Hello friends! This week has been lots of fun and was great for us in
terms of the work. Thanks to transfers I have an iPad again which is
definitely helpful so I'll fill you in on some good stuff.
Monday we went to a little town in our area over an hour outside of
Crotone because we wanted to try to go to the famous mountain range in
Calabria. We walk around the town but it was impossible to go in the
mountains without a car, but a least we got to be surrounded by the
beautiful trees that reminded me a lot of pine valley. We also ate
some pretty posh gelato so I was happy.
That night we received the news that my little Sorella Zapata would be
leaving the nest and flying down to Catania! I'm so excited for the
great work that she will do there. And, you guessed it, I will be
finishing my mission here in Crotone! In total I will have done 7
months here. I couldn't be more content. My companion is my sister!
(in mission terms) Sorella Walch! She was also trained by Sorella
Clark about 6 months after I was. She the cutest little redhead you'll
ever meet. She comes from California and plays the ukulele. We get
along great and really do feel like sisters. We'll have a lot of fun
together!
Before Sorella Zapata left we had fun running around saying goodbye to
people and as well as fitting in as many last lessons as we could.
Sorella Zapata and I were able to meet twice with a new investigator
Slessia. She is an ex-investigator from English course who came back
to English then also came to church last week. We taught her the
restoration on Tuesday and put her on date for baptism for the 15th of
July. We saw her the next day and taught the plan of salvation. We're
working on helping her recognize the spirit and receive an answer to
her studies and prayers.
We also were out to a tiny town this week that we'd never been to
before. We had to wait a while to catch the bus back home so we did
some finding through the flee market. It was really cool because no
one in that town had ever heard anything about our church. They
weren't super accepting of our message, but at least we got to plant a
lot of seeds. Like they say, it takes an average of 7 encounters with
the church before someone will agree to take the lessons. I felt like
a pioneer a little bit and thought about the first missionaries who
ever came to Crotone and all of the hard work and seed planting that
they had to do here to prepare this city and finally open up a branch.
I'm so grateful for those missionaries and what they did here.
Then Sorella Zapata tried to kill me on her last day here... We had a
lunch appointment scheduled with Juliet at 1:00 and planned to pass by
Sorella Zito before that to say goodbye. She called us at 11:30 and
whenwe told her that we were heading over she said, "just eat with us
today!" Sorella Zapata told her not to worry about it because we had
to see other people at 1 but she insisted saying, "its already ready.
We'll be quick, just come!" So my sorell accepts the have a lunch
appointment at 12 when we had another on scheduled for 1!! We ran
through the city in the blazing heat to sorella zito's where we at
rice with broth, chicken, vegetables, and I was forced to eat an
entire giant roll of bread because she fed us potatoes with
peperoncino which was easily the spiciest thing I've ever eaten...I
was sweating and couldn't feel my lips or tongue for like 20 minutes.
Then of course you've gotta finish it off with a banana and some
gelato cake to fill us to the max. After saying goodbye to this sweet
sister we ran through the southern-Italy heat to the other side of the
town where we ate a mountain of spices African rice and deep-fried
turkey. Sorella Zapata is lucky that I love her. But wait, there's
more!! Only an hour later we met with Graziella who gave us tisana and
a bunch of little Italian pastries. Let's just say if no one fed me
for the rest of my mission, I would be perfectly okay with that.
So Graziella is one of President Sarcone's friends that has been
coming to English course for years and meeting on and off with the
missionaries but she's always been more of a friend to the
missionaries than anything. As we talked with her and read from the
Book of Mormon to answer her questions, we discovered that she
actually wants to be baptized and join this church because she see
what good people we are and feels the spirit with us and when she's
there. She said that she doesn't even come for the English anymore,
just to sit in the church because she feels good there. She told us
that the reason she isn't baptized is because she's really busy and
doesn't find the time to come to church. She said that if she gets
baptized she wants to be a "full-time" Mormon, not like some of the
less active members that she knows (she is already friends with a lot
of our members.) We told her that we're here to help her and prepare
her to do this. I'm really excited to work with her more seriously
because she will be an awesome, and very strong member and we're in
need of those right now.
Transfer day was one of the craziest days of my life, and I wasn't
even being transferred! Let's just say that as we were carrying
sorella Zapata's luggage to the train station, basically all of the
wheels broke off! That made for a fun day. After lots of travel to get
her where she needed to go, we got back to Crotone and met up with
Sorella Walch. The day was especially hot as we lugged her suitcases
back to the apartment then went right back to the station to pick up
sorella bishop who would be staying with us that night and heading off
to Taranto the next day.
That night before English we did a lesson all together with slessia. I
was a little nervous about it because teaching in a trio is kind of
different, and none of us had ever taught together at all and we
didn't have any time to study and prepare together so we had no idea
what to expect. It went really well though and was definitely guided
by the spirit.
Saturday morning I got to participate in the Missionary Leadership
Council via skype because of my new assignment as the sister training
leader of the zone. I really appreciated being apart of the MLC. We
prepared for zone conference by discussing what we as a mission can do
to overcome the plateau that we are hitting. We are seeing many
miracles and our number of baptisms have increased, but we had kind of
hit a plateau at this point where everything is staying about the same
now. We had a great discussion and I am really looking forward to zone
conference in order to put learn more and implement these ideas. A
quote that someone said that I really liked was, "If you always do
what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."
We always be repenting (changing) and striving to reach higher levels
rather than just resting on our plateau.
Sorella Walch is amazing and I am so grateful to be with her. We have
already seen some wonderful miracles together. Her first day here we
went to visit a less active member that we have been struggling with.
She has finally started coming back to church but would not stay the
full three hours because she was offended by someone in the relief
society so she didn't want to go back. We taught her about obedience
to all of God's commandments, no matter how difficult it may be and at
the lesson we invited her to stay for relief society that week. She
was a lot more open to accept our invitation because the spirit was
there unlike some past times when we would go and kind of argue with
her a little bit. She ended up coming and staying the whole time on
Sunday and loving it!
Sunday night we ran into Roberta, a girl that I've known for a little
while because she has printed pictures for me a couple of times. Every
time I see her we talk about what we do as missionaries and our
beliefs but she always seemed more interested in a friendship than
anything else. Well we ran into her and she told us that she had
looked us up on the internet and had tons of questions for us. She
invited us into her family's shop and we sat down and she bombarded us
with all sorts of things she read on the internet. Thankfully she
understood that the things on the internet usually are not correct and
just wanted to really know what we believed in. We answered some
questions then explain The Book of Mormon and prayer to her and
invited her to read the book and start taking the lessons with us to
really know the truth. She accepted this invite and we're excited to
start working with her because she's young (26) and is intelligent.
She actually knows what she believes in as a catholic which helps a
lot.
Those are probably my biggest highlights of the week, sorry it's a
lot. Today we did a hike that I surprisingly haven't ever done before!
We hiked up to the giant sword that sits on the top of a mountain here
that we walk by almost every day. The view of the city was pretty cool
and it actually felt super nice because it was really windy up there.
We also walked through this park/museum that was created in honor of
Pythagoras because he was born in Crotone and essentially created math
here. It was full of statues that were all cool shapes and tons of
triangles and stuff. My favorite was these giant steps that created a
multiplication table (sorry I'm a nerd...)
Have a great week! I love you!
-Sorella Bonzo
Last gesso together
Dropping off Sorella Zapata 😢
Sorella Walch (aka Merida from Brave) with her deep-fried gelato! It was soo good
Times table
I ❤️math lol
The hike
