Tender mercies

February 25th
Today we had an appointment to go to Salerno to get fingerprinted.  They printed every fingertip, every finger and both palms.  There were quite a few immigrants there from Albania, some from Africa,  and a lady from Georgia, near Russia.  Salerno is like the county seat for Battipalgia.  Its the beautiful city on the sea that is built right into the mountains that we showed everyone on the Internet.  The main problem with Selerno is there is no parking.  There are a million cars but no parking.  The houses and apartments go right up to the narrow narrow streets.  Check out Paul 's blog to see a little video of driving in Salerno.  We are trying to follow the Tom Tom directions and it is pretty much directing us in circles.  We ended up in two very long narrow alleys that dead ended and we had to back up with only inches to spare on both sides.  Paul did a very amazing job of backing up and not even scraping our car.  I couldn't video that because I was way too scared and was praying as hard as I could..  Tender mercy #1....we didn't run into any parked cars.  I said another prayer that we could find a parking space and then we just happened to find one that was big enough to get into.  That was tender mercy #2.  We found the Questura where we had to get fingerprinted.  We were on time for our appointments and tender mercy #3 was that they took us right in and we didn't have to wait the hours and hours that other people told us about.  We made it out in time to drive to a nearby city for our district meeting.  The elders in our district are so good.  I feel the spirit as they teach us how to be missionaries.
Last night we met a young man who is an inactive member along with his girlfriend who is not a member.  While i was talking to her, I felt the spirit so strong as we both tried to communicate with  each other....her with her limited English and me with my very limited italian.  She would like to take the missionary lessons but I don't think her boyfriend wants her to because then he knows she would want him to live the commandments.
tonight we visited with a lady in our branch who joined the church a few years ago.  As we got the tour of her little apartment we could see all her catholic statues and pictures of the Madonna and child all over her house.  She is such a dear loving sister who hasn't been able to let go of her old beliefs yet.  As we talked with her we were amazed at what a difficult life she had.  She never went to school, even when she was young. Her mother was always sick and she was the oldest.  At 5 she kind of had to take over all the household duties.  At 7 she added helping her dad on the farm too because he became infirm also.  She would have to carry rocks on her head when she was very young.  She stayed working  on the farm til about 20 years ago when she moved to Battipalgia.  She is about our age. Two of her friends came over who have both been investigating the church for a long time.  We had a good talk with all three of them.
Paul worked on replacing part of the pipes under our sink this morning.  We hope that will fix the bad smell that keeps wafting through the air.
We are going to have about 16 people over for Pronzo (lunch) Saturday about 1.  Flavia is getting baptized at 4 and she is coming along with  many members of her family who are not LDS.  They will be traveling from 1-3 hours to get here, and I knew they would be hungry.  It will be a good chance to talk with them and introduce them to the missionaries.