Miracoli ovunque

Ah! You guys! This week was PIENA DI MIRACOLI!!!
Okay first, last week we had a lunch appointment with Anna's mom, Anna
left right before we got there to go to her cousins... Anyway we still
did it with her mom who's a less active and she made us pasta with
tuna and pana.. Pana is this cream stuff you use for cooking, I've
never heard of it in America but it's basically just fat. But it's
really good when you put it in stuff. So usually when you use pana you
just put 1/8 of a box in when you're cooking for like 4 people. There
were 3 of us there, and she put in a box of pana for each of us...3
BOXES OF PANA..and 3 cans of tuna..and pasta. And that's it. It was
soooo heavy. I was just eating straight up cream. I was going to die.
Then she also made us eat sandwiches, salad, and gelato. Sorella
Anderson and I literally almost through up on the way home and I felt
sooo heavy and sick the whole day afterwards. During my language study
I just did it while laying on the ground because I couldn't move. Oh I
can't even explain it but it was so funny and also the worst thing
ever at the same time. ....and she told us yesterday that she wants us
over for lunch again this week!! Pray for me please.

Okay, miracle time!
So we've been planning a talent show for a ward activity this week and
I think it was Saturday night we were talking to Anna and asked if she
wanted to sing for it with Sorella Anderson. We were thinking that it
would help her get over the fear of being in front of people and then
she'd more easily get over her fear of water for the baptism. She
decided to sing her favorite song, I am a child of God. And I don't
know why but I volunteered to play it on the piano..but the funny
thing is I don't know how to play that song. So on Wednesday we were
in the church doing a lesson with some less actives then afterwards I
was practicing that on the piano for a few minutes while my companion
was making some calls. If I didn't have to practice that song we
would've left the church by then. BUT we were in the right place at
the right time because while we were there this man showed up at the
church. His name is Alfredo. He told us that he talked to the Anziani
yesterday and was here for English course. We only do English course
Tuesday and Thursday and this was Wednesday but we thought, well maybe
the Anziani were going to meet him and do English just with him or
something (we later found out that he thought that said Tuesday
THROUGH Thursday) and he said he was like 15 minutes early so we tried
to call the Anziani but they didn't answer so we're like well, do you
want to take a tour of our church? He's like "this is a church? Sure!"
--you have to understand that this church is super weird. It's like
really small when you first walk in at the bottom then you walk up
tons of stairs to a bunch of classrooms then you walk up even more
stairs to the main floor with the chapel and all that, then you walk
up even more for the primary and stuff like that, and the baptismal
font is in the basement. So basically it's just all stacked on top of
each other.
It was so awesome though!! We gave him a tour and as we did it we
taught the restoration as we showed him the paintings. He was really
interested and had tons of questions. He started to talk about how the
bible is not completely correct (like everyone here thinks it is)
because of all the translations it's been through. He's really smart
and knows the bible super well. So ended up going into a classroom and
sitting down and we taught him about the Book of Mormon! He was so
happy when we gave him a copy and so interested to read it. It was the
strangest but best restoration lesson I've ever done and you guys..IT
FELT SO GOOD. I could feel the spirit the whole time just directing us
on what to say and how to do things. I was soo happy afterwards I was
just like rambling on about how happy I was and my companion took a
video because she thought it was so funny. But seriously. It feels so
good to fulfill our purpose as missionaries and teach the
restoration!!
He's a pretty young guy so we passed him to the Anziani but we have no
doubt that he's golden. I'm so grateful that I got to be apart of that
miracle!

The talent show was so much fun. We had so many different things from
singing to dancing to to poetry to baking to people demonstrating
their art work, one guy even showed us his animation video that he
made all by hand. It was crazy. Such a good night. And Anna performed
her song!! She was so happy afterwards. She's doing so awesome.

