Change is the only constant!

It has been wonderful returning to Siena among our members and missionaries in this fine, medieval city.  We really missed our small branch and the good people who strive each day to follow the Savior's example and to share their testimonies of the restored gospel with others.

Soon after our return Sister Boscia, a fine sister missionary from Palermo who has been with us since she started her mission in January, received notice that she was being transferred to Lugano.  Lugano is the one city in our mission that is not in Italy!  It is in Switzerland; right on the Italian/Swiss border, and most of its residents speak Italian.  It is a beautiful city!  How fortunate she has been so far, being able to serve in two of the most picturesque cities in our mission.

We took Sister Boscia and her companion, Sister Roth, out to Montepulchiano to visit one of the families in our branch.  We sat down with them and taught them about the restoration of the sealing authority through the prophet Elijah, as restored to the world again in 1836 in a miraculous vision in the Kirtland temple.  We talked about family history work and what we can do to bring the saving ordinances to our kindred dead.  They were excited about continuing this work.

Bonnie, Sister Gori and Sister Boscia

Darryl, Sister Gori, Sisters Boscia and Roth, Chiara

Saying Goodbye to Sister Boscia

Our branch will be taking a trip to the temple in Bern, Switzerland in September, and all our members are working hard to find names that we can take with us to the temple.  It is always more meaningful to do saving ordinances for those in our personal lines.

With Sister Boscia's departure, we received a new sister missionary, at least new to our little city.  Sister Andromidas joined Sister Roth to continue the great work that the sisters do here.  Sister Andromidas has served in three other cities in the mission, her mother is first generation Italian, and Italian was the first language she learned.  So she is going to help us greatly here in Siena.

Sister Andromadis joins forces with Sister Roth!

Our American family in our branch, the Nelsons, left for the States this week.  Spencer Nelson is a professional basketball player and played this season for the Siena team.  They made it to the Italian championship series and pushed Milano to Game 7, before dropping a heartbreaker to come just inches short of their goal.  We had to support him in his efforts, so we sat at a little outdoor pizzeria in Siena's famous campo and ate a late dinner while we watched Game 7 in its entirety.  Even though they lost, we enjoyed a gorgeous evening, as the sun set over the Torre della Mangia, the tallest civic tower in all of Italy!

 

A beautiful evening at Siena's campo

We visited the Nelsons for the last time before they flew home to the States.  We will miss their example and the wonderful times we had with their three kids.  Bonnie won't know what to do with herself on Sundays, as she won't have any American kids to teach in Primary.  But we are reactivating some of our Italian members with small kids and grandkids, so she will just have to continue her good work in Italian.

Bonnie, Tommy, Hannah, Julie, Spencer, Logan and Darryl

Logan and Hannah taking one more jump over the sprinklers

We had three young missionaries from our district get transferred last week, so we had new faces at our district meeting today.  It is always wonderful to meet new missionaries and learn from them as they carry the work forward here.

Elders Reese, Kekoolani, Giles, Axson and Lee
with
Sisters Lee, Andromidas, Hamblin, Roth and Jarvis

Time is flying by as we reach the halfway mark of our service here in Italy.  We are enjoying this time we have to work together and to serve the great people in this city.  We feel your prayers, and receive strength from your support.  Thank you for all you do!

Returning to Siena the Beautiful!

After another couple of busy weeks traveling all around the mission, we are finally back home, in our wonderful Tuscan town of Siena.  Hooray!!!

These past two weeks have been very busy, substituting for our Mission President and his wife.  After sending the Burgers home, we welcomed a new senior couple, Elder and Sister Fry from Oregon.  Elder and Sister Fry will be serving as member and leadership support missionaries in the beautiful town of Ancona, right on the Adriatic Coast and about as far south in the Mission as we are, just on the other side of the country.

Sister and Elder Fry arriving after a long trip from the States.

The Fry's and the Harmer's at the welcome dinner.

Bonnie prepared a wonderful meal to welcome the Fry's into the Mission.  Then, they and our office couple, Elder and Sister Harmer, caravaned down to one southern city to pick up some furniture, and then on to Ancona where they moved the elders out of one apartment and back into an apartment of four elders, while the Fry's took up residence in the elders' old apartment.

While the Fry's and Harmer's were heading south, we were off with the Assistants to conduct five Zone Conferences over a period of eight days.  Our first stop was in Alessandria, where we met with the Alessandria and Torino zones.  We taught doctrine about "Truths Lost, Truth Restored", focusing on the great truths that were restored during the First Vision in the Spring of 1820 and Moroni's visits to the Prophet Joseph Smith in September 1823.  We focused on the prophecies of Malachi and the great work of uniting families forever.

