Look at your Life through Heaven's Eyes

We had a great week but I don't have much time to write so here are some highlights:

The weather has been absolutely unpredictable. It was hot on Monday and Tuesday, then we went outside with short-sleeved shirts and no tights and froze. It's been windy and cold the rest of the week but was super hot today. 

We started teaching one of our English course students, Valentina, to help her with English. We had a conversation in English very slowly and just let her ask us questions. She immediately asked us all about who we were and why we're here. At the end we did a spiritual thought in Italian and explained the Book of Mormon to her and gave her a copy to read. She is now investigating the church so we're excited to keep teaching her because she's very curious and is looking for direction in her life. 

Wednesday morning we went to teach the mother & daughter who own the jewelry shop (Francesca & Sonia.) we planned to finish teaching them the restoration but Francesca's sister recently died so when we got there and started the lesson Sonia immediately started asking us about what happens to us after this life. So instead we used the Book of Mormon to teach the plan of salvation which had a lot more meaning to them. 

We got to visit my Italian grandma this week, a sister in our ward that is just the cutest little thing. She's so passionate about everything and loves and respects the missionaries so much. She very lonely since her husband died and all of her kids live outside of Crotone so she gets so excited to take to us. She gets teary-eyed every time we talk about the gospel with her (which is always the subject of the conversation with her) because she just loves it so much. I actually got a little emotional listening to her and decided in that moment that I wanted to be like her when I get older. She's 86 years old and still as active as ever. She has health problems but she doesn't let they stop her from speed walking every single morning at 5AM down the seashore then to the cemetery to visit her husband. She's wonderful. 

This week I called a potential Elisa the I met probably 3 months ago. She wanted to meet with us but doesn't live in Crotone and could get here without getting a ride from her husband who was in Germany for a few months. I kind of forgot about her but then randomly I saw her name in the phone and decided to call. She answered and we set up an appointment! On Friday she came to our church with her son Massimo who had tons of questions. We taught the restoration and they were really impressed with the way we pray. They promised to come to church, but they didn't. We'll see them this week and hopefully get them there next week. 

We had a great lesson with Rina. We went over the baptismal interview questions. She really is so ready to be baptized. We decided right then and there and that she would stop smoking and made a plan of action with her. She said that we'd pick a baptismal date next week because she needs to come to church first. But she didn't come either :( 

Then we ran over to a new pizzeria close to our house called PizziAMO (which translates to "I love pizza" as well as "we pizza.") We talked to them and they asked if we could help their daughter with her English homework. Afterwards we did a spiritual thought and invited everyone in the restaurant to watch our video. They all huddled around my iPad and watch a video of Jesus Christ. It was pretty cool. Afterwards they sent us home with a bunch of free food.

Saturday we got to go to Cosenza for a stake relief society activity. They set it up all cute with little tables and fresh flowers and we had drank tizana and had a bunch of homemade cooking and cakes and treats. We chatted and listened to testimonies and did a service project then ate some more. It turned out really good and was nice to be gathered together with more sisters. 

Saturday morning the branch president called and asked if I'd give a talk the next day so that was fun haha.. it went well though and was actually a really good meeting because our stake president, his wife, and their two young children came. We finally got to have a deacon (their son) pass the sacrament rather than an elder. Sister Zapata taught in relief society, she was really nervous to do the lesson but she did a great job. It was the best relief society class that I've been to here because she made sure that everyone took turns talking and sharing their feelings and kept it on topic. 

After church the branch president and relief society president organized a lunch for the stake president's family and the missionaries. Their 9 year old daughter is so cute. She just kept talking and talking and asking us all about what we do as missionaries, she said that she'd love to serve one day. She also loved me because she's obsessed with Harry Potter and the moment she saw me she told me that I look exactly like Ginny Weasley. 

Today we went shopping in Catanzaro at the mall and ate some good pizza. 

I got to do the training for district meeting this week and was inspired to lead a discussion on the "eye of faith" it's a topic that I didn't know much about this subject until really studying it last week in preparation for this training. It helped me turn my whole attitude around and see Crotone with a new perspective. I found a talk that I absolutely loved called Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ given by elder Kevin Pearson in the April 2009 General Conference. I invite you to read it. I learned that faith is brought about by obedience. And there are a cycle of things that destruct our faith starting with doubt. Elder Pearson referred to these influences as the 6 destructive D's saying, "First is doubt. Doubt is not a principle of the gospel. It does not come from the Light of Christ or the influence of the Holy Ghost. Doubt is a negative emotion related to fear. It comes from a lack of confidence in one's self or abilities. It is inconsistent with our divine identity as children of God.

