Siate Audaci

For pday last week went to the catacombs. It's like this underground museum-type thing with just a bunch of skeletons. They're bodies -well bones- of these rich families here who wanted to preserve their family members for some reason. One of their biggest attractions was a baby girl whose body has been preserved in this airtight container since she died in like 1912 and she's still in really good condition, she looks almost normal. It was kinda weird but fun. A few of the sisters felt sick and got creeped out but I just thought it was funny. But they didn't allow us to take pictures unfortunately so sorry about that, but if you do want to see pictures I think you could search the catacombs in Palermo and I think they have some stuff on their website..I'm not sure.

So funny/awkward story for the week. Tuesday after District meeting we went and ate lunch together then we were walking home and I was talking to this Anziano and right behind me was my companion who was talking to another one then behind them was their two companions talking. We we're just all walking and talking and whatever then all of a sudden I realize that I can't hear my companion's voice anymore. I'm like that's odd, so I turn around..and NO ONE IS THERE. I don't see my companion or any of the other missionaries. I had mini heart attack because I didn't know where my companion was and I was alone with this elder. Like what the heck how did this happen?!?! We turn around and start speed walking back down the street to find them. Finally we see my companion and one of the other elders stopped talking to this guy. The other two elders were a ways down from them talking to this other person. Apparently this guy just came up to my companion and started talking to her. Of course the elder stayed close to make sure everything was alright. I'm not sure what happen with the others but all I know is I was obviously oblivious to the whole thing. Turns out guy who stopped her was a friend of one of our members. 

On Friday we went Less active GANS finding with the Garrett's. Oh GANS=YSA because they're in charge of the young single adults here. We were going to different addresses to see if these people still even lived here anymore and if so we'd try to get in and get a return appointment. We had the coolest miracle happen. We went to this one place and rang the citofono (little buzzer thing that you press by their name then they come on the speaker and talk to you and decide if they want to buzz you in.) but no one answered. There were these young boys standing behind us waiting to ring and we asked if they knew this girl, one's like "yeah that's my aunt! Hang on the citofono doesn't work." Then this little twelve year old kid proceeds to hop the fence, buzz us in, then go see if she was home. Unfortunately she wasn't home but hey! At least we know now that she lives there and we can come back another time to see her! And we left our card with our number so hopefully she'll be willing to let us in in the future! 

We've been seeing the excommunicated woman, Maria, every week and really trying to work with her but she hasn't been able to come to church for a while because of the toll that the chemotherapy is taking on her body. The past couple times she could hardly move because her whole body was covered in burns. Last time we visited she asked Anziano Garrett for a blessing. This week we went over and she was almost completely healed from her burns! She looked so much healthier and happier too. She was finally able to come to church again this week! It was a miracle. 

We tried one last time to baptize Anna on Saturday before taking a little break and waiting a while. On Thursday we had a great lesson with her, she was filled with the spirit. She agreed to try again Saturday. We taught her again Friday. We talked about priesthood blessings. Not only did she refuse a blessing but stated very clearly that she did not want to be baptized. She did tell us that she does want to be baptized, but she won't do it because of her fear of the water. After sharing experiences and all the wonderful things about priesthood blessings and she still said she didn't want one. We asked her why and all she said is "non mi va." (It kind of means "I don't feel like it" but kind of different. It literally translates to "to me, it doesn't go", I don't really know how to explain it) It was hard, but we have decided to drop her as an investigator right now because there is not much we can still do for her at this point. We will continue to work with her though, by working with her mother as a less-active, still focusing a lot on her because that is what helps the mother the most anyway, but just really strengthening the mother so that she can stay active (she has been in and out of activity since she was baptized like 20 years ago) and therefore Anna will continue coming to church as well. When the time is right, she will be baptized, I'm sure of it. For now, we will still do all that we can to help prepare her for that moment. 

Lastly, they haven't shown the women's conference here yet but my companion and I used our lunch time yesterday to watch it in the church on lds.org. I loved it so much. I love how direct sister oscarson was about teaching children correct principles regardless of the possibility of offending someone. I have found that this is so true on my mission. I don't know if you guys know this but Italians are pretty infamous for a few thing, two of them being; their pride, and how easily they take offense to things. As a new missionary I was worried to teach certain things because I didn't want to offend anyone, for instance, I was hesitant to say that this is the one and only church of Jesus Christ with the fullness of truth. And that a man can be saved only by baptism in this church by the proper authority that it has, and in no other way can a man gain salvation. 

I realized that there is a difference between being bold, and being rude. We should never seek to discredit other religions for the good things that they have and bring to this world, but we should also NEVER discredit our church for the unique things that we do have. We can peacefully bare testimony of the things we have come to know are true through the power of the Holy Ghost and invite others to ask their loving Heavenly Father if they can receive this witness as well. 