Bonnie teaching about family history

The Torino Zone

The Alessandria Zone

Bonnie taught the missionaries very practical ways we can use the family history emphasis of the church, and especially the new booklet, "My Family" ("La Mia Famiglia"), to teach doctrine, strengthen testimonies, unite families, and find more people to teach and baptize.

Bonnie even created her own live four-generation chart, using the missionaries as stand-ins for her ancestors, to show how we can focus on family history in our missionary work.

The missionaries representing persons from Bonnie's family

As closing thoughts to the Zone Conferences, Darryl (Anziano Lee) taught a powerful training about being consecrated servants in the mission field.  He used a  portion of the 1995 talk by Elder Neal A. Maxwell titled, "Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father".  Darryl is a great teacher and knows how to involve the missionaries in the discussion.  They were able to feel the spirit teaching them truths. In fact, one Zone Leader leaned over to me and said, "Did Anziano Lee come up with this himself?"  Of course he did!

The next day we held our second Zone Conference in Milano, for our two zones in and around this large metropolis.

The Milano East Zone

The Milano West Zone

And as you see, when you give your camera to missionaries, they love to take selfies!

Even the Assistants get into the act

And Elder Gneiting, who used to be with us in Siena

Right before the first two Zone Conferences, we were able to invite, Domi, an Italian exchange student that spent this last school year in Pocatello with Bonnie's sister, Laura, and her family, to the mission home for dinner.  Domi is an elect young woman who was taught the gospel by the missionaries while in Idaho.  We got her together with two wonderful sister missionaries in Milano, and we hope that Domi will continue to move forward and be baptized.

Sister Curtis, Domi, and Sister Seare with us at the Mission Home

On Monday, June 16, we traveled to Verona for our third Zone Conference, meeting with the Verona, Bergamo and Venice zones.  As in all the sessions, we had the missionaries break out into small groups for "role plays", where they practiced how they might use the "La Mia Famiglia" booklets with investigators and new converts to further the work.

Doing role-plays

Also, the Assistants had a session where the missionaries were asked to break out of some bad habits that were exhibiting themselves throughout the mission.  So they had the missionaries actually break some boxes with each bad habit that we are trying to break.  (This was a play on an Italian idiom.)  The activity hopefully helped the missionaries realize where they might be straying from some of the mission rules, and direct them back to the right paths.

Our own Sister Roth breaking that box!

And Elder Gneiting

As you see on the screen, trying to break the bad habit of thinking that you can start your travels back home
at the end of P-day.  No, all travel needs to be within the P-day time frame!  Break that box!

Verona is one of the cities where our daughter, Kristine, served.  It was great to go back there again and join forces with the missionaries in this great work!

The Bergamo Zone

The Verona Zone

The Venezia Zone

After this Zone Conference, we traveled down to Bologna where we held our fourth Zone Conference with the Bologna and Modena zones.  Here we met up again with Elder and Sister Pederson, another new couple that we welcomed into the mission during our stay in Milano.  The Pederson's are working at a U.S. military base in the northern part of the country as Military Relations missionaries.

Sister and Elder Peterson

At each of these Zone Conferences we break for lunch of pizzas, fruit, cookies and soda.  During lunch, Bonnie does Birthdays!!  At these Zone Conferences we celebrated the birthdays of all the missionaries with birthdays in June and July.  They all got a new toothbrush and toothpaste, as well as a candy bar to rot their teeth.  Then all the missionaries sang "Happy Birthday" to them, playing "follow the bouncing ball" as we sang out each of the missionaries' names in the middle of the song.

Pizzas all around!

If there's no knife, just eat it like a big taco!

The Bologna Zone

The Modena Zone

After this fourth Zone Conference, we had one day off, so we drove down to our little apartment in Siena to see if it was still in one piece.  It was, thankfully.  However, while we were gone the batteries in our CO2 detector died, which caused the alarm to go off every 30 seconds.  Of course we weren't there, so after a day or two, our neighbors called the owners, who emailed us.  We immediately contacted our elders in Siena, who had keys to our apartment, and they took care of the problem.  Sorry neighbors!!

On Thursday we conducted our last Zone Conference in our own backyard, Firenze.  We hosted the Firenze and Rimini zones.  We taught, we ate, and we broke boxes (i.e. bad habits).

Doing birthdays!

Singing to the missionaries

The Rimini Zone

The Firenze Zone

And then after the official zone pictures, the rush starts to take pictures of all your former companions, friends, etc.

A mad rush for your cameras!

Can you spot the old couple in the midst of all the youth?

Some of our great sisters

 On Thursday evening, right after our Zone Conference, we went with our sisters to visit a less active sister and her son.  We taught them and encouraged them to come to church with us this Sunday.  We hope they will come.

We just received word that our Mission President was cleared to return to the mission, so he and his wife are now on a plane heading back to Milano!  That is great news for everyone!  We don't have to get back in our car and drive back to Milano, and our missionaries will have their Mission President and his wife back in the saddle.