Doubt leads to discouragement. Discouragement comes from missed expectations. Chronic discouragement leads to lower expectations, decreased effort, weakened desire, and greater difficulty feeling and following the Spirit (see Preach My Gospel [2004], 10). Discouragement and despair are the very antithesis of faith.

Discouragement leads to distraction, a lack of focus. Distraction eliminates the very focus the eye of faith requires. Discouragement and distraction are two of Satan's most effective tools, but they are also bad habits.

Distraction leads to a lack of diligence, a reduced commitment to remain true and faithful and to carry on through despite hardship and disappointment. Disappointment is an inevitable part of life, but it need not lead to doubt, discouragement, distraction, or lack of diligence.

If not reversed, this path ultimately leads to disobedience, which undermines the very basis of faith. So often the result is disbelief, the conscious or unconscious refusal to believe.

The scriptures describe disbelief as the state of having chosen to harden one's heart. It is to be past feeling.

These Six Destructive Ds--doubt, discouragement, distraction, lack of diligence, disobedience, and disbelief--all erode and destroy our faith. We can choose to avoid and overcome them."

But as we grow our faith through constant obedience, we will be able to see things with a new perspective. We will believe so much that we will see through the eye of faith, and be able to see everything differently, the way God sees it. 

Much love, 

Sorella Bonzo

Inviato da iPad

She says we don't take enough pictures so we got a Pastry so that we could take a pic with it..lol

Our "blessings" (as sorella Zapata says) from doing service. 

Driving up to Cosenza we took a pit stop to see this beautiful view of the lake. 

Relief society activity (those cookies are all handmade by the counselor in the rs presidency) 

My Italian always wears this blanket that she claims is a scarf when it's cold haha it's so cute 

Buona Pasqua!

Happy Easter! I hope you enjoy it!

Once again I was touched by the sweet spirit that we felt in zone
conference this week and have been trying to put into practice what I
took from it. Our president talked about the "good, best, best" concept in reference to how we use our time. As a companionship we have decided to better our
less-active member visits by setting goals with them that will
ultimately lead them to the temple rather than just visiting them or
even getting them in church a time or two. Personally I would like to
improve my usage of time. I feel like there are so many good things
that we can do with our time here in Crotone and often I feel that
these things are needed, like visits to strengthen the members. But I
sometimes get so caught up in visiting members and trying to solve their
problems that I don't leave any time to find the people in this city
who are ready to hear the gospel and will ultimately strengthen this
branch. While we will continue to care for the members, I would like
to focus on using my time to do the best things to strengthen this
branch and carry forth this work rather than just filling the time
with good things to do. 

To be honest, I have found myself this week losing my hope for this area.
Sometimes it seems impossible to do anything and I feel like I'm
running around in circles. I feel like I've used up all of my ideas
and don't know how else to help these people. I've been feeling pretty
stuck lately and don't know how to get out of this rut. But I think
with this new emphasis I am putting on really "dominating" the time
that we are given each day, it should help us find new people to teach
so that we can grow our work.

President Pickerd also showed us some videos of the Angel Moroni being placed on the Rome temple. The spirit was powerful and I almost cried just thinking about what this means for all of these wonderful Italian saints who have waited almost 10 years for this. I know that I won't be able to hold back tears when I finally get to step on those temple grounds after it is complete.

The assistants did a training on the Book of Mormon and it's power in conversion and finding. We have been challenged to really study this holy set of scriptures and know it's content so that we can use it to answer questions in finding situations and lessons rather than just speaking from our own knowledge. There is so much more power as we answer first through the scriptures, the testimonies of many prophets, then back that up with our own personal, living testimony. 

After Zone Conference I did an exchange with the STL Sorella Ensign. A less-active man in their ward died recently and their bishop asked them to attend the funeral which was held in a Catholic church. Going to a real Catholic funeral was an experience that I had always wanted to have here in Italy so I'm grateful that I got to go to it. It was definitely different than your traditional Utah Mormon funeral. We didn't really know what was going on half the time, just that we were supposed to stand and sit and repeat things and do things. We tried to act like we knew what was going on and blend in as much as possible. Overall I just felt really sad for all of these people who were obviously morning the loss of this man and grateful for my sure knowledge of the Plan of Salvation thanks to the restoration of Christ's church. 