Cari miei, I love you, I pray for you. I hope that you will stay bold and firm in your testimonies, always looking to be builders of God's Kingdom. Dio sia con voi. 

Con affetto, 

Sorella Bonzo

 My favorite cathedral I've been in. Made completely out of gold, by hand and the walls are covered with stories from the Bible rather than saints!

Chips! (Basically French fries with a sauce on top) they're really popular in Europe 

Last pday 

This says it's a Muslim museum. It was closed when we tried to go inside though. 

Look it's Grass!!! It's so rare to find a park like this here. 

Inviato da iPad

Become the Message

This week was crazy and stressful and exciting and difficult and spiritually uplifting and  devastating all at the same time. 

On Tuesday night we had tons of lessons and all of the sisters on the island coming in and half of them staying at our house for the mission conference the next day with president Kearon (Presdient of the European area in the church.) He did one conference here in Sicily and the other in rome. I got to see tons of old friends including my MTC companion sorella rushton!! 

I appreciated the conference so much. I felt the spirit so strongly in that meeting and know that all the things we talked about were inspired. I was able to apply so many things to help me become a better, more consecrated missionary. President Kearon talked a lot about  "becoming the message." My zone leader put it best when he said "trying to convince people of the plan of happiness without looking happy is like buying a weight loss pill from a fat person." It's so true! My faith and testimony were definitely increase and strengthened thanks to this conference. Above all, President Kearon expressed his love to us and his appreciation for our service. It really touched me, and after the 6 hour I could not believe it was over, I didn't want it to end! 

We focused our week on preparing two of our investigators for baptism, however, neither of them ended up getting baptized. After Alessia's interview with the district leader, it was decided that she needed a few more weeks to strengthen her testimony in a couple areas. We are working to help her understand that this is a good thing and trying to prepare her even more so that she will be strong and ready when the time comes. 

Anna, the 9 year old, was ready and excited. However, she has a terrible fear of water. We have helped her as much as we thought possible to trust in Christ so that she could overcome this for the baptism. The day came, and she was filled with excitement and joy. We dressed her up, she stepped into the water, the man baptizing her almost said the prayer, but at the last minute she freaked out and said the she couldn't do it. There were 2 other people being baptized that night as well so there was a crowd of people in the room and around the font. There was too much commotion so we weren't able to help her and talk her through it. In the end, she couldn't get the courage up to do it. It was devastating. We are still working with her though and we're praying that we will see a miracle. 

Last night we did a gesso. I saw a man come up and look at one of the Books of Mormon on the ground. I walked up and started talking to him, asking if he'd seen the book before or heard of us. He said when he lived in Ecuador there was one of our churches right by his house. We started talking and he asked if I believed in the second coming, I told him yes. He said "well I don't, how old are you?" I gave him my age and he proceeded to say, "you've got a long walk ahead of you. This world is not good, the devil is real, and there are temptations. If we are god's children and he loves us so much why would he send the devil down to tempt us? I'm old, I've been waiting for Jesus to come for a long time, and I'm tired of it." I bore testimony after testimony of hope and joy and faith and all the things that I have in my life thanks to this gospel. I could see his heart softening. I talked to him for a total of like 30 minutes, and at the end his said "it's a beautiful thing to see a woman as young as you are have so much faith." During the conversation I asked him if we could exchange numbers and meet about 5 times, he declined every time saying that he was busy, but finally at the end I asked one more time. I told him that we can always make time for things that are important to us. He agreed and we exchanged numbers. It was a cool experience for me to be able to bear testimony and see the spirit touch this man's heart on a noisy, crowded, Italian street. 

Thank you for the prayers, letters, emails, and love. Vi voglio un mondo di bene ❤️

-Sorella Bonzo

8 sisters, 1 bathroom, and a giant sleepover

From my MTC group!!

We got matching shirts for the conference 

Well, we got the pictures anyway. This cute girl is Anna, and this was her almost baptism day 😕

Inviato da iPad

x

Happy

MONDAY:
After pday I did an exchange with my STL Sorella Littlefield. We went
to the hospital to visit a man who has some kind of skin cancer that
is eating away his face so right now his entire cheek on the right
side of his face is gone. His wife is their investigator so they
usually go and see them together but she was running late so we went
inside and talked to him for a while...it was a little difficult
because he can't really talk so it as kind of difficult but he's sweet
and I could tell he appreciated the company. We'd brought their
Anziani with us to give him a blessing.
It was getting late and his wife still hadn't shown up so we finally
just had them do the blessing then we had to go.
We went to the bus stop and waited...and waited...and waited....
Palermo 2 doesn't have the safest areas..so the Anziani were going to
go with us back to the station where we'd meet palermo 1 Anziani who
we would us home....but the bus never showed up...finally it hit 10:00
and we decided we should probably do something about it haha. We
couldn't walk because none of us knew exactly where we were, we hair
knew that we were really far away. Then finally one of the Anziani had
the idea to call the senior couple! Haha so Anziani Garrett came to
the rescue in his car and took us all home. We didn't get home until
like 10:40. So that's my apostate story for this week haha. We felt
super bad for making everyone get home so late that later in the week
we made them all a cake.

