Shelly and Ryan arrived yesterday . Touring Rome

We have been looking forward to our daughter Shelly and her husband coming to visit us.  They arrived yesterday. We picked them up in Rome along with their friend's Christy and Scott. We stayed the night all together last night in a nice apartment and we showed them all around Rome, at least what you can see in one and a half days.

We got settled in our apartment and then we took the bus and the train and the metro down to see the Vatican.  We didn't have to wait in line too long and we got right in to see St Peters Basilica.  It is huge.  Something like 2 football fields long and the dome is a football field high.  The church covers 6 acres.

Michelangelo was commissioned to be the architect when he was 71 years old.  They replaced the old St. Peter's church which was in the same spot from AD 329-1500.  It was built where The Apostle Peter was killed and buried.   They built the new church around the old one and when it was finished 120 years later, they dismantled the old church and took it out the front doors.  

The huge square in front of the church has 284 columns each 56 feet high.  There are 140 statues of favorite saints on top of the columns and they are each 10 feet tall.  

Inside the basilica, there is the famous and incredibly breathtaking Piata which was sculpted by Michelangelo when he was quite young.

This is a picture looking up into the dome above the alter where Peter is buried.  The ring of gold letters at the base of the dome are 7 feet high and give the scripture about Christ saying that upon this rock he will build his church.

There are tons of statues inside this huge church.  It holds 60,000 people standing.  We arrived too late to get into the Sistine Chapel.  We tried some wonderful gelato after the tour of St. Peters.  Yum!

Our English students visit London

Martina and Maryanna come to our English class every week and we love our whole class.  They took a quick trip to London to see Martina's sister.  We were so happy to find out that they took a picture of them standing in front of the lds church in London. They were excited to show us this picture.

They had a couple of other fun pictures I thought I would share.

Fredrick's and Marianna at Greenwich line 0

Authentic Mexicani Lunch

On Wednesday, after our District meeting, sister Gio said she would treat us to her homemade tortillas.  Her mother is from Mexico and so she grew up making tortillas like I grew up making peanut butter sandwiches!  She made homemade refried beans and homemade salsa.  I made the meat and we had grated cheese, (scarmosa, not cheddar, but equally good).  Oh my, these tortillas were so good.  That is the next thing I need to learn how to make.  She made 50 tortillas and they were all gone with 7 of us eating.  We also had Guido come to lunch.  He comes to the church every Wednesday to do the ward clerk stuff.  We had a great lunch.

Sister Gio is almost 5 feet tall and besides being a fantastic tortilla maker, she is a wonderful missionary.

I am grateful for my family

I have been reading in Ephesians and Galatians and Philippians this morning and I thought of my family several times as I read.  Whenever I read Galations 5:22-23, I think of my Mom giving Tommy the challenge to memorize that before he was baptized.  And I think that most everyone in our family memorized it. Thank you mom for influencing our lives for good!   "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness faith, meekness and temperance."  That verse helped us all to recognize when we have the spirit.
I have used this scripture so many times for Holy Ghost talks at Baptisms and in lessons and talks in church, and with investigators here in the mission.

Ephesians 1:16 describes what I do every day.  I also "cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers."   I also do as it says in Philippians 1:3-4,   "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.  Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy."

We pray for each of you every day, morning and night, and sometimes in between.  We certainly give a lot of prayers every day.

And when I read  Ephesians 3:14-19 I wanted you, my family to know,  that I feel the same for you as The apostle Paul did for the saints in Ephesus when he wrote, "I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man that Christ will dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints  what is the breadth, and length, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with the fullness of God."

I think that each of you are "rooted and grounded in love".  I hope you feel our love for you and even more, that you feel the love that Heavenly Father has for each of you.  "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

I pretty much have half of the verses underlined from Galatians 5 through Ephesians and through all of Philippeans.  If I had to pick my favorite it would be impossible.  But I will add two more for you to ponder.

Philippeans 4:11 says, " ......I have learned , in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."
(That is really hard sometimes for me to do and I think it's hard for all of us at various times.)

Verse 13 of the same chapter says, "I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHEN ME!!!"   (I added the exclamation points!). What if we really believed verse 13?
Wow it would be awesome!!

Become Who You are

I read a great talk last night from a CES devotional given in 2012 by the French Brother who is in the presiding Bishopric.  Gerald C......?

He had a wonderful talk about finding our own happiness.  Do read it if you get a chance, it's on http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/archive/ces-devotionals/2013/01?lang=eng.  go to 2012.  Anyway, I have cut and pasted a part that I really liked. I hope you enjoy it.

