church in general. He went off the map after that, and the missionaries had no way to contact him. Then when I first got here, one of the members who he had become friends with invited him to her house to study the Book of Mormon and invited he elders as well. From that day the elders have been working with him and truthfully, miracles happened, especially with his wife! He stared coming to church every week and anyone who didn't know him thought he was already a member.--he does have more doctrinal knowledge than probably 90% of the members--But his wife finally allowed him to be baptized!!! He was beyond happy and so are we to have him as a member of our ward now. I just pray that one day him wife will come around so that they can be an eternal family. 

Thursday was he funniest day of my life. Literally EVERYTHING went wrong. Every single one of our appointments weren't at home or didn't show up..our English course class didn't even show up! But it was my favorite day. So many funny things happened including when I put all of my pass along card in my skirt (like between my skirt and my body) so that I could answer a phone call, then 15 later when I wanted to give one out I looked down and they were gone! One of these streets must have a lot of prepared people waiting to pick up a card of Jesus off of the street and call us!! Another funny moment was when we were doing door to door and we rang this one guy's buzzer (is that how you would call it in America?) He answers and we're like "hi we're missionaries and we're gifting a book about Jesus Christ" he's like "look, I'm taking a shower. I'm not interested." Okay either it's a lot funnier in Italian or it was a "had to be there moment" either way we both could not stop laughing. At that same building there was an old lady who couldn't hear us so she just let us in. We climbed like 10 stair cases to reach her floor and then we got to her door and we're like "hi! We're missionaries!" She just looked at us, slowly closed the door, then locked it 😂 good times. And lastly, we did some finding in a pastry shop where my companion bought a pastry we'd never tried before and it turns out that it was soaked in alcohol! Hahaha she took a bite and she's like "sorell, I think there's alcohol in this, I mean I've never tried alcohol before but it smells like rum" haha and sure enough, it was! Che ridere quel giorno...

So although every single one of our plans fell through that day, we ended up meeting some cool people including the gate keeper at a park that we never go to. We talked to everyone in the park but no one was interested so on our way out we talked to the gatekeeper and he told us to come back and teach him! And in the part after being rejected by tons of Italians, we walked over to these 3 cute African girls who were sisters ages 10-16. We showed them a video and asked if they wanted to learn more and they said of course! (We'll pass them to the other sisters because they're in charge of the English speaking branch) But to sum up this day perfectly, guess what their names were? Happy, Happy, and Happiness! 

We dropped sorella Littlefield off at the airport last night because she is finishing her mission. It was such a sad thing for us because we all love her so much, we've all gotten really close. But I think that he biggest thing that Sorella Littlefield taught me in these two transfers that we've lived together is to just be HAPPY! She taught me that no matter what is going on in life, if you just face it with a smile, everything will go a lot better, or at least you'll have a lot more fun. And when you really become this happy person, when we ARE THE MESSAGE (like President Kearon taught us to be), this happiness will start to rub off on everyone around you! God didn't put us in this earth to suffer, but to have JOY! And as we constantly search to be happy, we will see that life really is just a bunch of funny moments all designed to help you grow and become the best person that you can become! (Aka like Christ). Sorella Littlefield once told me that she believes that her purpose in life is to make other people happy. She has definitely fulfilled that purpose here in the great Italy Rome mission and I know that she will continue to fulfill it in her life back home. But may I suggest that should be the purpose of each one of us? To make others happy? As we serve and love others and most of all, share the marvelous gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone, we're fulfilling this purpose and spreading joy all around the world! I would like to invite all of you as Sister Kearon invited all of us to "GO SPREAD SOME JOY!" 

I love you! No matter what's going on in your lives right now, know that happiness is always the best choice, and although it is sometimes a hard choice, it is a choice! 

Love, 

Sorella Bonzo

Cathedral we went to last week in monreale. It's all made out of real gold. 

We found a new pizza place by our house. Yummm

Happy, happy, happiness, and sorella frolgey. I snuck a picture while they were watching the video. 

Rosalba and her cute parents. 

Bye bye sorella Littlefield  

Sent from my iPad

x

Temple Trip

Hello! Happy Halloween! 

So many exciting things happened this week. 

First, on Tuesday, we were at a less-active family's house doing personal progress with the daughters. Then the mom came out as we were leaving and was like "I want to do a surprise for you" we were like what? Then she ran to the store to buy stuff to make us dinner! You have to understand that this was not just any dinner appointment..this family is from Ecuador! So I had my first authentic South American meal! It was soo goood. We had rice with turkey and this sauce stuff and lettuce. And the best mango juice I've ever had. My tummy was happy that night. 

