Remembering

 I had the priviledge of serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints in 2000-2001.  I served in Bologna for 3 short months with these two ladies.  Camille and Zoe happened to be taking a cruise out of Rome this weekend and came up to Bologna just for the day to visit.

I have to say that this was possible thanks to a wonderful husband who worked all night, didn't get to sleep after working all night and took care of the boys so that I could go with them for the day to see Bologna again.

In front of San Petronio

 As we walked around, memories came flooding back.  As a missionary you work hard, really hard.  You sweat, you panic, you pray with all your might to give what is most dear to you and it's mostly shunned and not many people care.  I had a lot of hard and good and bad experiences, but all of them were growing experiences.  I learned that there really is a God in heaven that loves us and is aware of us.  He has  a perfect plan for us, and He wants us to be happy.  He also lets us struggle a little bit in order that we can grow.  And I also know that His church is on the earth.

I associate knowing that there is a God with feeling His perfect love.  It buoys me up, it fills me to overflowing, and on really bad or hard days, I can seek those feelings again to give me strength and grit to do what I need to do.

Two towers behind us

 A mission gave me the opportunity to grow spiritually.  It also happened to be in the best place on earth for eating!  Come on, I mean we're talking about Italy!  So we had our favorite gelato from our favorite place, and our favorite focaccia from Esselunga.  So delicious!

eating focaccia at giardini margherita

Via bonafede, 21- where we lived as missionaries

 We lived in the tiniest apartment where our bedroom was wall to wall beds.  Paolo met us here with the kids so that he could say hi too.  When Paolo was baptized we were all serving together in Bologna.  For his baptism, all of the  missionaries wrote their testimony in some scriptures that we bought as a present.  All 3 of us had written in it.  Good memories.

Something else I've learned: the good you do grows.  And it's still blessing my own family today.

 I got a laugh out of Aaron trying to take our pictures with my camera.

 Aaron actually took a nice picture so I wanted to post it

And this little champ only had one tantrum on our all day tour of Bologna.  That is HUGE for her (and for me)!