Today at the bus stop we were visiting with an African woman from Ethiopia. We couldn’t give her a pass-along card because she was Muslin, but she spoke very good English and we had quite a conversation with her. Italy is such a melting pot of different countries and peoples. We invited her home to dinner, but she wasn’t brave enough to take us up on that. Besides, it was only 6:00 p.m. and she thought that was way to early for dinner. The Italians eat “cini” much later in the evening.

The Roman Forum, the mission newsletter, is completed and run off for another 6 weeks. The missionaries look forward to receiving it, but it is sure a lot of work. Elder Kopischke, our Area Presidency counselor, is visiting the mission Zone Conferences this coming week. The Rome Conference will include Napoli this time and it is on Wednesday. We look forward to hearing from him.

Sister Bennion, our favorite missionary to date, has returned home after completing a successful mission. My, how we hated to see her go.

Friday night took us to downtown Roma, and we stumbled onto an outdoor music theatre with concerts nightly during the summer. The open-air theatre was constructed about 100 A.D. We will probably attend a concert a little later in the month.


On Saturday, at Venezia Square, I really wanted to go inside a certain church. We waited for it to open at 4:00 p.m. and when it did, there was a wedding party that arrived and went inside. Tourists were also inside, and so we went in and looked around, then watched the bride come in for her wedding. Before she came down the isle some young children were preceding her. The little boy leading the procession couldn’t have been more than 2 years old. He was well practiced and did very well. It was interesting that they played the old standard wedding march as the wedding party came inside and down the red carpet. We only stayed long enough to watch the bride come in, and then we felt we needed to leave.

We purchased some beautiful watercolors on Saturday. They are small, but have good detail, and are very well done.



Just a few flower pictures this week. This is what we see on balconies and along the streets everywhere. So beautiful . . . This is a beautiful country in many ways.