Sorella Bonzo: Rain is a Good Thing

Good (stormy) morning my friends! 🌧

The weather has been crazy here in these days. We have been getting rained and hailed on every day this week and today apparently there's supposed to be a cyclone in Crotone today. We went up to Catanzaro (the other city in our district) and have been completely poured on all day so we'll see what it looks like in Crotone when we get back. It was funny because you'd think we'd learn to just bring umbrellas with always but instead we were just running around the city let wet little dogs in pencil skirts haha. It was fun though!..minus the hail because that kind of hurt...everyone was soo amazed (and kind of thought we were crazy) that we were still working and going to appointments in that kind of weather because here if it's bad weather, you don't leave the house.

But despite the rain we have started getting in shape and running every morning with the elders. We kept saying at night that we'd run the next day, but it's kind of hard to hold ourselves accountable when we're tired and cold. Apparently the elders had been having the same problem so we decided to hold each other accountable by meeting up every morning at 6:30 and running to the beach. The run is a little tough because there are a lot of steep hills but in the end it's always worth it to see the sun rise over the ocean every morning.

Last week we did our family home evening with the Africans in our ward. It's a weekly thing that we like to do with them because every week we have members, new converts, investigators, and potentials all there! This week we brought the dinner and made an oven-baked pasta. After we'd gotten there though one of the friends of our member was already making fufu (a traditional African plate.) So afterwards they offered that to us too! And some fried fish and also cow leg.. it was actually really good. This guy was a chef down in Nigeria before he came here so he knows how to cook. So in case you're wondering, fufu: a ball of dough kind of stuff that you grab off smaller balls from then dip it in a sauce. Then you swallow it (you're not allowed to chew.) it was really spicy though and super filling. But it definitely wasn't bad!

We went over to see our new investigator Rita again. When we got there she said that she was at her sister-in-law's (they all live in these houses all right next to each other kind of in their own little community.) We walked in to find 3 of women (Rita's cousin & sisters-in-law) Sitting there chatting. We were super surprised because we also walked into a house that was all blinged out in gold with chandeliers and everything. It was so nice. They were all googly-eyed for us because we were the first Americans that they'd every seen.. they were especially interested in my cute blonde-haired, blue-eyed companion. At one point they took pictures of us without asking haha. This is my 3rd consecutive blonde companion so I'm pretty used to it haha. We get so many stares all the time and people actually think that I'm Italian sometimes next to her. Last week I even had someone tell me, "I thought all Americans were blonde." Eccomi qua. But anyway, we finally got them calm down and listen to our message (after many attempts.) it was actually cool because we tried a lot of different tactics to help them listen to us and stop talking about American or on the phone or to each other. Our last attempt we tried to explain the Book of Mormon by telling the story of it using the pictures in the front. They still lost attention super quickly. So I just closed the book, and began to testify. Rather than explaining what it is, I explained what it does based on my own experiences. The room got quiet and for the first time since we got there I felt the spirit. We had there attention now. My companion backed me up and bore her testimony and in the end, they were all asking for copies. We had only brought one with us so we left it with the one who seemed the most interested and they all promised to share and read a little bit together this week, then we'll bring them all their own next week!

We watched the restoration movie with one of our investigators this week and as I sat there and listened (reciting the entire movie by memory in my mind) I started to get all nostalgic. I cannot tell you how many I have watched that video in the past 10 months of being here in Italy, but the cool thing is that I can get something new out of it every single time. I firmly believe that all of the lines in that short 20 minute movie were prayed over because there is so much power in every sentence. Watching with different investigators helps me to see it with their eyes, thinking about their doubts and concerns, different principles stick out to me. This week when we watched it with Rosa, she stopped and said, "wait, I have all of those questions too!" I feel like something clicked for her! It's been hard for her to think about changing the religion that she's been her whole life. It's part of her identity she feels, although she has openly expressed the things that she doesn't like about it. But little by little, she's seeing all of the light that we have to offer and becoming more comfortable with the idea of changing.