Wednesday my companion and I were finally reunited! We picked her up at the airport that morning and she was so glad to be back. And as much as I love the other sisters, and trust me, we had so much fun together, I was so glad to have her back. That night we had a Relief Society Activity--the first one I've been to on the mission. It was a cook-off. So they had everyone who wanted to (which was everyone) brought smething that they cooked/backed, then one by one stood up in front of everyone and presented it. Then the judges would taste and score it. This activity was perfect for them because they all love cooking and they also love talking about their food. And we got some really yummy food out of it too. 

Thursday was like wooooh so many cool things happened! We went to find a less-active lady but she wasn't home. So we decided to do some door to door in that area because we're never there. That's not a very successful finding method in our mission so we don't do it very often but while we were going we were searching all the street names on our ward list to see if we had any less-actives nearby. Turns out we did!! We went and found her and she gave us her number (which we didn't have) and invited us back! Wooo!! Then it started POORING rain. We were walking and I was on the phone when my pass-along cards fell out of my pocket. This African guy ran up and helped me picked them up then basically handed me his number. So we passed him off to the Anziani in the english branch. His name was Wisdom. I also met an African on the bus last week named Bluesky and another man named Fabulous. I also know of a baby named Racehorse. Okay I'm done. 

On fridayyyyyy, we had a sick lesson with Alessia and then right after she had her baptismal interview and now she's getting baptized this Saturday!!! Yayyyy!! She's so happy and so are we. She asked me to give a talk at her ceremony...😬 I'm nervous because surprisingly enough, I haven't given one as a missionary yet. But I'm so excited. 

That night we had a Halloween party with the young single adults and we invited this cute English course student who is going to become an investigator! It was super fun. We played tons of crazy fun"American" games that all of them loved. 

Saturday morning we got a text telling us that apparently we were in charge of the Ward activity that would happen that night. So we basically had to drop everything and go set up and get ready for that all day. But it turned out awesome. We did tons of dancing. One of the investigators of the Anziani is a dance teacher and he is sooo sick. He did hip hop and it made me miss dancing sooo much. Ugh it was so good. 

Sunday we went to like 5 different beaches with Alessia to choose which one she will get baptized at. Oh yeah, she's getting baptized in the ocean as well!! Wooo! It was beautiful. 

Then today we went to another town in Sicily called Agrigento. It's got tons of temple ruins and is basically like a mini Greece. So no I didn't get to go to the actual temple, unfortunately...but this was pretty cool too. 

Okay sorry if that was random. I can't really focus right now.. but yeah I'm good! I hope you guys are too. Vi auguro un buon Halloween! 

Love, Sorella Bonzo

Ecuadorian food

I forgot to mention that we dressed up like the anziani for the Halloween party

Her first time seeing the beach in the mission

The temple! 

We were each other 

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When in Rome

This week was unlike anything else! So many miracles and surprises, it's was the least normal week I've ever had in the mission. 

Starting with Tuesday when we were doing some door to door because we went looking for a less active but she told us she's not interested in letting us in. We don't do this approach very often because it hardly ever brings success in this mission. We'd been going for a while when we actually got let in!!! That's my first time ever! We went up to find a cure Indian woman and her baby. She didn't speak very much Italian but the spirit was still there. We were able to communicate enough to testify of the Book of Mormon. She told us to come back and bring her one of them. Luckily we were in Rome and got to look in the supplies office and found one in her language Timl!! We're so excited to take it to her. 

We also started teaching this cute lady, Rosalia, who was an x-English corse student. We called her up and invited her back and also asked if she'd like to meet with us. She did, and when we met, she was touched. She set her own return appointment and will start coming to English again as well!! 

Wednesday was one of the most stressful days of my life haha. Our flight for Rome was at 5 so we were planning to be picked up by the Garrett's at 2:30 to head to the airport. We were out working in an area pretty far away from our home when we got a call saying that the anziani from Sciacca got to Palermo without their passports to the garrets had to drive them back to get them which means that they wouldn't be able to pick us up and we needed to be at the station in an hour to take the bus to the airport. It usually takes at least 45 minutes to get to the station from our house. We were at the end of the line on the tram and had to wait like 20 minutes for it to even go again. The other sisters helped us gather out things over the phone (because we hadn't packed) so we ran home and threw it all in a bag then ran to grab a bus to the station. We made it on time, grabbed a quick lunch at McDonald's and got on the bus to the airport. 

Then when we got to the airport my companion couldn't find her passport!! So called the Garrett's who got to the airport, dropped off the Sciacca anziani and grabbed us, we sped back to our house, grabbed her passport, then back to the airport. We made it just in time to catch our plane. Hahah but seriously I think that Garrett's deserve exhalation for all that they do for us. 