SUNDAY--the best day ever.
God has been preparing me a lot for motherhood lately as we teach
Anna. We always have to come up with creative ways to do things and
she's really quiet and won't talk or do things unless you show her
tons of love and encouragement. Her mom doesn't really understand how
to discipline her kids(most parents here have a hard time with this)
so every time she wouldn't come to church or read her scriptures her
mom would just say, she didn't want to. She's only 9 so she needs a
little more help. So every single night this week we called them at
9:30 and reminded them to read the Book of Mormon together and pray.
Then the reason she says she doesn't want to come to church is because
it's boring. Her mom only comes to sacrament meeting and hello she's
9, of course she's going to think it's boring. So this week we told
them we'd be at their house at 9:15 am (church starts at 9:30) to pick
the up.
I cannot tell you the amount of joy that I felt when I saw their cute
little family (all 3 of them including the brother who doesn't want
anything to do with the church) walking down the street in their
Sunday best to meet us.
Anna was teased by some of the kids in primary a little while ago so
that's why she hasn't wanted to go back. I promised her I go with her
and stay with her the whole time. So I got to go to primary!! It was
so fun and cute! The primary president was also soo sweet and
welcoming to her! Then after sharing time (while we were eating our
snack) the primary president said "sister, I think Anna is comfortable
enough and know us well enough if you want to go you could." So I ask
Anna, i said "would you like it if i stayed here with you or left?"
She just shrugged her shoulders. I said you choose, we can do whatever
you want! Then she just smiled and said "vai" (go) so I said okay I'll
see you after and left.
I picked her afterwards to go to Sacrament meeting and she was so
happy!! She said she loved it and can't wait to go back! She also was
so reverent and great in sacrament meeting, I couldn't have been
happier. --not to mention we had 4 investigators in church that day as
well..just sayin..that was pretty cool. 😏

There was also another super super awesome miracle that happened on
Sunday but we're meeting with her this week so I'll tell you more
about her next week.

Today we went caving!! It was so cool because we went In these caves
with a member and the tunnels got really small at some points (I kinda
freaked out just a little) and at the end it opened up and we saw a
cave where tons of past missionaries had signed their names. We got to
sign ours as well :) it was super awesome because there was the cave
we went in and we were in this little forest thing but from there we
could see the ocean! You guys, I'm so blessed.

Life's good here in Palermo! Il lavoro sta crescendo e Palermo sta
fiorendo! I love you guys!
Love,
Sorella Bonzo
Oh ps: I also cut off like 5 inches of my hair so that was fun. But I
haven't taken any pics so sorry.

Inviato da iPad

I'm addicted to cannoli and this was the best I've ever eaten.

Well this was my hair before I cut it but I forgot to take an after pic

The cathedral from last week. I couldn't get the whole thing in one pic this is only a small part of it

From on top

SANTA TORTA

Well, I'm still here in Palermo. Sorella Anderson is also here with
me. Sorella Roberts left and Sorella littlefield came and took her
place. We also got 3 new Anziani in our ward with included a
companionship that were blown in training. We have a greeny in our
district!!! Yay! I love greenies! They're the best. So now we have 6
elders just in our ward! It's crazy. Forza Palermo I guess.


Last week we were talking to an investigator about birthdays and I
Our investigator Alessia told us like 5 minutes before our lesson with
So on Friday we finally went out to visit the Excommunicatd member who
Last night at our gesso there were tons of different churches, I think
Today we went to two cathedrals huge here. The first, we were the only
I love you all and hope you're well!!
I just remembered another really funny thing that happened this week
District pic minus zone leaders
Teaching a 9 year old the word of wisdom. Haha we got pretty creative.
We're having a talent show next weekend! I drew the invites and thought they turned out kinda cute
She's such a cutie. I met her on Sunday In church. She "braided" my hair then told me that she wanted to be Sorella Bonzo so I let her :)

told her that my favorite cake is red velvet and asked if she knew
what that was because its not a thing here. She goes "SANTA TORTA!! OH
MAMMA MIA CHE BUONA!" Hahaha I will forever call red velvet cake
"Santa Torta" (holy cake) now. So we decided that we'd make it for her
this week. No it wasn't as good as the ones you find in Costco, but
with what we have here, I thought we did a pretty good job. She loved
it.

her that her mom and a family friend was coming and that she wanted to
learn more. The Anziani are already teaching her mom and younger
brother but the friend was a referral! We decided to forgo our plans
for that lesson and whipped out the restoration for this new
investigator. She's very religious but said that she'd love to meet
with us again and come to church. She told us that she already has a
Book of Mormon but she's never opened it. She got it from her niece or
something. She said she's moved and cleaned our her house many times
but never could get herself to throw it away. She promised to read it.
It was actually really cool because Alessia'a mom was making these
excuses of how she's read a little bit but she's too busy to read and
her friend was agreeing so we asked Alessia- who is a very busy young
person but has now finished the book and is to D&C 50!!!!- to tell us
her feelings about the Book of Mormon. She bore a beautiful testimony
that brought her mom to tears. She's so awesome.