After the funeral Sorella Ensign and I did some finding. She's one transfer ahead of me so it was nice to be with another experience missionary. I've never really had that because at the beginning of my mission my companions were a lot older than me, and then in the middle they became a lot younger than me which is normal of course. But it was really fun because we're really similar and get along really well so although we haven't ever done tons of finding together, we worked really well together and everything just seemed to flow so naturally which felt really good. We talked to the cutest family ever in a park and were able to set up a return appointment with them. They had a 5 year old son who was shy at first, but once I asked his name he warmed up and told me all about his little transformer toy. I really hope things go well with them because they were so nice and our conversation was just so natural but gospel centered at the same time. 

As we planned for this week we decided to call the mother of a family who has been inactive for about 9 months now. I've seen them one other time and the elders go and visit them sometimes but we didn't really feel like we know how to help them come back. When we called she told me that she was actually in Rome for an operation this weekend. My companoin (who is from Rome) told me to tell her that if she needs anything in Rome, she can give her her mom's number. She told us that she actually would love to see the temple but itsn't sure how to get there. We gave her the number of a member in the relief society presidency who is actually American and is living here while her husband works on the temple. She has learned Italian in order to be able to serve in their ward. Right after we called the sister missionaries who are serving there and asked if they would make sure that everything got organized alright for this sister to go because we know how much of an impact it could have on her to see the temple. Not too long ago her family was sealed in the temple so I knew that this would give her the perspective that she needs right now. It turned out to be a miracle that the sister serving in that part of Rome right now has actually served here in Crotone before and knows the member!

We also organized to go and do a picnic with this family today to celebrate Pasquetta (yes, in Italy we celebrate Holy Friday, Easter on Sunday, and the day after Easter even though no one really knows why.) 

We tried to do a lot of finding this weekend because everyone is out of school for the holidays. On Thursday we were on lungomare and the finding was not going well at all. We stopped all of the young people but none of them seemed to be interested and it just felt really awkward because they were just kind of laughing at us. I just started praying that we would find one miracle before we had to head to the church to do english group and the next people we talked to were it! Their names were Antonella & Salvatore. Right at the start they told us that they don't pray to statues, that they believe that repentance should be between us and God, not through confessions, and that they don't believe that the priests have the power of God, and therefore, they believe in Christ, but they don't practice their religion in church. We were able to teach the whole Restoration right there with a beautiful beachside sunset in the backgroud might I add, and invite them to read the Book of Mormon and meet with us again. They have a lot of potential so we're really excited. 

The best way Italians know how to celebrate is with food so this Easter weekend was full of a lot of good meals. I'm pretty sure that I gained at least 5 kili just this last weekend from all of the food that we ate. 

Friday night we did another dinner for a branch activity to celebrate Easter. Tons of people came including our investigators and a really cool potential that I found a few months ago. I gave his number to the elders but they weren't ever able to set up an appointment with him. We saw him in Juliet's shop on Thursday (he's there often) and we invited him to come. He loved it and told us that he'd come to church on Sunday and set up an appointment to meet with the anziani. All of our active members were at the dinner and some of our less actives too! The food was so good and we ate so much food that I didn't even eat breakfast the next day because I was so full! 

Saturday we went over to Juliet's house so that she could teach us how to cook African food. We made a huge bucket of rice with liver, fried turkey, and salad. It was a lot of work but super good as always. Sooo then I was super full again and so I didn't eat until Sunday at pranzo.

We had a nice Sunday in church with a break after sacrament meeting before the classes to eat Italian Easter cake and big chocolate eggs that the branch president brought for everyone (haha only in Italy.) We went to our relief society president's house for lunch and ate just about everything you could possibly think of. We started with a huge slice of lasagna and bread, then she brought out the second plate which consisted of 7 different types of meat and she insisted that we ate all of them. We had this really good beef stuffed with cheese, rabbit meat, and spicy sausage. We also ate a really spicey spread on bread that is only found here in Crotone. It's made of red peppers and raw sardines baby sardines that are just born. After all of that we ate a bowl of fruit with ice cream. I was so full that while we were eating the fruit I got cold chills and felt like I was going to throw up. I had to excuse myself to the restroom and say a little prayer and take some deep breaths. It was painful, but I was able to get ahold of myself to go out and finish my fruit bowl. She offered us cake as well, but saw that we were full so she let us take that home with us at least. I've never been so full in my life, I was literally popping out of my skirt that I actually broke the zipper on it! The things we do for people as missionaries man... I'm really glad that we got to go to her house though because after lunch we were able to talk to her about all of the inactive people in our branch and get her on board to help us with this work. 