"This phrase “become who you are” is attributed to Pindar, one of the most celebrated Greek poets.⁴ It sounds like a paradox. How can I become who I already am?

There is a film called Age of Reason. This film tells the story of Marguerite, a prosperous banker who leads a hectic life filled with travels and conferences in the four corners of the earth. Even though she is married, she says she doesn’t have time to have a child.

The day she turns 40, she receives a mysterious letter which says: “Dear me, today I am seven years old and I am writing you this letter to help you remember the promises that I made at the age of reason, and also so that you remember who I want to become.” Marguerite suddenly understands that the author of the letter is none other than herself when she was seven years old. What follows are several pages on which the little girl describes in detail her life’s goals.

Marguerite realizes that the person she has become is nothing like what she wanted to be when she was a young girl. As she decides to reclaim the person that she envisioned as a child, her neatly planned and organized life is turned completely upside down. She reconciles with her family and determines to consecrate the rest of her life to serving people in need.⁵

My dear friends, if you were to now receive a letter from your past, what would it say? What would 

be contained in a letter you might have written to yourself on the day of your baptism when you were eight years old? I’ll even go back further. If it were possible for you to receive a letter from your pre-earth life, what would it say? What impact would such a letter from a forgotten but very real world have on you if you were to receive it today?

This letter might say something like: “Dear me, I am writing to you so you will remember who I want to become. I shouted for joy at the chance to go to earth. I know that life on earth is an essential passage to enable me to grow to my full potential and live forever with my Heavenly Father. I hope that you will remember that my greatest desire is to be a disciple of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I support His plan, and when I am on earth I want to help Him in His work of salvation. Please also remember that I want to be part of a family that will be together for all eternity.

 One of the great adventures of life is that of finding out who we really are, where we came from, and then living consistently in harmony with our identity and the purpose of our existence.

Brigham Young said: “The greatest lesson you can learn is to know yourselves. … You have to come here to learn this. … No being can thoroughly know himself, without understanding more or less of the things of God; neither can any being learn and understand the things of God without knowing himself: he must know himself, or he never can know God.”⁷

Recently, my daughters pointed out to me that an excellent allegory of this principle is found in the 

film The Lion King. Your generation grew up to the sounds and images of this movie. You probably remember the scene where Simba receives a visit from his father, Mufasa, the deceased king. After his father died, Simba fled far from the kingdom because he felt guilty about his father’s death. He wanted to escape his responsibility as heir to the throne.

His father appears to him and warns him: “You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the circle of life.” Then this invitation is repeated several times: “Remember who you are. … Remember who you are.”

Simba, completely shaken by this experience, decides to accept his destiny. He confides in his friend, the shaman monkey, that it “looks like the winds are changing.”

The monkey replies, “Change is good.”

And Simba says: “But it’s not easy. I know what I have to do. But going back means I’ll have to face my past. I’ve been running from it for so long.”

“Where are you going?” the monkey asks him.

“I’m going back!” cries Simba.⁸

We can all take—or take back—our place in the circle of life. Become who you really are. Your happiness and ability to find balance in your life will occur as you find, recognize, and accept your true identity as a child of our Heavenly Father and then live in accordance with this knowledge.

Lunch and waterfalls

As we headed home, we stopped and ate lunch at a very cute restaurant which you can see below, where Anziano Scherbel is standing outside of.  Our branch member was a friend of the owner and they gave us a beautiful four course lunch that they would not let us pay for.  They make all their pasta fresh each day.  Here is a picture of three different kinds.  The one on the right is Fusilli which is cut in thin long strips and each one hand wound around a thin wooden stick to make it's spiral shape.  The round one is called, "little ears" in Italian, but I can't remember the Italian name, and the one on the left is called "little caves", which you use two fingers to press down and roll to make each piece curl.  The owner was about 85 and was missing most of her teeth in front.  She had the kindest eyes and was so darling.

 

After Lunch we stopped at a beautiful tucked away spot, our friend knew about and we went on avery  short hike to see some beautiful waterfalls.  I felt like we were on the road to Hana and had taken a little hike off road to see incredible waterfalls.

A beautiful Tuesday

After visiting the hospital we drove through the mountains and saw that autumn is just starting to catch up with the leaves turning colors and we saw more orange, gold and reds than we saw green. We stopped to buy bread at a very famous bread place.  We took a few pictures of the owner and the ladies who were baking bread in a very hot oven and removing the loaves with these long sticks that had a paddle like end which they could scoop the bread out without getting too close to get burned by the oven.

The yellow house across the street from the bakery had its sheets drying in the breeze and darling geraniums on the window ledges.  I love all the bright cheery colors that they paint their buildings and I love seeing their clean clothes flapping outside every each window.