We also passed by her a few days later because we were in the area and she invited us to say for lunch! We ate with her sister and her which was so much fun because we got to talk to her sister a lot! She kept teasing us because when Rosa asked if we wanted to eat with her she said, "we don't want to disturb you all!" But after we insisted of course we said yes. So her sister kept saying "we don't want to disturb..but we're going to eat anyway." We left them with a spiritual thought and they both were in tears at the end so that was cool.

A miracle this week was when we went to pass by this less-active that we haven't ever been able to see or get ahold of. We walked up and she was standing outside of her apartment building waiting for her husband. It turned out to be sooo much better than if we just rang her bell then went up and did a lesson because we just got to talk to her and get to know her. We told her that we wanted to make lasagna that day so she taught us how and even told us a recipe for another pasta! We got to talk to & get to know this less-active in a non-threatening situation (and she invited us back) and we learned how to make lasagna! Double-wammy!!

Our lasagna turned out sooo good too. Mmmmmm. We ate half on Saturday for lunch and after we got home that night and then other half on Sunday. We're planning on making it again this week too because it was soo tasty.

Other random fact of the week: my zone leaders decided to sort us all into our "harry potter houses"...we're not really sure why but they put me in Gryffindor- characteristics: courageous, nobile, and just.

Sunday was fun because the sacrament was delayed 30 minutes to wait for some members but we'd already started sacrament meeting so there was just this awkward time in between so I just played the piano for all of that time which was actually pretty stressful because I don't know very many hymns and am not all that great at sight-reading. I just pick the 4 hymns every week then practice them after English group on Tuesday and Thursday while my companion makes phone calls is I wasn't really prepared to play a half an hour of intermediate music but oh well, at least we weren't just sitting there in silence. I also got to give a talk yesterday able the temple. I felt inspired to encourage them to "see [themselves] in the [Rome] temple." It's been a long time coming and still had a little while to go, but I hope that we all take seriously the preparation that we have to do, all the way down here in Crotone, to be ready to have the blessing of temple in this country.

Another miracle was definitely Rina. We hadn't seen her all week because she's been so busy then her grandkids who that she is the guardian over got really sick so she wasn't even able to come to church again. But we got to go see her Sunday night and although her house was full of caos with her grandkids running around and her teenage son and all of his friends making crepes (side note--they made some for us and we're pretty sure they did something to them because they just kept looking at us and smiling while we were eating and when they asked us how it was, but whatever, sometimes as a missionary you make sacrifices like that haha,) we got to have a really good lesson with her. We taught Rina about the sacrament and how we use the atonement and renew our baptismal covenants. She has a great desire to come to church and said that she will definitely be there next week. She also said that she's been reading the Book of Mormon every night and she knows that she wants to be baptized so she was a little sad when we told her that we needed to move her date because she hadn't come to church. We prayed and pondered as a companionship for her new baptismal date and invited her to be baptized on March 4th. She also told us last night that she has started the process to stop smoking and has already cut back the amount that she smokes a day!!! At the end we talked about this gospel being for the family. She expressed her desire for us to teach her whole family after we get her baptized. That lesson felt like Christmas morning! It was just one good thing after another!

I have felt this great desire to study Jesus Christ this past week. Studying the New Testament and Jesus the Christ, i feel like I have learned so many things already. These materials are jam-packed with "golden nuggets" (as President Pickerd says.) One things that stuck out to me was this short, simple verse:

Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

The first recorded word of Christ's marvelous ministry was repent. That is also our focus as missionaries! That's what we're here to do! Sometimes things seem so difficult and complicated but in the end, we're just here to do as Christ did and preach repentance! If we teach people how to repent, we fulfill our purpose of bringing them closer to Christ through necessary ordinances such as baptism and partaking of the sacrament. Sweet is the work of the Lord. I love it, and I love you!

-Sorella Bonzo

Fufu