I decided to give Rina a pause for a few weeks because she hasn't
really been progressing. Yesterday was her birthday (and Easter of
course) so we stopped by to give her "auguri" and also so that Sorella
Zapata could meet her. She also fed us some of her birthday cake...yay, more food... We didn't get to do a long lesson, because of
the festivities she had family over, but we were able to gather them
all to watch the Prince of Peace video. After we talked with Rina
about the invitation that President Monson gave us to read the Book of
Mormon daily and I asked her if she has received a testimony of it.
She told us that she had. she also expressed her testimony of the
prophet Joseph Smith. She continues to smoke and still has not come to
church, but I know that she sincerely has received a testimony of the
truthfulness of our message. I know that she cannot deny this
testimony and so although I sometimes get frustrated and lose
hope, I don't want to give up on her. I have been back and forth for a
while now deciding whether or not we should drop her because she
struggles with these 2 commitments, but when I hear the honest and
straightforward testimony that she has bears, I can't bring myself to
drop her. 

Some cool miracles happened this week including 3 different groups of people asking us to come by and teach them when we had time. One was a family who recently opened a pizzeria by our house. We go there when we don't have a lot of time to make lunch because it's quick and cheep and tasty. We've become friends with them and explained who we were and they told us to come back some time so that we can talk on a day when there aren't lots of people!

Then when we were going to eat lunch on Sunday we wished some of the neighbors a happy Easter and they said, wait, who are you?? We talked to them for a second and they told us to come back another time to teach them. 

And then while we were at Rina's her neighbor came down and gave her a gift then met us and she explain who we were and he invited us to pass by his family as well! 

So this city has a lot of potential really, sometimes it's easy to lose hope, but as long as we have faith and work hard I know that great things are just on the horizon. 

Today We did went to the less active family's beach house and spent all day with them. We ate once again a big lunch with lasagna and roast and tons of tasty things. Then we went down to the beach with the kids and played some games and hung out for a while. It was a really nice and relaxing day. It was good to get to know this family better and have fun with them. 

Vi voglio bene! 

Sorella Bonzo

Our little zone

We didn't really get a good picture of the dinner but 

African food 

Easter 2nd course. 

Today 

x

Mini Miracles = Huge Successes

Hello! I hope that you enjoyed your week as much as I did.

Monday we finally got to do an FHE with sorella Zapata and Juliet. She
made her famous fried rice and turkey. We told the story of the
Jaredites and talked about faith which was really cool to do with her
because she does have a lot of faith. She hasn't been to church in a
while though which is really sad, but on Sunday she came so that was a
miracle!

Another miracle happened on Tuesday morning. We had just arrived in
Catanzaro for our weekly district meeting and were waiting to take the
calebro to get to the church when a lady accidentally hit my companion
with her umbrella. We turned around and she said sorry, then saw our
name tags and stopped and said, "who are you?" We explained that we
were missionaries and all of the usual stuff to which people just
usually say that we're great people and wish us well in our work. But
she continued to talk and ask questions. We got on the calebro and
continued to talk with her and explain what we teach. She asked us
about the difference between our churches and listened intently. I
brought up the Book of Mormon to her and pulled out my copy. She said,
"can I?" And began to look through it. She said that she felt so much
peace as we talked and that she was really draw to us and what we had
to say. I realized that we needed to get off of the calebro at that
point so I asked if she would like to meet with the missionaries here
in Catanzaro so they they could bring her one of these books. The
Anziani got off of the calebro as I was getting her number and the
doors began to close. Luckily they were able to forcefully pull them
back open and hold them until we could finish getting her number and
jump off. Then right after I tried to call her number to make sure
that it was correct because it all happened so quickly and it said
that the number was inactive!! I was so disappointed! But we looked
back at the number I had written and realized that it had 1 too many
numbers. I decided to try to delete one of the zeros that I had put
and call again. She answered!!! So many miracles. Nothing happens by
chance.