Being the substitute Mission President couple for a month has opened our eyes to the many things that have to be done each day to keep the missionary work moving forward.  There are administrative issues, health issues, disciplinary issues, spiritual issues, and many more that fill each day.  We are grateful for President and Sister Dibb and for all the hard work they put in to help the Lord's work move forward in this beautiful part of the Lord's vineyard.

It is now our time to refocus our own efforts on helping our little branch in Siena grow and prosper, and helping our four missionaries bring more souls to Christ.

Summertime in Milano

It is past time to write a bit about our experiences in Milano where we are trying to fill the shoes of President and Sister Dibb during their absence from the mission.  These past three weeks have been very full of very different work for Darryl and Bonnie.  This mission has 240 young missionaries (165 elders and 75 sisters), as well as 11 senior couples.  Those are quite a few missionaries to keep track of.

After a few days of settling in and getting our feet wet, we went right to work training twelve new missionaries who had been in Italy for just two weeks.  The way we do it here is after the first two weeks in country, we bring the new missionaries and their trainers back to Milano for a daylong training.

Getting ready to start

Reciting some mission scriptures

Darryl waxing eloquent, but the Assistants seem bored

A day full of treasures, hopefully

Both Darryl and Bonnie provided some essential training to these missionaries.  We tried to address the worries that can come up during the first two weeks, and most of all we tried to encourage them and inspire them to exercise their faith in the Lord to help them learn the language and get over any fears that they might have in doing missionary work.  This group seems prepared and ready to become great ambassadors of the Lord.

 

Darryl and Bonnie with the new missionaries and their trainers

That very evening we met a brand new senior couple that arrived to begin their service.  They will be serving near a U.S military base in the northern part of the country.   After providing them some training and taking them out for their first meal in Italy, we gave them their car and their TomTom, and pointed them off in the right direction.  They found their new assignment, moved into their apartment, and began their service.

One of the real disappointments of the timing of this special assignment was the fact that we missed spending time with our dear friends, Craig and Gayle Speechly, who planned to be in the Siena area just days after we had to leave for Milano.  But we were able to help them with their itinerary, and since they were flying out of Milano on their return home, they were able to stop by the Mission Home so we could spend a few hours together.  We cooked them a good, old-fashioned American breakfast, and sent them on their way.  It was great to see them!

On Sunday, June 1, we also had the privilege of preparing dinner for Elder and Sister Burger who were finishing their mission.  They have been a wonderful couple who had the unenviable assignment for at least the past year of finding and furnishing apartments for the missionaries.  With the announcement of the age change for young missionaries, all missions received a surge of new missionaries about a year ago, and we had to find places to put these missionaries. 

Sister and Elder Burger, coming for their "Last Supper"

The Burgers with Elder Harmer and Bonnie

The Burgers and the Lees

Plus, the Church has asked missions to get away from having more than two young missionaries in any given apartment.  Because of the high cost of housing in Italy, it had been the norm to house four missionaries in an apartment.  (When Darryl served his first mission here, it was typical to house 6-8 elders in one apartment.)  So this couple has opened more than 100 new apartments, has closed some very old apartments that were basically uninhabitable, and put thousands of miles on the mission van as they traveled all over this great country.

In between all these events, Bonnie has been very busy handling the health needs and concerns of all these missionaries.  She has become an expert in dealing with the Church's insurance facilitator, finding doctors and hospitals throughout Italy, consoling and counseling the sick and encouraging the healthy to keep up the good work.  She has dealt with things ranging from broken ankles, missionaries hit by cars while riding their bikes, hand, foot and mouth disease, a possible emergency appendectomy, a broken wrist, together with the more common ailments such as colds and the flu.

Darryl also has been dealing with some interesting things, such as special baptismal interviews, counseling missionaries who are feeling blue and want to go home (we haven't lost one yet), fielding calls from missionaries who get home too late, and working with missionaries on keeping focused on why they are here.

Last week we held our Mission Leadership Conference.  This is where we bring all the Zone Leaders and the Sister Training Leaders to Milano for an all-day training session.  We taught and trained these leaders, and learned from them how the troops in the field are doing and what we can do to assist them.  They have strong testimonies and a great desire to share the gospel.  It was good to rub shoulders with them.

Darryl with a few of the Zone Leaders

Sister Training Leaders doing a role play

The Assistants mugging for the camera

Darryl and Bonnie with the Mission Leadership Council

Now we are preparing to welcome another senior couple to the mission before we hit the road for five zone conferences in five different parts of Northern Italy.  No rest for the wicked!

We have learned much these past few weeks, and we hope to learn even more during the next two weeks.  President and Sister Dibb should be returning by June 22; so we hope to back in Siena soon with our wonderful branch members, our four tremendous missionaries, and the beauties of the Bella Toscana.