Then a bunch of more crazy stressful things happened but I don't have time to write them all but just know that if you notice any zits in my pictures this week, that's why. 

We got to stay in the Villa (mission home) with a bunch of other sisters which was fun! 

We had a conference in Rome on Thursday where every missionary in the mission got to go up and learn from President & Sister Kearon, Elder & Sister Hallstrom, and President & Sister Nelson. It was such an unforgettable experience to get to sit there and be taught by an apostle of the lord for an hour. He taught us all about the abrahamic covenant and how that applies to the work that we are doing today. He referenced scripture after scripture and did so without any notes at all. He also wanted to make sure that we told our families "thanks to them too," so, family and friends and everyone who is supporting me in this mission, President Nelson thanks you. 

We weren't able to get a lot of work done in our area because of the conference but I'm so grateful for the opportunity that we had to be in Rome and be instructed directly by God's servants. And it was so much fun seeing everyone!! So many cool reunions with people I thought I'd never see again.

We had fun doing some finding after the conference, in fact, sorella Frogley and I were able to teach a girl the restoration in one of the most famous piazza's in Rome. She was just there as a tourist, but she told us that a lot of her friends are Mormons. She's originally from the U.K. but has lived in Texas for a while, and right now is doing a study-abroad in Switzerland. She said that would love to learn more. We even helped her download the gospel library app! It was such a cool experience for me to teach the restoration in my own language for the first time in my mission and in such a cool, historical place like Rome. 

Our plane to leave Rome wasn't until Friday night at 9:30 so we spent all day in Rome hanging out with President and his wife in the villa because there was a strike that day so all of the buses and trams and metros were shut down for most of the day so we couldn't go anywhere. Then we received a message that sorella Frogley'a permesso (visa) would be ready to be picked up on Tuesday and they were trying to figure out our travel plans. We called and told them that we were still in Rome (they didn't realize because everyone else had already left) so they decided that sorella Frogley would stay in Rome until Wednesday to pick up her permesso and I would go back to Palermo with the other sisters. 

So now Ive been in a trio the rest of the week! It's been super fun but I also miss my cute companion. It's hard to get a lot done because we work in different areas and are trying to do both of our works, but we're doing what we can! 

We got home at 12:30 Friday night so we were super tired Saturday from all of the late nights and early mornings that we've been doing lately but it just made it more fun because we're all a little crazy when we're tired. 

Do you remember the crazy old lady I talked about a few weeks ago? The one that cried on our shoulders at 5 am when we were taking sorella Anderson to the station. Well on Saturday she was like "I want to come to church with you tomorrow. Come and pick me up at my house and I'll go with you" we didn't know what to do because we could tell her no so we picked her up for church the next day! I was really worried because it was a stake conference and she's really just not all the way there so I was stressing the whole time that she'd do something crazy like stand up and start yelling in the middle of the meeting. We were able to keep here pretty calm throughout the whole thing though. She did start balling when she had to leave early and she said bye to us, but other than that we were good!! Before she left she was like "so when can you come to my house? Tomorrow? And the day after that?? You have to come visit me now because I came to church with you"...my life is so much fun. 

Two other fun things- 

Yesterday we sat by the ocean and read the Book of Mormon with a less active so that was fun. And then that night we did a gesso. I saw that old man who stops my literally every time and tries to get me to go get coffee with him so I ran and hid behind some people and started talking to them. Meanwhile the elders told him that I had gone back to America...hahaha what can you do? Hopefully he won't come back now.. 

Today we went to a cute little tourist town about an hour away from Palermo by train called Cefalù! It was beautiful. And guess what, it's the end of October and everyone is still going to the beach because it's still 80+ degrees every day!! Yeah it rains most nights and in the morning sometimes but by the middle of the day it is hot ancora! 

K cool. That's all I have for ya. Love you guys! Always talk to people on planes and at bus stops and train stations and stuff. People love Mormons! And although we may not be able to convert them right there on the plane, we're just putting a little more light and truth into their lives which never hurts! And then when they're ready, they'll remember you, and that moment. 

You guys are the best! President Nelson loves and appreciates you, and so do I. 

Love always, 

Sorella Bonzo

Palermo zone on our way to Rome 

Our hands right after we shook hands with president Nelson 

My MTC group! 

Palermo sisters 

My mom and sister!! (My trainer with her 2 greenies) 

Rome- it was actually really cold there! 

The lesson by the ocean. (Look at my iPad..don't worry sorella Frogley, we promised we wouldn't go to the beach without you) 

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