On Wednesday morning we had planned to go see some people but didn't
have any set appointments. I've been making it a point to really seek
the Lord's will in my prayers and that morning as I was opening my
personal study with a prayer, I had a small feeling that we should not
do what we had planned, but instead go finding all morning. Usually
finding is more of a backup plan if your plans fall through, so it
seemed a little strange to me, but I earnestly prayed to know if that
small feeling was a prompting from the spirit, and I felt that it was.
I then asked where we should go and what kind of finding we should do.
After personal studies I told this to my companion and she agreed that
we needed to follow the prompting. So we went to lungomare for a whole
morning of finding. I was praying constantly that morning that we
would find at least 1 person that would become a new investigator. We
faced a lot of rejection, like always, but I was determined to talk to
every single person there because I knew that there was someone out
there for us to find that morning and I didn't want to miss them. We
ended up finding and exchanging numbers with 2 women who have a lot of
potential. One is young and had never heard of our church, but is
curious to learn. The other is in her 40s was walking her dog and when
I saw her I awkwardly ran over these 2 barrier things to talk to her
before she walked away. I know that I looked so weird but in the
moment, my sol focus was to find that person that we were sent to
find. She said that she's familiar with our church because she's
friends with our branch president. He had given her a Book of Mormon
that she occasionally reads when she has time, and she said that she's
even been to our church before! What a miracle! My companion is still
getting used to the fact that these mini miracles are our huge
successes here in the Great Italy Rome Mission because she came in
with higher expectations, which isn't a bad thing by any means. I am
so grateful for these 2 women that we found and I know that by doing
what God asked of us, even if it didn't seem to be the most ideal or
practical thing, we were blessed.

Another huge miracle that night happened when we called a member to
ask her a question and then we ended up getting to have a spontaneous
appointment with her right after our other one fell through. When we
went over her inactive daughter came to join us for the lesson which
is always what we want. She was excited to find out that my companion
speaks Spanish because this girl lived in Mexico for a year and hasn't
been able to really speak it with anyone since she's come back here.
They sat and spoke Spanish for like 10 minutes and this girl was in
heaven. I felt like a new missionary again because I could get the
gist of what they were saying for some of the time but I didn't really
know what was going on. Now she actually wants to keep seeing us
though! Yay!

We went to visit our investigators Francesca and Sonia (mother &a
daughter that own the jewelry store) on Thursday. They were really sad
because Francesca's sister had just passed away. They said that they
didn't want to have a lesson that day but thanked us for our visit. We
bore testimony of the atonement of Jesus Christ and its healing power
as well as the power to be resurrected. We offered them comforting
words and before leaving I asked if we could leave them with a prayer.
After I said the prayer it showed in their faces that they both felt
the spirit. Sonia said, "while you were praying I felt like you were
really connected to Jesus." That was a cool experience for me, because
as missionaries, we pray a lot. I know each time that I am talking to
my Heavenly Father, but at times it does feel a little rote. I gave a
sincere and heartfelt prayer for them because I knew that they were in
need, and everyone felt the difference.

We went to visit our favorite little old member on Saturday morning.
She was all upset and frustrated because she is 80+ years old and none
of her neighbors clean up their trash outside so she does it for
everyone. She spent the morning doing that and still didn't have time
to prepare the relief society lesson for the next day. She was upset
and stressed so we talked for and calmed her down, then offered to
help her prepare her lesson. She is so wise and wonderful. I learned
so much just while talking to her and she was so grateful for the
help. We were able to talk through some of the parts of the lesson
that she didn't understand so she felt prepared for the next day. She
said, "you were an answer to my prayers!!" I love her.

That night we visited the branch president's wife who is inactive. She
was very cold when she let us in again so we took time to just talk
and get to know her. She ended up sharing basically her life story
with us and talking a lot about her family and the love that she feels
for her 5 sons. It was perfect because we had prepared to teach the
first 2 points of the restoration: God is our Loving Heavenly Father,
and the Gospel Blesses Families. She told us that it wasn't by change
that we talked so much about families. At the end of the lesson, we
hadn't planned on inviting her back to church yet, we wanted to start
with the basics like prayer. But my companion boldly invited her to
come back to church and I know that she was inspired for doing so. She
firmly said, "No." We asked her why and she told us that she practices
her religion at home, but will not come back to church because she
doesn't feel the spirit there. That's a problem that a lot of people
have been having in this branch that we're trying to solve. We talked
with her and in the end she said, maybe some day, which means that we
are getting somewhere! She really grew to love us in that appointment
and we grew to love her too. It helps to have an Italian companion
because they seriously love
Italian missionaries. After the lesson she showed a room that she has
full of pictures of her family and even offered us fresh strawberries
to take home. As we kissed her goodbye she said, I hope to see you
soon! That is a miracle!!

