Well, I'm spreading my wings and flying (taking an airplane on
Thursday) out of my birth city! We received transfer calls on Saturday
and found out that I'll be island hopping down to Palermo in Sicily! I
was raised like a princess here in Caglari. It's one of the cleanest,
most organized and Americanized cities in our mission. And from what
I've heard about Palermo, it's one of the sketchier areas in the
mission haha but it has some of the best food in all of Italy. The
Anziani told me that it's okay if I get fat in palermo because I'll
never get food like that again 😂. This week I was going to complain
about how hot and HUMID it's been here in Cagliari, because it's been
bad. I've never sweat so much in my life. But apparently it's even
worse down in Sicily...pray for me 😅. I am going to miss Cagliari so
much, it is such a wonderful city. But above all, I'm going to miss
all the people here. They have been so good to me. In fact I'll
probably gain 10 pounds before I even get down to Sicily because we
have Pranzo appointments every day this week!! Oh mamma mia, this is
the life my friends.
THIS WEEK:
Thursday was the highlight of our week. We did an exchange with the
Sorelle in Sassari! It takes about 3 hours to get there by train but
we didn't want to waste time with all the travel so we decided to get
up at 4:30am so we could exit out house by 5:30 and get on the
earliest train which was at 6:40. That way we could just do our
studies on the train and not waste any time! We got to Sassari around
9:30. I was with Sorella Anderson this time! She is such an amazing
missionary!! In the morning we got to do a service project in the
morning and help a member who is a little disabled (her legs don't
work very well) clean out her storage unit and put in supplies for her
food storage/72 hour kits.
Then somehow every single one of our appointments that day fell
through so we were left to doing finding all day in the warm sardegnan
sun. Luckily it's a lot dryer up in Sassari. It was hot, but I wasn't
sweating as much because there's not as much humidity there like there
is here. I learned so much though about street approaches by stopping
literally everyone we saw. Not very many people wanted to stop and
talk with us. I think a lot of the reason would be that it's so hot so
people just want to get where they're going. We walked all around the
city and by the end of the day our feet hurt so badly and we were both
sunburned, but we were happy because we knew we did all that we could
that day.
It was actually such a miracle because we had just been talking all
day about how we should be trying to talk to and teach young people
because they are more willing to change (not as rooted in the Catholic
Church) and they are the ones who will grow up and raise families in
the church. But it's so much easier and less scary to talk to older
people! We decided together though that we would talk to everyone, but
especially try to talk with every young person that we could. Right
after we got on a bus (actually the only one we took that day) and
there were 2 young girls sitting right by where we were standing.
Sorella Anderson looked at me like 'this is what we've been waiting
for' we were both scared-I don't know why, young people are just
really intimidating here- but she started by inviting them to English
course. We bounced off each other to keep the conversation going and
then when they asked how we could speak Italian well so quickly
Sorella Anderson immediately responded, "honestly, because we're doing
this mission, we have the help of the lord." And after that it turned
into a religious conversation (that's always the hardest part, turning
a normal conversation into one where you can bear testimony and invite
them to learn more.) We told them about what we do and teach as
missionaries and asked if they'd like to know more. They said yes and
we exchanged numbers!! Then after they got off we were able to talk to
2 more people and get their numbers' as well! It was a miracle and I
hope everything goes well with them!!
Thursday was also Sorella Tingey's year mark so Sorella Anderson and I
stopped by a sard store that was close and get her some earrings she's
been wanting to buy. Then that night we celebrated by ordering pizzas.
I want to try something new/different every time I get a pizza so this
time I tried one with hamburger french fries, and a fried egg on
top...not my favorite but it wasn't bad! My favorite pizza I've tried
so far had eggplant on top. I'd never tried eggplant before I got into
the mission but they use it a lot here and I love it now!
Friday morning we woke up at 4:30 again and caught the earliest train
back so that we could get back to our area and start working again! We
actually almost missed our train because this crazy old lady asked if
I would carry her huge, heavy bag of plants and pots to her train
because she was having a hard time with it. Of course I was willing to
do it but holy cow she was insane and made us walk all over and then
when we're like "our train leaves in 5 mins" she's like "oh! That's my
train up there! Run run run!" We were able to get her on her train and
run to ours and luckily made it on time.
We dropped almost all of our investigators this week because of the
lack of real intent or willingness to meet so in the morning we met
with Raffaella then the rest of our day we were on the streets
finding.
Funny story: we were doing some address finding which basically means
we went through old potentials sheets and wrote down and mapped out
the people we wanted to go and find to see if they were still
interested. We rang the citofono of this lady who was like I'm busy
right now and blah blah blah basically saying she didn't want to meet
without actually saying it. So she didn't want to meet but since we
were there we decided to just ring all of them and ask if they'd like
to hear our message. We were going down button by button and most of
them didn't answer then Sorella Tingey rang that lady's again without
noticing it, She answered again (it had been like 5 mins since we
talked to her) and I was like we already rang her! But Sorella Tingey
thought I meant that it was one of the ones who didn't pick up so
she's just like "hi we're missionaries and we have a message of
Christ.." Or something like that and the lady yells "ANCORA?!
