Trials, Challenges and Opportunities to Serve!

As senior missionaries, you never know what each week will bring.  As we mentioned in our last blog, one of our sister missionaries started feeling ill a couple of weeks ago, having bad headaches, nausea, blurred vision, etc.  We took her to the Emergency Room, and after only eight hours of waiting and exams, they diagnosed her with a severe sinus infection.  They prescribed some antibiotics and sent her home.  Elder Gneiting and Darryl gave her a blessing and she seemed to rest a little better.

However, after taking antibiotics for a few days, there really was no sign of improvement.  Our mission nurse in Milano, after consultation with Dr. Wing, the Europe Area's full time doctor in Frankfurt, decided that we needed to take Sister Hunter to see another doctor.  Our Relief Society President recommended a doctor.  That doctor simply asked for the ER's records, and didn't even want to see our missionary.  After looking at her ER records, he prescribed a whole different drug treatment.  After Bonnie looked at what he was suggesting and realizing that some of the drugs didn't have anything to do with Sister Hunter's symptoms, Darryl felt strongly that we should call Sister Dibb, our Mission President's wife, and our mission nurse, to report in and to express our concerns.  They consulted with Dr. Wing in Frankfurt, and they all agreed that she shouldn't start taking the new meds.

Instead, we were instructed to take Sister Hunter back to the hospital and have them conduct more tests.  When we took her back, it seems that the doctors finally took her symptoms seriously.  They kept her in the hospital and started running all kinds of tests.  The bottom line is that Sister Hunter has a condition that affects the pressure of the fluid in the head, thus causing all her symptoms.  The Italian doctors came up with the proper diagnosis the same day that Sister Hunter's father, who is a physician in Colorado, also came up with the correct diagnosis. 

Sister Hunter and Sister Boscia continued to be great missionaries, even in the hospital.  Their good example was seen by others in her room and many questions about the church were asked.  Sister Hunter was loved by all the patients and their families in her room.  They took great care of her and she helped them. They shared pizza and cookies with one another and they took pictures and shared contact information.  While most of the memories from the hospital were not fun, there were some memories that Sister Hunter will cherish.  She had some tender mercies in the midst of her trials.

Sisters Hunter and Boscia in the hospital.

A son of one patient, and Sara, a patient that was going home, with Sister Boscia and Bonnie.
Sister Hunter got Sara's phone number in Venezia, and she will be sending the missionaries to her!

Sister Hunter, with Elders Robb and Axson

Since Sister Hunter was in the hospital, we brought her companion, Sister Boscia, to our apartment for a couple of nights.  When it seemed that Sister Hunter would not be returning to full time missionary work for some time, President Dibb asked us to take Sister Boscia to Pisa to stay with the Sister Training Leaders there.  So on Friday, we took Sister Boscia to Pisa where she will work with the Sisters there until the President works out how to staff the work here in Siena for the sisters.

Meanwhile, the doctors started Sister Hunter on a drug that should address the problem.  However, just to be safe, the Mission President and the Church doctors in Frankfurt, in consultation with Sister Hunter's parents, decided that it would be best if Sister Hunter went back to the States for a few weeks to get checked out completely and to get her on track for a full recovery.  Then, she can return to her mission here in Italy, where she really wants to be, and hopefully she will return to Siena to continue her great work with our members and investigators in this beautiful city.

We actually got approval for the Area Presidency to leave our mission boundaries twice, once on Saturday to drive to Rome to pick up Sister Hunter's mom from the airport, and then again on Monday to take Sister Hunter and her mom back to Rome for their flight back to the States.

We spent quite a few hours and days in the hospital with Sister Hunter, and coordinating her treatment with the doctors in the hospital, the Church's doctor in Frankfurt, and with her parents back in the States. Darryl was very helpful and it was comforting to Sister Hunter and her parents to know that he was there and taking care of the details.

