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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