Branch Activity for Pasquetta

The day after Easter is called Pasquetta.  Everyone is off work and school.  It's not a religious holiday, but just a national holiday.  Our branch has hosted a Pasquetta party for a number of years and has always invited the other branches that were in our district to come too.  Because we have a big lawn area, the kids really enjoy coming and playing soccer together and eating and playing other games.  Our missionaries are forbidden to play soccer, and they were very obedient and didn't play.  I know they would have loved to because there was a great group playing, but they had other games going and were involved with being in charge of the whole party.  They did such a wonderful job planning and follow through.

We had a service project for the first two hours.  We got the lawn mowed and the long driveway adjacent to our lot, all cleaned out of trash, weeds and ten years worth of pine needles.  None of our branch members came to the service project, except our new convert family from last summer, and a new convert young man from last summer, who brought his non member mother.  Of course us six missionaries were all there!  At the very end, one of the boyfriends of one of the ladies from Napoli, helped us, and two new converts from Casserta helped us the last 1/2 hour of the service project.  So we got a lot done and the yard looks so nice.  I just wish that the long time members would take ownership and come together to keep their building and yard nice. Not one of them came until the project was over and the party began!  

We had lots of food, games and visiting during the afternoon.  I counted 52 people that came to the party.  6 missionaries

          20 members. 3 of which are totally inactive

           2 new members from Casserta

           1 member from northern Italy who is the boyfriend of one of our young adults

            9 non members

            7 adults from Napoli branch

            7 ragazzi  from Napoli at least two are members, I don't know about the other 5!

The kids played soccer, and then a fun version of water balloon battleship.  Everyone played ping pong and fooseball.  The winners of the scavenger hunt were:

We had lots of good food:

The adults had fun singing:

I would say that it was a very good party.  Everyone drew closer who came.  We had a marvelous turnout, thanks to the people who came from Napoli and Casserta and thanks to all the publicity the missionaries gave out and calls made to remind people to come.