On top of our efforts to help Sister Hunter, our branch had planned a party at the church for the festival of Carnavale.  We were able to drop in on the festa after coming back from Rome with Sister Hunter's mom.  We owe a great debt to our two elders, Elder Robb and Elder Axson, who took complete charge of the party and made it special for our members and our investigators.  We had a number of kids at our party, and everyone seemed to have a great time.

The Church foyer decorated for Carnavale!

Darryl's counselor, Simone, who is leaving this week for a job in Milan!
Darryl is really sad to see him go, but it will be good for him.

Elders Robb and Axson with their homemade piñata.

Lots of pizza and great company!

We have been working with one of our members who hasn't been to church for quite a number of years.  One of Brother Natale's many talents is making homemade pizzas.  He agreed to come to church and make the pizzas for our party.  He showed up at 10 am on Saturday morning and he made the pizza dough from scratch.  He then fixed a great pasta lunch for our elders, and helped decorate for the party.  (Darryl helped him get started in the morning before we had to take off to Rome to pick up Sister Hunter's mom).

Brother Natale making great food for everyone!

 After returning from Rome, we stopped by the party just long enough for Sister Hunter's mom to meet a few people and to thank Brother Natale.  We then took Sister Hunter's mom to the hospital to take care of her daughter and to work with the doctors to try to get her released to go back to the States.  After we dropped her off and made sure all was OK at the hospital, we went back to the church for the last bit of the party and to clean up the mess.  It was a long day!

On top of it all, Sunday was our scheduled branch conference with our District leaders.  Darryl prepared his talk in between all the other happenings of the week.  But, Sunday went fine and we are progressing as a small branch struggling to grow.

Right after our Sunday meetings, we learned that Sister Hunter was being released from the hospital that afternoon, and that she and her mom were scheduled to fly back to the States on Monday morning.  We hurried to the hospital and helped Sister Hunter break free.  We took Sister Hunter and her mom to our apartment for a good lunch (anything is better than hospital food).  Thankfully, Bonnie had put a chicken in the crockpot before we left for church that morning, and we fed them some of Bonnie's great cooking.  They loved it!

We fed the Hunters and then took them to Sister Hunter's apartment so they could pack up Sister Hunter's things.  Later that evening we brought them back to our apartment to spend a short night before leaving bright and early Monday morning for the Rome airport.

We got Sister Hunter and her mom safely to the Rome airport and on a plane headed for Colorado.  It was sad to see Sister Hunter leave, but we are praying that all will go well and that she will be back here in a few weeks.  That is definitely her wish, and we need her great spirit and her wonderful love for the Italian people back in the great city of Siena.

Sister Hunter at the Leonardo di Vinci Airport in Rome.

Bonnie, Veronica Hunter and Sister Hunter

Darryl and Bonnie saying Goodbye, but just for a few weeks we hope, to a great Sister.

The lines at the airport.

We decided to drive a different route back to Siena from Rome.  We drove along the Mediterranean Sea for a while, and then we headed into the hills of Tuscany.  

A brave spear-fisherman getting ready to see what he can catch.

Along the Mediterranean Sea.

Bonnie contemplating a dip.  The water was so clear!

It was a beautiful, clear day, and we stopped at Montalcino for lunch and took a quick look around.  Spring is definitely in the air, even though it is still February.

The Tuscan countryside.

In the mountain town of Montalcino.

The castle where the Sienese people holed up in their valiant last stand before being overrun by the Florentines.

Cactus growing on top of a wall.

With Sister Hunter in Colorado and Sister Boscia in Pisa, Darryl picked up the slack and taught the English class last night.  He had a blast teaching English and working with the kids and adults that attend the beginning class.

In the midst of all this excitement, our district leader for some months now, Elder Gneiting, was transferred to Padova.  We will certainly miss his enthusiasm and love for our members here. Elder Axson came to take his place.  Elder Gneiting was about 6'6", and Elder Axson is even taller.  He seems like he will step right in and lead our missionaries to success.  We will miss Elder Gneiting, but we are blessed to meet new missionaries every six weeks, and learn from them.

