Wow, I love this mission!

Wonderful thing for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday:  Well.  too much to condense.  Let's just fast forward to this evening!  I spoke of Elisa, the sweet Italian lady who lives in Brazil.  Every now and then we drop by her daughter's house to let her know we're here for her.  Her mom is far away, and she is a widow with two teenage children.  Last time, we took some flowers, she came to the gate, we talked a few minutes.  This was several weeks ago.  I had some cookies in the freezer awaiting another trip, but the Big Move changed that.  Somebody else ate the cookies.  If you read about the trip to Camp Darby, you may remember that I left Jared's Congo Bars sitting on my counter.  Of those, I set some apart for Elisa's daughter (I wish I could remember her name!).  In the freezer, again.  The other day, I added three pieces of pumpkin cake, left over from our [big success of a] missionary luncheon.  Yesterday, two strong impressions came to me to go there.  I'm kind of like the son in the parable who says he'll go and do his father's bidding, then follows some other tangent.  By the time we finished some "important" errands, it was too late to go by her house.  I repented, and this evening nothing would stand in the way.  We drove up to the house; it was dark.  I told Blaine I would leave the cookies anyway, with a note that says, "Never forget someone cares for you."  We rang the bell, and as we did so, she approached on the sidewalk, together with her son.  She was happy to see us; we talked about her mom, about whom she feels great concern because she has a bad knee, and where she lives, in a fishing village in Brazil, there's not much in the way of emergency assistance.  We were gratified to hear that she is facing her trials with faith and learning good things, and going forward with a smile.  She said that she doesn't know how to get ahold of us or where to find us, so we took care of that right away, giving her a passalong card with our name and phone number, and the address of the church and time of Sunday meetings.  We felt very gratified indeed to have done this little thing.  Out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

Fun thing:  today we went to the Pascuzzos to take photos of their house.  I am serious about putting this house out there for potential buyers.  What a gorgeous house!  Whenever we've been there, we've been in the family room to eat (and eat and eat and eat); the rest of the house is incredible; I haven't seen one like it in Italy.  I'll be posting pics soon.  Scrape your pennies together!  We are still so happy to be here, loving our brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends.  We did sign up for Internet yesterday, but it will take from ten to thirty days...

Senior couple missions are the way to go, my friends!