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
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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