had come back to church and wants to be rebaptized, Maria. She lives
in the realllllyyy sketchy part of town. There are like bullet holes
in the walls and tons of little kids running around half-clothed who
stared at us like they'd never seen a girl in a skirt, or let alone a
non-Italian in that area in their lives. There was this really loud
music playing over these weird speakers. Our bishop told In fact in
our area book it says that sisters are not allowed to go there and
that's why the sisters stopped visiting her in the past, but we talked
to our zone leaders and they told us that we should just only go in
the morning and just get in and out for her appointments, don't do
finding there or remain there longer than is necessary...so that was
fun!! She told us her whole conversion story which was really cool!
She's doing really well and even has a goal to go to the temple.

a total of like 5 lined up doing things as well on that same street
where we always go. It was crazy. I saw a girl come over and look at
our sheet so I went up and talked to her. Turns out she's from Ohio
and moved here with her husband because he is a baptist priest or
something like that. She asked me what we do and what we believe so I
explain the whole restoration to her very simply. She then said,
"okay, I have a couple questions," and began to throw me every kind of
bible-bashing material she could think of. To every question she
asked, I simple bore testimony of what we believe. She continued to
try to confound. I gained a testimony last night of the promise that
we have as missionaries, and even members, that if we speak with the
spirit, no one will have the power to confound us. You guys, it's so
true. I was truly given the words to say as I calmly and sincerely
bore testimony to her. In the end, she became confounded, having now
more words to say against me or our church. I politely ended the
conversation by inviting her to read the restoration and to pray, just
as Joseph smith did.

inside and it kind of creeped me out...the second was the biggest in
Palermo. It's huge. We walked up to pay for our tickets which were €7
each but the man looked at us and said, "oh, you're sisters, you can
just go in." We explained to him that we aren't apart of this church
but that we're missionaries for another church. He continued to say
that we were missionaries and didn't have to pay. It was super
awesome. The whole time we were in there people were talking to us and
asking which church we were from. We can't preach in other churches so
we couldn't really do tons but it was cool. And we got to go on the
roof of the cathedral and look out of Palermo. It was the coolest
thing I've ever seen. Also we ate the best cannoli I've ever had. The
lady made it right in front of us!! I'm started to have an obsession
them..especially ricotta (the sweet cheese that's inside of them.) its
kind of a problem.

Love, Sorella Bonzo

but I don't have time to write it. Also I took so many pictures today,
I have to go through and send you the best ones. I'll send both of
those next week.

Sorella littlefields first cannolo

Come & See

Ciao cari miei!!

Such a good week. Filled with miracles!!
For example, TUESDAY we went to visit an excommunicated member who we
will start working with this week. She was in the hospital doing
chemotherapy for a tumor that she has. We had no idea where this
hospital is and unfortunately my companion knows this area just about
as well as I do so we were lost. I decided to start asking people for
directions because it's always worked for me before. My companion is a
little more skeptical because I guess she's been led astray by a few
Italians in the past so we decided not to trust them and just follow
her map. After we had walked for 2 hours (during the hottest time of
the day might I add) we were basically completely lost but still
trying to follow this map. Then behind me I hear someone year
"sisters" at first we both ignored it because we get strange men
trying to talk to us in the 3 English words they know all the time.
But then I thought, maybe I should see who that was. I turned around
and saw a member waving us down- he speaks English. We told him where
we were trying to go and he looked us up and was able to give us
directions there. He said it would take us probably 3 more hours to
walk there from where we were at. We ended up having to do a little
back-tracking to go and catch this bus p--which by the way was what
the lady had told me to do in the first place haha. Then we got off
where we were supposed to and were planning to walk from there to the
hospital but I felt impressed to ask the lady In front of us if that
was right. She said that we needed to turn around and take a different
bus otherwise we'd be walking for a while. At the bus stop I asked a
different lady which bus we needed to take and she ended up getting on
the same one as us so I sat by her and talked to her about the gospel
of course! It was great! She said she was busy with work right now but
wasn't opposed to hearing our message! She also was able to tell us
exactly which stop we'd need to get off at. As soon as we got off this
man came out of nowhere and said the hospital is right here and
basically walked us there then left. Angles were guiding us I'm
telling you. I think God was like, "alright you can't waste anymore of
your time, I'm going to make it impossible for you to not get there,
as long as you trust me." Which we finally did. My companion felt
super bad after it all happened and said that she's trusting me to get
us everywhere from now on. I told her that we'd just trust God
instead.

