We ain't just whistlin Dixie

Wonderful thing for Weds., 20 May:

I just want to give kind of an overview of what we're up to these days, since my daily efforts seemed to have slogged to the wayside.

We are super involved with Pathway.  We have a dozen+ faithful, enthusiastic students.  They do online work individually during the week, then we all get together for a Gathering/encontro on Thursday evenings, where a "lead student" - a different person each week - facilitates the discussion of the principles learned during the week.  Before the Gathering, which takes place at 9:00 to accommodate everyone's schedules, some come at 7:30 for Institute (the 18-30 age group) and some come at 8:00 for a BYU-I Religion class gathering, again led by a different student each month.  This is the group who are fluent enough in English that they don't need the extra language class online, so they take a Religion class in order to receive enough credit for the trimester.  This way, everyone receives 5 credits a trimester, which rolls over to BYU-I credit if they should decide to enroll as online BYU-I students after the three-trimester Pathway run.

I've been teaching the Institute Program; I don't recall having such profound learning experiences in a course I was teaching!  The course is "Jesus Christ and The Everlasting Gospel."  Marvelous.  Melvin, Dani, Jenny and Elton all prepare and participate; we are all "edified and rejoice together" (D&C 50:22)

Blaine oversees the Religion class, and we both oversee the Gathering.  The discussions and topics are exciting and, well, edifying.  You're made a better person for learning them.  Our students all lead very busy lives and the time commitment for Pathway is not small, but they LOVE it.

We really feel blessed to have landed in this opportunity here!

We're going to be doing some training for the Young Women/Young Men programs here in the Florence Stake in the next few weeks.  It is amazing how much the stake presidency looks to us to help the stake and wards learn what it's like to be a stake and a ward; it has only been a year since they were a district and branches.  Things run a little differently when the church is more established; our experiences have helped prepare us to share with them.  It's daunting; they are not "new" members by any means, but strong in faith and in testimony.  They've just never been a ward or a stake before.

Keep us in your prayers, we want to help without giving the impression that we "know it all" and they don't.

We are still, always, working with the Young Single Adults, here in Prato mostly, but also in Florence, Pisa and Livorno.  We do our very best to encourage, to share our testimonies about how the principles of the Gospel really do work, based on our own experiences.  We always have a good home evening at our apartment on Sunday evenings, even though it is not always well-attended.

Yesterday we hoped to visit some of our YSA in Pisa and Livorno, but couldn't make an appointment.  We had to go that direction anyway to pick up a bed frame from the Pisa elders, and take it to the Livorno sisters, one of whom was sleeping on her mattress on the floor.  In speaking with the Livorno elders, Blaine asked them if they were working with any YSA.  They told us that they baptized a young man recently, so we called him, and he was available for a visit.

His name is Jim.  He is Filippino and speaks English.  He has been working as a sous chef on a luxury yacht stationed in Livorno.   It was a pleasure to talk to him (on the beach at Viareggio, no less!), he is sweet, humble, happy with the spirit of peace and joy he is feeling.  We felt blessed!

So.  Now I've brought you up to speed.

Fun thing:

Today, the missionaries' P Day, we asked the sisters if they wanted to accompany us on a hike.  We wanted to check out a place we'd seen on the map, as a possible site for our YSA activity this Saturday.  Blaine had been up in that area before with Mike Mower, and had seen some gorgeous waterfalls.  It's pretty much just a couple of miles into the mountains from our house.

We all set out, at first in our car along very narrow, typically winding Italian roads, the kind where you have to honk every time you come to an incline or a curve, for fear of meeting an oncoming car; then we took off on a trail Blaine already knows from his walks, trying to figure out the directions for a less traveled path on our Italian map.

 a villa we saw along the way, surrounded by glory

We were supposed to come to a centuries-old house, Casa Bastone, after .4 kilometer.  It was supposed to be easy hiking.  After an hour-and-a-half of uphill, rocky climbing, the last half-hour of which was in the rain, we sent Blaine ahead to see what he could see...which was more of the same.  In the meantime, it started raining harder, the mists descended, and we started feeling cold, even in our windbreakers.

Okay, we put on our windbreakers at about this time.  These are our adventurous sister missionaries, Sorella Pulli and Sorella Johnson.

We must have taken a wrong turn , but we're not sure how.  Back down we went, taking care not to fall on the now somewhat slippery rocks (I did slip three times, twice into briers!).  By the time we got back to the car, we were totally, soakingly sodden.  As if that weren't enough, we decided to go check out the waterfalls area a little further along the road.  We ate our lunches in the car on the way.

It didn't take long on that little hike to say, "Okay, fine, this'll do, let's go!"  We were all amazed that we had actually had the gumption to get back out of the car in our flooded state, and trudge back up another trail!  We did see a couple of small falls; maybe Saturday we'll go up high enough to see the rest.

Funny how being completely uncomfortable makes for great memories!