BASTA!!!" (Still?! Enough!!) and hung up the phone. I then explain to
Sorella Tingey that that was the woman we had come here for and then
we could not stop laughing..super awkward.
I wish I could say that we saw fruits from out labors that day but no
one really wanted to listen to us except for one girl named Veronica
who we found in a park next to one of the apartments where we were
looking for someone. She was really nice and interested and we taught
her about Joseph smith and got her number but she was with her family
who did not seem very happy that we were there. We tried calling the
next day to make an appoinemt and she had blocked our number (we think
probably because the family gave her a hard time for giving it to us)
so that was sad.
Saturday morning was transfer calls day! The Anziani got their call at
like 9:30 in the morning which is usually around the time that we get
ours. We waited and waited (not being able to focus very well on our
weekly planning) and then finally at 12 the assistants called us.
Telling Sorella Tingey that she will stay here and 3 other sister will
arrive, making it 4 in the house and ward again which is exciting. And
then I was told they I'll be going to Palermo 1 to be with Sorella
Anderson (not the one in Sassari a different one)
We've really been hitting the streets and trying so hard to find new
investigators (especially with all these new Sorelle coming in) but
it's been super hard because it's summer so everyone's at the beach,
all day, every day. That's the culture right here now. No one will
meet because they're at the beach. No one is in the park or on the
street because they're at the beach. But we were able to find and talk
to one girl Martina who seems like a really cool person. She's a
university student (which means she's young!) and is studying
philosophy. She told us that she believes in God as like an energy and
doesn't believe in Christ, she told us, "honestly, I don't really know
what I believe right now, I'm kind of studying and searching until i
find what I feel is right" we're like perfect! Do you wanna meet?! She
said she'd love to so I'm excited for them to get to work with her!
Daniela was so sad when I told her I'd be leaving. She's doing so
well, doesn't feel ready for baptism yet and doesn't want to be forced
to do anything, but she comes to church every week and is at every
activity including the baptism (for a member who turned 8) last night.
I promised her that I would email and keep in contact with her. I am
praying so hard that she'll finally have the desire to be baptized! We
met with her and did more of a spiritual thought type thing and she
loved it. She said that the video we showed and scripture we shared
were her favorite she's ever seen and heard, I think it's because it
was exactly what she needed right now. I know that we were inspired to
share those things so that felt pretty good.
I had to say goodbye to my best friend rina 😢. She is literally one
of my favorite people in Cagliari. I can't wait to see her nel regno
celeste 😊
Yesterday was my last Sunday of course, sad, but good. I'll definitely
miss this ward so much. Even the crazy old people like the man who
gave half his talk yesterday in sardo (their dialect that is closer to
Spanish than Italian so I understood nothing.) it's been fun.
We spent our day today with the Sanna family 😊 They are like my
family here in Cagliari. We went over at noon and Sorella Sanna taught
us how to cook this really yummy keisch type thing and some rice with
pumpkin. We ate and talked and laughed, it was such a fun day. I love
them so much.
FUNNY MOMENTS:
* A less-active says she can't come to church because she has feet
problems. she's been saying this for 3 months and keeps saying "I'm
going to the doctor this week," yet somehow she can manage to make it
to the church every week for our appointments because she won't let us
go to her house. This week after we met she said to me, "why don't you
massage my feet?! Maybe then I'll come to church." 😂 good thing I'm
escaping to Sicily 😬
* We were sitting in correlation with the ward mission leader, bishop,
and all the missionaries and all of the sudden our ward mission
leader's phone started ringing and the ringtone was some Beyoncé song.
You have to know that our ward mission leader is quiet, bland kind of
person. All of us sat there for a few seconds in awkward silence
trying not to laugh then we just couldn't hold it in anymore and we
just all started laughing.
Well I don't know how this email got so long, I'm really sorry if I
bore you guys ever haha. I hope you can see how much I love this work,
my companion--oh speaking of her I'm going to miss her so
much!!--these people, and Cagliari. It's going to miss it all so much,
but I know that Palermo is where I need to be now and I'm excited to
take on the new challenges that this transfer has to offer! Also, I
love all of you. Thanks for your wonderful support. You're the best!
con amore,
Sorella Bonzo 💕
The less active who asked me to message her feet 😂 she's so funny
Eating gelato with rina
In Sassari with our pizzas
Daniela and Sandra
La Famiglia Sanna
Eride and Roberto
Sorella Pistidda (our cute little bread lady)
