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

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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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