We came to Taranto yesterday because we have interviews tonight and
zone conference tomorrow. Today we did a picnic by the ocean with the
sisters in the zone. It's getting warm here in southern Italy which
means no more tights and tons of bug bites! Bring on the endless
sweaty days and funny shoe strap tan lines.

Have a great week! I love you!

Sorella Bonzo

We drew this picture for precious so that she could teach us the plan
of salvation for her new convert lessons

These are all chocolate eggs that they buy for their children for Easter

Today

There were tons of these all over the city on Saturday and Sunday for Palm Sunday.

Love is the Great Motivator

This week was pretty normal. We got to see a bunch a people, do a bunch of finding, and save a bunch of souls...you know, the usual. We just been meeting with a lot people and getting Sorella Zapata familiar with the area and missionary work. We're both really determined to help make this little branch and make this area a great one.

Precious is doing really well. She has a solid testimony that just keeps growing stronger. She's now attending a school to help her learn italian so when we have an extra minute and we're in the area we go and help her with her homework. She's so awesome, and so smart! 

Wednesday we went up to Cosenza for district meeting. It's a little over 3 hours away by train so we had to leave pretty early in the morning to get there. We decided to meet up with the elders at 6:15 to take the 20ish minute walk to the station so that we'd have plenty of time to catch our 6:45 train. One companionship of missionaries (I won't tell you which one haha) was running a little late and didn't make it there until about 6:35. We ended having to run to try to catch this train, but at the pace we were going there was no way we'd catch it. The entire time I was praying in my heart that we'd somehow make the train because there wasn't another one to Cosenza for a few hours so we'd miss district meeting. We got to the station around 6:50 to see that our train was the only one with a 10 minute delay..the miracles of prayer..

The new district is fun and the meeting was good. Afterwards we got deep-fried mozzarella balls for lunch(yeah..I'm really killing it at this "eating healthy 6 months before you go home" thing) before we caught our bus to come home. 

That night we had a lesson with a less active lady who won't come back to church because her perception of forgiveness is a little distorted. We had the same conversation that I have with her every time we go over and talked and talked and talked and tried to help her understand that we are commanded to forgive all men..no matter what..no matter how many times. She didn't agree with what we said and wouldn't change her mind. Then, my amazing companion started asking some inspired question and we finally were able to understand the root of her problem..she doesn't understand the atonement! She couldn't even really tell us what it was or what it allows us to do. We now understand that we can help her by teaching and strengthening her testimony of the atonemnet of Jesus Christ. I cannot imagine going through life without understand this fundamental principle of the gospel, yet there are so many people in this world that don't--sure most know that "Jesus died on the cross for us", but often times, they overlook the suffering in Gethsemany, why he did it, and what this atonement allows us to do. This realization gave me even more motivation to find and teach everyone who will listen because it's almost unfair that a person should go through life without this comforting knowledge.

The sisters from Taranto came on Friday for exchanges. I got to work with Sorella Rhoades again! Them deciding to come was a very last-minute thing and we'd planned to do our weekly planning that morning so we didn't have tons of appointments planned for the day which I felt bad about becuase I always try to get a lot of lessons planned for exchanges so we aren't just all finding the entire day. We decided to go in the morning to visit a bunch of less active members that we can't schedule appointments with. Miraculously each companionship was able to get in and teach some people! Sorella Rhoades and I got to see a less active sister that I have only seen once before that. Her nonmember boyfriend and she let us in, a little skeptically, but after we did some service helping them finish up their cleaning, they warmed up and listened politely to our message. We talked about the peace that we can find in our lives as we bring ourselves closer to Christ. This sister chimed in, with shame and sadness in her eyes and said, "but if we don't go to church..." then trailed off. My heart ached for this sister because I knew that she understood what she was doing wrong, and she even had the desire to change, but because she is in a difficult situation, she feels stuck and doesn't know how to find this inner peace that comes from faithfully keeping the commandments. We invited them to attend General Conference and they actually happily accepted the invitation, saying that if she didn't have to work, she'd be there. That is the first time that she has committed to step foot back in the church, so it was a huge miracle to see the progress that she has made. 