The events of the last two weeks have taught us many things.  Foremost among them is that challenges and trials come into all our lives, even when we are doing our very best to live as we should.  And this is exactly according to God's plan.  We have trials so we can have life experiences, and so we can learn valuable lessons.  We must experience the sour so we can truly enjoy the sweet.  When we are ill, we treasure our health even more.  When we fall, we struggle to rise again!  The thing that our Heavenly Father wants to know is how we respond to our trials and our challenges, and how they change us, hopefully for the better.  If we can learn patience, courage, empathy, and love from our trials, then we are on the right path that will lead us back to our Heavenly Father.

Valentine's Day is For Lovers and Missionaries!

This week started with the Zone Conference that we outlined in the last blog post.  We followed that meeting up with a couple of mundane things, like taking our trusty steed (our little Opel Meriva) into the Opel dealer for some regular service and maintenance.  Bonnie went to her favorite hairdresser in Siena for a wash, cut and style, and we did a few other things that were needed for the branch building and our little apartment.

We also helped plan for our branch's St. Valentine's Day party!!  We invited all our friends who come to the church building two nights a week for English classes to come, and some of them did!

We spent most of Thursday cooking and baking for the big party.  We made some killer meatballs to go with some spicy homemade pomodoro sauce that we put together.  (No, no one died from the meatballs, but they were the hit of the party!)  Bonnie also made some great lemon bars and dipped ruby red strawberries in chocolate to bring that extra touch of class to the evening.

We did most of our party preparations on Thursday because on Friday, Valentine's Day, we needed to take our elders to Firenze for a baptism.  Our great sisters serving in Montevarcchi (a small town close to Arezzo) had another baptism!  That branch is really growing!  We went to the baptism (which started over an hour late) and quickly returned to Siena for our big festa.

Sister Yost, Alice and Sister Lopez 

The elders and sisters from Montevarcchi, and most of the branch.

Our Activities Committee arrived early and decorated our Relief Society Room for the big event.  They also coordinated all the other treats and food for the party.  Our elders made a Nutella crostata, and our sisters made a "Mormon-style" Tiramisu.  Some of our members made some gnocchi and some risotto, and we had a great time.

Angela, the lady that Bonnie has been teaching and fellowshipping (see last blog post) came to the party and she had a great time.  Some of our English students also came.  It is a great way to have our investigators meet and interact with our members in something other than the "Sunday" environment.

Bonnie and Angela talking at the same time.  That's what we do in Italy!

Enrique, one of our great branch missionaries, and two of our English students.

Laura, an English class participant, and her camera-crazy daughter.

A great couple, Lorena and Redi

After we served everyone a yummy dinner, we put all the desserts out on a table in foyer, and it was open season on some scrumptious treats!

Notice how fast the strawberries were gobbled up!

Our sister missionaries didn't make it to the party because one of them was not feeling very well at all.  On Saturday morning, after consulting with Sister Dibb, our Mission President's wife, we took this sister to the doctor's office, which in Italy means a quick trip to the Emergency Room of our local hospital.  They saw her and prescribed some antibiotics for what they diagnosed as a bad sinus infection, gave her some over-the-counter pain relievers for a bad headache and sent her on her way.  She has been resting, and seems to be on the mend.

On Sunday we decided to do an "Ode to the Hymns" sacrament meeting.  Our Music Director kicked it off with a short talk about the importance of music in our worship, and then we sang her favorite hymn.  Then, whoever wanted to share their favorite hymn and explain why it was special to them had the chance to do so.  We probably sang 10-12 hymns during our meeting, and it was wonderful how the music and the short testimonies really brought the Spirit.  We had some members visiting from one of the Rome wards on Sunday, and the sister said she had a wonderful experience and she was going right back home to tell her Rome bishop about this new idea for a powerful sacrament meeting.  We actually had 36 people in our sacrament meeting this week!

 

Logan and Hannah chillin' in the new comfy chairs in our Primary.

Oh, and remember Doris and her little son Daniele who live in a small village more than an hour from Siena; they took the bus on Sunday and came to our meetings!!  They had a wonderful time, and we hope to see them more often.  It would be great if her husband would come with her and bring them to church; but as we say in Italy, "piano, piano".