Tuesday evening after English course, oh wait have I told you guys
about the English course here yet? I don't think I have...I love
them!! We split it up into 3 levels and in Cagliari I taught the basic
class but here the sisters always teach advanced. It was super weird
to switch from speaking mostly Italian and teaching basic English
words to only speaking in English. I loved my students in Cagliari,
but our advanced class here is so much fun. It's really small and
usually the only people who come are these 3 best friends who just
like to joke with us the whole time and an old guy who was born in
Palermo but grew up in the US then lived in Germany for a while and
now he's back here. The 3 friends always say stuff like "sister have
you been drinking? don't you be lyin'." They know all about the word
of wisdom and one actually tells us he's a Mormon in his heart because
he no longer drinks alcohol or coffee. Anyway they're hilarious and
it's super fun. Apparently they're loaded and travel the world
together and keep saying they're going to come to america and visit me
next summer. (Mom, dad, don't be surprised if we have 3 crazy Italians
showing up at our house next year.) in fact after I showed them some
pictures of st George one asked if I would marry him so he could live
there too 😂😂

Okay so then after English course we celebrated Anna's (our
investigator) birthday with her family and a few members she's close
with. She is such a cutie I love her so much. She's 9 now and
officially an investigator so we were able to commit her to a
baptismal date for the 3rd of September!! (The same day as Alesia.)
she's still timid and nervous but we've been able to help her open up
tons already and I know that these lessons are really helping her
mother to reactivate as well.

WEDNESDAY we celebrated my 6 months mark (6 months since I entered the
MTC) by getting some gelato with the sisters in the morning. There are
so many gelaterie in this town I'm never going to be able to try them
all! But we found a new favorite Wednesday. They also do crepes with
gelato inside that I'm definitely going to have to try.
We also had our interviews with president Pickerd Wednesday. I love
the Pickerd's, they're so sweet. We decided to get them bombe (a roll
filled with Nutella, deep-fried, and covered in sugar--haha welcome to
Sicily..I just realized how unhealthy that sounds) on our way there
because we knew they'd appreciate something sweet (and something they
hadn't tried because neither of them served in Sicily) after all those
interviews. We bought 4 for them and the assistants and the owner of
the shop ended up giving us 8 because we're bffs and say hi to him
every time we walk past (which is multiple times a day.) it pays to
have friends in high places I'm telling ya.

We saw so many amazing miracles this week! One of them being our
lesson with our investigator who will be getting baptized in September
named Alesia. We had planned to teach her about sabbath day observance
in order to help her come to all three meetings in church. We planned
to meet her twice this week and thought we'd teach her about
priesthood and auxiliaries the next time. When we were planning for
her lesson we had forgotten that we'd be teaching about the sabbath
and just planned to teach about the preisthood. We also planned to
have a member in the lesson but she cancelled on us but at the last
minute we were able to get another member there. The lesson ended up
being exactly what she needed. It was amazing because this member and
our investigator have actually been friends for a while and she
respects him so much. He is a priesthood holder and was able to help
explain to her what that means. We then talked about the auxiliaries
and how, under the direction of the priesthood, we as women can serve
others and be lifted up through relief society. After explaining this
we invited her to come to relief society next week (Our relief society
is at the beginning here and sacrament is at the end. She is just used
to coming to sacrament and says its too early for her to come at 9:30)
and she accepted! We finished by talking about the blessings of the
priesthood and specifically, priesthood blessings. She asked if her
friend (the member) could give her a blessing so he did. The spirit
was strong. Afterwards she said something like, "I felt like God was
talking to me through John." at the beginning of the lesson she
questioned the priesthood a little bit, saying that all churches have
the power of God, we were able to refer back to the restoration to
explain and after the blessing she received I know she has a testimony
of the power and authority that we have in our church. It was a
special experience for me.

Zone conference was Thursday!!! I love zone conference! Our main
subjects were how we can better walk with God, the doctrine of
repentance and how we can teach it using examples in the Book of
Mormon, and 3 works that president uchtdorf admonished us to use when
he came and visited Rome a few weeks ago "come and see." He told us
that we don't have to fear August (the hardest month for this mission
because everyone either leaves town or goes to the beach all day every
day) if we'll just invite people to come and see. We are going to work
on inviting everyone we can to church every week and doing more church
tours. The zone leaders ordered lunch for us and literally everything
we are was deep-fried haha welcome to Sicily! Apparently that's
usually what we eat every zone conference and is straight up Sicilian
food..they deep fry everything. It was really good nevertheless.