We also had a lesson with Rina. I asked her what her motivation was to stop smoking. I realized that she has good motives, like for her health, but they were not strong enough to help her overcome this strong temptatoin in the difficult times. We then shared my favorite conference talk of all time, The First Great Commandment by Elder Holland. We tried to help her make her motivation to quit smoking, her love for Christ, because in the end, love is the greatest motivator. It is interesting because President Uchtdorf talked about this kind of motivation in his talk on Sunday. Rina commited to come and watch General Conference, and I know that that talk would have perfectly solidified everything that we had discussed in that lesson, but she didn't come becuase it was raining. 

Friday also had appartment inspections from the senior couple in Bari. Anziano Fitzner came and fixed everything that was broken and even brought us office chairs for our desks! And Sorella Fitzner brought us banana-nutella muffins. I miss having a senior couple sooo much!!!

Friday night we did a big gesso with all of the missionaries from Taranto and Crotone (our anziani were also doing exchanges that day with the zone leaders.) The weather has been warming up so lungomare--the walkway along the seaside--has been really popping so we've been doing most of our finding there rather than in centro. We decided to try a gesso there! We have been using the new easter video Prince of Peace in our finding a lot lately and have seen some pretty good success come from it. It was fun doing a gesso with more than just 4 missionaries. I felt like I was in a big city again! Near the end of the night we actually met a family! Sorella Ensign and I did some team work. The 10 year old some came up as I was drawing on the sheet and asked what I was doing. I asked if he wanted to draw with me, so he drew himself playing soccer and we talked, and meanwhile Sorella Ensign talked with his mom with was pregnant with another child! They were the cutest people ever and we were able to get their number! I have a lot of hope for this family.

On Saturday we got to visit and eat lunch with our relief society president who has recently become less active. We haven't been able to get into her house during this period, but I felt like we needed to call her a few days earlier and at first she said no to an appointment, but then I asked if we could see her Saturday morning instead and she said, "okay, but come a little later so that you can stay for lunch!" She listened very intently to our spiritual thought and continued to thank us afterwards, telling us it was exactly what she needed. Lunch was tasty as well, she is such a sweetheart. 

That afternoon & evening we watched the Women's session, and the Saturday morning session of General Conference. We watched it in Italian and I was taken back to a year ago when I watched the entire conference in itlaian my second week in the mission. I can gratefully say that I actually understood it this time around haha. We had 2 investigators there for the Saturday Morning session that night, a couple who the elders were previously working with but recently passed them to us. We did our first lesson with them after the conference. I have known them since they started investigating the church a couple of months ago because they come to church and english course. I translate for gospel principles and help teach the lessons so I already know them really well. The wife Oriana is so ready to be baptized but her husband won't let her because he says it's way too early. They loved conference. Oriana loved how they talked about light. We then decided to focus the lesson on light, and how she will continue to see more light in her life as she continues to take steps of faith, such as baptism. We wanted to set a date with her but her husband firmly disagreed to this. He said that it is going to take him probably a year or so, which is probably true because he doesn't keep the commitments. On the other hand she is so prepared and could have been baptized weeks ago. It's a tough situation and we're still trying to figure out how to overcome it, but we are just praying that the spirit will touch their hearts, especially Antonio's to allow his wife to be baptized even if he is not ready to be at this point. 

Sadly, not very many people came to conference, on Saturday there were 3 members there and 2 english course students actually came which was super cool, and on Sunday the same 3 came plus Precious. I got to watch it in English with her when she came which was a tender mercy for me to be able to hear the voice of our sweet prophet. I appreciated so much all of the words of the speakers and am excited to listen to the other 2 sessions when they come out because right now I feel a little incomplete. 

I hope that you all took the opportunity to not only listen to, but also take to heart the words of our inspired leaders this weekend. I hope that you have reflected on the words that you heard, and have made goals for how you will become better thanks to the things that touched your hearts. 

with love, 

sorella bonzo

Sorella Zapata made me Ecuadorian food

Finding all day on lungomare 

Centro storico 

After the gesso with Taranto missionaries (+sorella zapata's first after-finding gelato reward) 

It randomly decided to start pouring last night after the conference.... the lightning was soo close to our house too)