Transfers are every six weeks, and the next transfer happens tomorrow.  We don't know if any of our four Siena missionaries might be leaving us, so we have started a new tradition to have all our missionaries over for dinner the Sunday before transfers.  Thus, all four missionaries came over to our apartment after church yesterday and we fed them some great Chicken cordon bleu, pasta with mushroom and onion cream sauce, fruit salad, fresh baked bread, and some yummy banana pudding.  We really appreciate all the hard work that these young missionaries do here in our fair city, and we love them all.

Elders Robb and Gneiting, Bonnie, and Sisters Boscia and Hunter

We are busy planning our monthly visits with all our members, both those who are active and those we don't see very often.  We are planning a Festival for Carnivale this Saturday at the church, and one of our members who has been a professional pizza chef in the past is coming to make the pizzas for us.  He and his wife haven't been to church for many years, so this is the first step to bring them back into activity.  They will probably bring their two grandchildren who live with them, and that would be wonderful.  Those young children could really learn in Primary.  When we visited their home a couple of weeks ago so Bonnie could visit teach, she brought some pictures of Christ as the good shepherd for these kids to color, and they really enjoyed that.  The older girl turned around and gave the picture she had colored back to Bonnie, so now we have that hanging in our study.

The work moves slowly, but when we step back we do see that it is moving, and it seems to be moving in the right direction.  We are trying our best not to get in the way, but to put our shoulders to the wheel and keep the momentum going!

February in the Bella Toscana

On Saturday, February 1, we took our sister missionaries out to Roccastrada, a small town about an hour outside of Siena, to meet with one of our members, Doris Scappaticci.  Doris is from Peru, but she came to Rome when she was about 20 years old with her sister.  She met the missionaries in Rome, and joined the church there.  She later met her husband, a good man from this small town of Roccastrada.  They married and then had a son, Daniele.  While Doris has not been able to attend church because of the distance to church and because she doesn't have her own car, she has become very active in Institute, which she attends during the week via Skype.  But how her 3 1/2 year old son now needs the Primary and the teachings of Jesus that will help him through his life.  We have given Doris some Primary materials and she is teaching Daniele at home.  We hope that when the weather turns a bit warmer, she and Daniele will be able to take the bus to church on occasion.

On that same day, we and the Sisters visited an inactive mother, Maria, and her 6-year-old son, Alexander.  We had a very good visit with this sister, and believe that she has a desire to come back into activity.  She and her husband were active in the Florence branch years ago, and they even went to the temple.  They are separated now, but Maria still seems to have a spark of testimony.  We need to fellowship her and help her see how the gospel, as well as the church's organization, can help her and her son be happier and more fulfilled.  Again, this little 6-year-old really needs the basic teachings of the gospel upon which to build a strong foundation in order to face and overcome the trials and tribulations that life brings to all of us.

Sisters Hunter and Boscia, playing against Alexander

Sister Boscia, Maria, Sister Hunter and Alexander

Our missionaries have been teaching Angela, a single woman from a nearby town, on and off again since we arrived in October.  Angela loves America and spent quite a bit of time there.  She speaks English quite well, and she and Bonnie have become good friends.  Angela has some very strong opinions about religion and the injustices of the world, and she loves to expound on these topics.  Thus, it has been hard for our young missionaries to teach the gospel in any orderly way.

Sisters Hunter and Boscia, Bonnie and Angela

 Bonnie has felt the Spirit encourage her to reach out to Angela.  Bonnie called Angela last week and they spoke on the phone for quite awhile.  Bonnie set up an appointment to meet with Angela at the church, and she invited the Sisters to join us.  We spent about an hour and a half with Angela, and the discussion, for the most part, was quite positive.  We bore testimony to Angela that our Heavenly Father knows each of us, and that he does hear and answer prayers.  While the answers are not always the answers we want, they are the answers that we need.  Angela expressed some very personal feelings, and there were tears shed during this lesson.  We don't know whether Angela will eventually take the steps necessary to read, ponder, and pray to know whether she should be baptized, but we do know that we have shared important and eternal principles with her, and that she can improve her life and find more happiness as she comes to understand and implement these eternal truths.