Well those are the highlights this week! Thanks for your faithful
examples! I love you!! 💕

Anna's birthday!!

6 months brioscià --I only have a year left 😢 where does the time go?

Zone conference food. Proprio siciliano

I drew this for our gesso last night! Also I have a new "boyfriend" here. Every gesso this guy in his 70's come up and talks to me for like 30 minutes...he's always like "do you want to get a coffee with me? It's just right there, I promise it won't take long" 😂 I just told him he can come hang out with us at church on Sunday.

x

La vita è bella

You guys, I'm the worst. I had a hard time sleeping last night and we've done
tons today so I'm super exhausted and really don't want to write a
group email. Plus I forgot my planner so I have a hard time
remembering what even happened this week. I'll do my best but if this
just turns into me sending you a few pictures with explanations,
you'll know why.

We taught Anna and Katia (and Francesco- Anna's brother- he won't
participate in the lessons but he's always there on his phone..but we
know he's secretly listening) twice this week. Last Monday we
committed them to read the Book of Mormon and pray together. Anna is
progressing so much! She is very shy but she's been opening up a lot.
She originally didn't get baptized because she is afraid of water. But
we weren't sure if that we the only reason and the. With her mom being
less active for about nine months she hasn't really had the support
system to do so. But we have now established that she does want to get
baptized. And she is getting more and more comfortable with the idea
being baptized because we told her that the water will only be waist
high and she will go under for 2 seconds and have someone there to
hold her the whole time. Things are looking really good for her!!

We did exchanges this week! So I got to work in the Palermo 2 area one
day (shout out to my trainer Sorella Clark.) I thought I'd seen ghetto
here in the Palermo 1 area but boy we I wrong hahaha. It's so dirty
over there. We turned a street corner and Sorella Roberts is like
alright "I have to warn you, there's a lot of garbage" and then I look
and see just tons of trash piled all over the sidewalk. So gross. The
sisters in Palermo 2 also work in the Palermo 3 ward which is an
English-speaking ward (it's a ward made up of Africans) so I got to be
an English-speaking missionary for the day as well! That was soo
weird. Africans are so funny! The whole day it was like one second
they were arguing with us and quoting the Bible, and the next they
were like "yes I'm really interested, I want to meet with you to learn
more" and we were exchanging numbers?! On one occasion we were talking
to a man who Sorella Roberts talked to a few days ago. She said he was
crazy and loud that day, not wanting to listen, just arguing. We saw
him again so we talked to him and h asked how we learn Italian so
quickly. We told him only through god's help can we do this. I told
him that we study and do our part, then pray every day for God to help
us. Sorella Roberts asked if we could pray with him to help him learn
this language, because he says he studies and wants to be able to
speak it. She asked me to pray. That is the first time I have prayed
in English in 6 months. It was hard and actually pretty awkward. I
don't remember how to pray in English and everything I said came out
like I would have said it in Italian. Being an English missionary was
really hard for me because I'm just not used to talking about the
gospel in English! But guess what?! He ended up coming to church on
Sunday!! So cool, that never happens with Italians.
Also, okay so Sorella Bellomo is a sister in p2 and she's Italian,
she's trying to learn English right now. She comes home frustrated a
lot because she can't understand these Africans and now I can tell her
not to worry because honestly, I couldn't understand a lot of them
either 😂 I felt like a greenie again only being about to pick up bits
and pieces of the conversations here and there, but as the day went on
I got better at understanding them.

Today for pday we hung out with the senior couple, Anziano and Sorella
Garrett! We went and at Fratelli la bufala (a well-known, very tasty
pizza restaurant) then drove up a mountain with them and were able to
look out and see all of Palermo. We also got to see the cathedral of
Santa Rosalia (zone patron saint of Palermo). It is the coolest
cathedral I have ever seen. You'll have to look up her story because
it's long but part of it is that she went and lived in this cave and
died there and they believe that this cave on this mountain was her
cave so they made it into a cathedral. So it's a church inside of a
cave!! So cool. We got tons of good pictures.

Yep, that's about all I remember for this week. It's been fun, we're
working hard and sweating tons.

Con amore,
Sorella Bonzo

Scambi life= gelato life

Welcome to Palermo 2! (I couldn't capture it very well in this picture because of the lighting)

Fratelli la bufala

Palermo❤️