We scheduled Anna's baptismal interview for Saturday last week so on
TUESDAY we played Jeopardy with her to review all the stuff we've
taught and prepare her for the interview. She knew all the answers and
even the game!! We've also been helping her memorize the articles of
faith. She's so good at them! She's doing awesome.

THURSDAY morning we got a call from Anna's mom saying that her friend
(a former investigator from like 6+ months ago) wanted to meet with us
that day. We moved some stuff around so we'd be available. I guess her
story is that she was all good and loved the church until she found
some anti-Mormon stuff then went wayy against it. But when we met with
her she said she wanted to start fresh like a first lesson. She said
she knew that God wanted us to meet that day and so she knew there's
something she needed to learn from us. We taught her the restoration
and it was the strangest, craziest lesson ever. She had tons of
questions and a lot to say.. She is very influenced by her Catholic
background and was upset for a while because we don't worship Mary.
But by the end she said, you're right, we do only have on savior,
Jesus Christ. When we got to talking about the Book of Mormon she
said, "I know that this book is true." So we flipped to the last
paragraph of the introduction that says that if this book is true then
Joseph smith was a prophet and that this church is God's kingdom on
the earth today. we pointed that out and she said that she knew they
both of those things were true..so the only thing left to do was
invite her to baptism which we did and now she has a date for October
8th!

We also met with the cutest less active lady ever this week who was
shocked when I started speaking Italian. She was like "how long have
you been out? You speak so well! Your ancestors must be Italian, it's
in your blood!" Haha she was the sweetest thing. She even promised to
teach us how to make Arancine if we teach her how to make American
cookies.

We are lunch with the relief society president and her fami,y this
week. She has 3 crazy but cute kids. After we ate she basically forced
us to watch an hour long video of her wedding...It was so long but
she's the kind of person who would've been very offended if we hadn't
watched the whole thing. Plus it was pouring rain that day so she was
going to drive us back to the bus stop so there wasn't really anything
we could've done about it. It was just really funny, she loved it. She
did feed us waffles with Nutella on top for dessert so that was a
plus!

SATURDAY was a little rough. We did service in the morning which was
fun but it was super hot. The same guy stopped and gave us food again
out of the trunk of his car! But as soon as we got home my companion
was not feeling good at all. She was dehydrated and those sandwiches
were kind of heavy so it made her feel sick. Plus we were both
exhausted from working in that heat for so long. Then she threw
up...she was so sick I felt so bad.
Then Alessia (our other investigator getting baptized) wasn't texting
us back. Then we were planning to meet Anna for her bap interview but
her mom called us like 2 hours before and said "Anna doesn't want to
get baptized anymore." I asked her why and she said that she's too
scared of the water. I asked if we could still meet that night and
Anna said that she didn't want to go to the church.. I told her mom
that they need to read the scriptures together, every night, pray
together every night, and come to all three hours of church the next
day.
About an hour later we texted the mom telling her that we had made
cookies for Anna and asking if we could stop by for a few minutes.
They agreed.
Then I burned the cookies!! Haha I was so preoccupied with what we'd
say to Anna that I forgot about it. but it's okay because we had just
enough time to throw another batch in before we had to go.
We went over and talked to her a lot. I shared this scripture with her:
10 ¶Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy
God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold
thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41)
We were able to help her realize that God wants her to that so he will
be with her the whole time. She agreed to continue towards her
baptism.
She did her interview last night and we're having her try on the bap
clothes tonight!! She's excited once again to do it :)

Alessia wasn't able to come to church yesterday because she had to
work :( but she's doing well and is so ready, she just has to convince
herself that she's ready. We're meeting with her tonight and hope that
all goes well for her to get baptized on Saturday as well.
If so we will have a 4 baptism! Anna, Alessia, Alessia'a brother, and
another man! It's gonna be the best week ever!!

I love you guys! A special prayer for my investigators would be
appreciated this week!! Love you all so much!

Teaching Africans in English is fun

This is the cutest little kid

I tried to write in journal...I failed.

Shopping today!