We are also working with another inactive couple that has a very precarious family situation.  They are taking care of not only their two grown sons, who suffer from some medical problems, but they are also the caregivers for two grandchildren.  The sons don't work, and this couple tries to keep everything together by working very hard, but the financial situation is such that the company the grandfather works for is failing, and workers are sometimes limited to 8-10 work days a month, which places a great burden on everyone's shoulders to simply survive.  The branch is helping out where it can with the temporal needs of this family, and they are now disposed to try to come to a few of our branch activities.  Again, we long to reach out and help these two grandchildren, and we wish they could come to Primary and be taught what Jesus wants them to learn.  As they say in Italy, "piano, piano" which means "slowly, slowly" we hope to make progress with our less active members.

We keep our spirits up and energized by rubbing shoulders with our four young missionaries and the active members in the branch.  Bonnie uses her musical skills to bring the Spirit into our meetings.  Darryl asked the missionaries to sing in Sacrament Meeting last Sunday, so Bonnie and the four missionaries got together to practice a few of their favorite hymns.  We move forward, even though the middle D on the keyboard (and a few other less important keys) doesn’t work.  We get by with what we have.  We finally got a small table that our young Primary children can sit around, and a CD player for the Primary.  We are very grateful for these things, many of which we take for granted at home.

We had a good Sunday.  As a branch council, we have decided to plan a trip to the Bern temple.  We decided to plan it for September so that we have the time to work with some of our members who have let their recommends expire, and those newer members who are preparing to go the temple for the first time.  We want to work with each member who desires the blessings of the temple in their lives to assist them to prepare for this trip and be ready when the time comes.  If, as King Benjamin instructed his people, we gather together as families and keep our tent doors open and always pointing toward the temple, we will be instructed from on High and know the road we must take to allow Christ's atonement to have full effect in our lives.

Sunday evening as the rains let up and the sun began shining, we took an evening "passaggiata" within the walls of the old town.  We walked down streets that we hadn't explored before, and enjoyed a pleasant evening.  We went to the large, gothic cathedral of San Francesco, and reverently walked through its naves.  It is stark and cold; nothing like the warm and beautiful Duomo of Siena, but it has its own unique grandeur and splendor.

Yesterday was a very wet and rainy day throughout the Toscana.  Luckily for all the missionaries in this Zone, it was Zone Conference, so they were able to spend the day with our Mission President, his wife, the Assistants, the Sister Training Leaders, and the Zone Leaders in a day of teaching and training.  The missionaries received some very good training that, if implemented, will greatly assist them as they continue to find, teach and testify.

Zone Conference in Florence

Our Mission President, Bruce Dibb

The Sister Training Leaders, Sisters Stewart and Jameson

Even though we are still in the middle of the rainy season, this winter, at least here in the Bella Toscana, has been very mild.  No snow, no ice, and we've only had to scrape the windows of the car twice.  And even though the leaves are gone, the fields remain green and we see buds of spring all over.  We know that it is still a few weeks (or maybe a month or so) away, but spring is coming!  And with the spring, newness of life is ready to explode.  We are anxious to see the wildflowers, the vineyards, and the olive groves burst into being.  With the newness of life that the spring always brings, we hope that we can bring the hope and light of new beginnings into the lives of some of our members who have chosen other paths.  

Oh how much we can all learn from Lehi and Nephi's vision of the tree of life!  That great and spacious building is getting more and more crowded with our brothers and sisters who have chosen other paths and who now look down on those holding fast to the rod of iron and pressing forward toward the tree of life.  May we all keep our eyes and hearts focused on the love of God that is sweet beyond all earthly delights, and not give heed to the mocking and laughing voices that rein down all around us.  As we strive to live the gospel of Christ, may we reach out to all our loved ones and invite them to take the road that is becoming less and less traveled, and see if that road can bring us the happiness and fulfillment we seek.