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.