Sorella Bonzo: 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 ❤️