The fields of sunflowers have replaced the fields of red poppies.


The week has been an eating week. The Italian way is to have about 5 or 6 courses at any meal.
Our courses this week included:

1st and 2nd course: Scone Night for missionaries and investigators. A fun casual get-together at our apartment! All the scones and honey-butter you can eat. Of course, that means that the next day will be cinnamon bun day as I always make up too much scone dough and it also makes great cinnamon buns.

3nd course: Our favorite Italian investigator cooked for us again and we all rolled out of the apartment afterward. This time the meal included 2 pasta dishes, pheasant – you had to watch out for the buckshot it was killed with - when you ate it, an egg and cheese dish with grated truffle in it, a stew made with beef, potatoes, red onion, and red pepper, and stuffed eggplant.



This black "thing" is called a truffle. Francesco said it cost $150. It was given to him by someone he had worked for. It is a kind of spice and he grated it into the egg dish he made. Once before he brought truffles too and then he grated it onto cooked spaghetti which was delicious.


4th course: A surprise birthday party for Sister Acerson, the President’s wife – featuring pulled barbeque pork, salads, a birthday cake, and a very surprised Sister Acerson. This was complete with balloons, and candles. 1 candle for each 10 years.



5th course: Fried chicken dinner for the assistants. Elder Rogers is going home this transfer and we will be sorry to have him go, he is so fun. He's the one in the front.


6th course: UVSO – Utah Valley Symphony Orchestra playing beautiful classical music as well as several LDS hymns with special arrangements by the conductor’s wife. That was a treat of a different kind, but definitely dessert.

On Saturday we played at Marina di Alabrese.


By the way, this is a picture of the apartment we will be moving into in September.


That puts us into transfer week this coming week, which is our biggest assignment in any 6 week period of time. We have played, and eaten, and taught, and listened. Now we work!

ITALY IS GREAT!


CINQUE TERRE


THE PIETA IN ST. PETERS AN ANCIENT TEMPLE

This morning at church, Bishop Edgley, of the Presiding Bishopric, and his wife were in attendance. Next weekend, he will meet with all the stake presidents in Italy, the area presidency and the mission presidents. His mandate is the temple here in Rome. At the end of our fast and testimony meeting today, he spoke to us briefly. He said they had seen the coliseum yesterday, and today he was thinking of this area as it began as the fountain of Christianity. Then His precious gospel was lost from the earth. He said with the announcement of the temple in Italy, it was clear that the gospel of Jesus Christ is back, and it is here to stay. He said he wanted to thank those early Christians who believed in Jesus Christ and his gospel. Many of them were martyred.
HOW THE COLISEUM LOOKED ORIGINALLY

HOW THE COLISEUM LOOKS TODAY

He spoke of Joseph Smith and how his name would be known for good and evil throughout the world. He said we will continue to grow and be active in the church because the church is true. He also commented that there were two important witnesses to the first vision: God, the father, and his son, Jesus Christ. I had not really ever thought of it that way before. He reminded us that if we wanted to know if it was true, to ask the witnesses if it happened.

Just prior to his remarks, an investigator stood and bore testimony of the reality of miracles in his life and his belief in Jesus Christ.

The weather is warm – very warm in Italy right now. Just about every morning, it starts out a little hazy and then the haze burns off to a bright, glorious day. You can feel the humidity hanging in the air. By about 6:00 p.m. – sometimes earlier – a large thundercloud rolls in and we have a giant electric storm, which lasts about an hour. Then the air is clear and fresh once again. When it rains, it seems that the heavens open up and lets out the bathwater. Even an umbrella is useless in this torrent.

THE METRO - we travel on these trains a lot!

Last night we attended a Nordic concert in a church downtown next to the Marcellus Theatre that we attended last weekend. This was probably a 100-piece orchestra, much of that, stringed instruments, directed by a famous Norwegian conductor. Some of the songs were loud and strong, but the last two were our favorite numbers and were softer and easier to listen to. The orchestra was made up of talented cream-of-the-crop youth from several Scandinavian countries, who had met and practiced once together and then they go on tour throughout Europe.

Saturday morning we were invited over to Pearson’s for a 4th of July breakfast with the missionaries from our district. We didn’t sing, “God Bless America,” but the meal was tasty.

We haven’t been very good about carrying the camera this week, so I am adding a few pictures that have been taken before for you to enjoy. Stay wonderful and keep the faith!
This is Nettuno. A favorite place on the Mediterranean.

Rows and rows of grapevines. We are hoping to get in on a grape harvest this year.

Mediterranean coastline

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to ME!

Between the Assistants to the President and our district leaders making me a very fun homemade birthday card, to getting phone calls from several missionaries throughout the mission, to receiving bear hugs from many of the sister missionaries, to going to a concert in an ancient Roman theatre, to seeing the Mediterranean, to seeing a rainbow in Rome (the world must not be coming to an end yet), to cooking dinner for an investigator and several missionaries, to attending Zone Singing in downtown Rome, to being fingerprinted (it’s for my Questora – permission to live in Italy), to receiving emails and care cards from all the kids: Life is good, and I feel spoiled rotten and much loved.

