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
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