This is my WORK and my GLORY

Our main focus for the next few weeks will be on our two investigators
who will both be getting baptized on the 17th! They are both
progressing wonderfully, living all the commandments, and they've both
accepted the challenge to live as if they were already members. There
were some hold ups before with the 9 year old, Anna, who has a fear of
water and didn't want to go to primary, but we have been able to work
through theses concerns with her and now she lives going to primary! I
fasted yesterday that she would be able to overcome this fear of water
(even if it's just for the day of her baptism) so that she can get
baptized without a problem that day. She has also been reading the
scriptures by herself almost every day and is now praying every night
to have the strength and courage to be baptized.

The other one, Alessia, has been ready to be baptized for a while but
just kept telling us that she was looking for a bigger answer and
wanted to be more than 100% sure. We had a really good lesson with her
last night where we were able to resolve all of her concerns, use some
really great repentance scriptures from The Book of Mormon, and help
her understand that if she desires to follow Christ, this is the next
step. She has already finished The Book of Mormon, read half of D&C,
and has gotten almost halfway through The Pearl of Great Price. She
had even had the desire to share our message with her friends! We
helped her understand where that desire was coming from and how she
needs to be the example and take the step towards baptism to be able
to more fully share this light with her friends. At the end of the
lesson she asked if we could do a fast together to help her feel more
sure about the baptism and this date.

Also, we taught the excommunicated lady the restoration this week and
it couldn't have gone better. She expressed to us how she now
understand the atonement and absolutely cannot live without The Book
of Mormon which has been her light in these dark days. As soon as she
finishes her chemotherapy she will be able to finish the interview
process required for her to be rebaptized. I have never seen a
stronger woman than her. I know that she's been through a lot and made
a lot of mistakes, but I have never seen a person more humble and
truly penitent. She is so desperate for the light of the Holy Ghost as
a constant companion in her life again. It's a humbling experience for
me to see and helps me realize how very grateful I am for this gospel
and the wonderful gift of the Holy Ghost that I have from my father in
heaven so that I have the opportunity to always feel his love and
guidance in my life.

We also had 2 lunch appointments 2 days in a row and I think I
literally gained 10 pounds. The first one was sooo rough. Like don't
get me wrong, everything was super good, probably the best I've ever
eaten, it was just so much. Half way through I was holding my skirt
waist open under the table just so I could let my stomach breath. And
she gave us 2 sausages each that were HUGE..like too big to fit on the
plate, and if you know me you know that I HATE sausage. That was
rough...but it's all good because I survived! ...this week though we
have 3 more appointments..a special prayer in my behalf would be
greatly appreciated 😂

On Saturday we got to do some service! We're having a mission
conference in a few weeks with President Kearn (the European area
president) and all the missionaries in Sicily are coming to Palermo
and we're meeting in the p2 church. The area where the church is is
very dirty so on Saturday we went and pulled all the weeks from by the
sidewalk and cleaned up all the trash. We're going again next Saturday
to finish up. It was tons of work but looks so much better now. It was
so funny the amount of people driving or walking by who stopped and
asked us why we were doing this service so we ended up getting to do
some missionary work too! We were finishing up and it was getting near
lunch time and this guy drives up and asks if we want food, we're like
yeah? So he pulls over, pops open his truck, and pulls out tons of
sandwiches for us! I know this sounds sketch but I promise you it's so
normal here for people to sell things out of the back of their cars.
In fact it's usually always better than the stuff you'd buy at stores.
But it was super nice of him and he gave it all to us for free because
of what we were doing!

Today we went and played laser tag with our district, the other
Palermo district. It was so much fun! Then some of us went and ate
lunch at Nino u'Ballerino. I got the thing they're famous for..the
spleen sandwich! I guess this guy went to a competition and it was
announced that his our the best in Italy and 5th in the world. It was
good, just kind of weird. It was like a roast beef sandwich just
chewier. And it was only €1.50! Then we went and bought Casio watches
as a district. They're super popular here in Italy. I got a rose gold
one that's super cute.

I have grown such a love for missionary work. I realized yesterday, as
I sat in church next to Anna, that I get to feel just a little bit the
way that God feels about us. In that moment I felt so much love for
her, like she was my own child, and had such a desire for her
happiness and wellbeing. I realized having these two investigators so
close to baptism, jus throw much God cares for us. We are literally
putting everything into them right now, every prayer, every fast,
every study, every day, always thinking about them, and what we can do
to help them finally get there. How disappointed I feel when they mess
up, but how much joy I feel when they keep the commandments and do
what is right. I can now stand alongside of God when he says that
"this is my WORK and my GLORY to bring to pass the immortality and
eternal life of man" there's no greater cause, and I can testify that
there's nothing else that will bring greater joy than this, the work
of salvation.

Love you guys! Sorry I never have time to respond to anyone! I promise
I'm trying, thank you so much for the love and support! ❤️
-Sorella Bonzo

We decided to be cute and match our hair

You guys, this is what it looks like when I go to buy fruit. How lucky am I?

Service!

Spleen sandwich