This morning at DDM, the missionaries from our district served birthday cake and ice-cream and sang happy birthday once again. I've decided that this birthday has been so much fun that I think I will have one birthday a week for the next several weeks, and get this getting old stuff over with so I can just enjoy life.

The Mouth of Truth is an ancient stone mask that was moved to Rome in 1632. At one time the mouth moved and the legend was that if a liar put his hand inside the mouth, he would lose his hand.

The Theatre Marcellus, completed in 13 BC, now features outdoor summer concerts every day of the summer June through September. We enjoyed a concert there on Friday evening. We have tickets to go to four more concerts during the summer.



The missionaries from Rome 1 and Rome 2 meet together in downtown Rome and sing hymns as people walk by. After a bit, a couple will go out and talk to whoever has stopped and wants to talk, and then in a while, they go back to singing and others break away from the choir and visit with people. They look pretty sharp dressed in white shirts and ties, and skirts.

A busy, exciting, sad, thoughtful, beautiful, spirit-filled week!
On June 16th my oldest brother, Kenny Teeples, passed away. What a difficult piece of news to receive when you are so far away from home and so unavailable to go be with family at a tender time like this. Kenny’s wife, Audrey passed away in November of this past year. Between missing her and being in very poor health, I’m certain that Kenny was ready to go “home.” There is a saying: “to take mourning out of death, is to take love out of life.” Ken and Audrey were such good people and I will miss our visits tremendously. Ken and I were 17 years apart in age and yet, we were really quite close. I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the knowledge that we can see loved ones again. Thank goodness for a husband who understands my need to reminisce about my brother and who gives me comfort in my temporary loss.

Five new missionaries from the MTC arrived at the mission home on Wednesday. They were two weeks late getting to Rome as they were all detained for a time in Provo due to a swine flu scare at the MTC. They look like fine young men and women and we are excited to have them serve in our mission.

Our mission president has given us an additional assignment and the week has been a busy one. So, by Saturday we were looking forward to our first train ride to Anzio. It is a fishing village on the shores of the Mediterranean. On our way there, President Acerson called and invited us to travel with him and his wife to LaSpezia in the northern most corner of the mission the next day. We were delighted.

Sister and President Acerson - Sister Pearson - Will - Elder Pearson
At 4:00 a.m. we were ready to be picked up for the 4-hour drive to LaSpezia. An overcast day was perfect for driving, and we attended our 3-hour meeting block there at an active branch of the church. After the meetings, the President encouraged us to take a train to Cinque Terre, a beautiful rugged coastline area of Italy. Pearson’s, the other office couple and ourselves, enjoyed three hours of incredible beauty. The overcast burned off and the day turned out to be warm and sunny.


At the end of that time, we met back up with the President and Sister Acerson to travel to Prato for two baptisms. That part ended up being the highlight of the day as we witnessed the baptisms and listened to the testimonies of these two converts. The spirit of the Lord was so incredibly strong. (We JUST NOW felt about 10 seconds of another earthquake move our building gently back and forth!) Then toward the end of the meeting, Sister Leckie and Sister Stephensen sang the hymn, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives,” in Italian. During the singing, as their voices blended with amazing skill and thrilled all of us, we looked at one another and mouthed the word: WOW! The perfect ending to a beautiful Father’s Day! We are being so very blessed. What an awesome experience a mission is for a couple. We highly encourage it.





Looks like snow? Actually, it is marble in the mountain where it is being mined.

Zone Conference was on Wednesday of this past week. Napoli Zone was joining Roma Zone since we were enjoying a visit from Elder Kopischke, a member of our Area Presidency and a seventy. Elder and Sister Warner, who are serving in Caserta, close to Napoli attended the Conference. We have stayed with them twice so we could shop at the navel base there. Elder Warner is ex-military and can get us on base to grocery shop. So, we were excited that they would stay with us this trip and attend the conference with us.


On Thursday, we took them to downtown Rome to see the coliseum and while we were there, Will took some very interesting pictures of it. The wall was built after Rome had a major earthquake to try and shore up the coliseum enough so that it will not all fall down.

As we walked around to the opposite side than you normally see, we could see the wall that was built. On the front side, you can also see how shaky the huge pieces of stone seem to be. Another earthquake and we would probably really be in trouble.

Afterwards we climbed a hill inside a park and Will got these beautiful pictures of the flowers and palm trees with the coliseum in the distance. (about a block away)

Wow! What a great way to get around Rome. Unfortunately, we walk! But this sure looked like fun.

We have a flavor to ask everyone: please pray that the government officials of Rome will allow the building of the temple to go forth at this time. We were told that major decisions will be made in the month of June as to whether we are recognized as a church in this country and given permission to built the temple. We are anxious to have a beautiful temple in this beautiful land.

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.