Sites Around Sicily

What another beautiful day in Sicily!! Here is a shot of Mt. Etna with the city of Catania in the foreground.
Palermo--on the other side of the island and the boat dock. This is the city Jim's great grandfather was from.
This is a picture taken from the top of Erice looking down at Trapani.
One of my personal favorites--Here is what retired men do in Italy!! I think their wives kick them out of the house and they all meet at the park and play cards until it is time for lunch.

Roots in Italy

After most of the family left we went with Rick and Marilyn in search of her ancestoral roots. Cirella (the town where Marilyn's granfather was from) is in the Calabria, up in the mountains. We followed a narrow and worn out road acrossed the tops of the mountains into the little city of Cirella. There we were met by many of Marilyn's relatives. It was so fun to be with them all!
Rick also has ties to Italy. The last name Toronto was originally spelled Taranto.







This is a view looking down from the mountains at Cirella.
Here we are in the Cirella cemetary recording information about Marilyn's family. Marilyn (green coat, cousin Giuseppe, Diane, Rick). A wonderful experience.

Catania Maxi Conference

Mar. 20-21
The Sicily Maxi Conference included Malta, Catania, Palermo, and Ragusa zones. We had lots of food, training, skits and sporting events. This was a modified sack race (we used garbage bags).
A skit with an alligator??
Good missionaries, good times, good memories!

Maxi Conference in Taranto

Mar. 6-7, 2009
They may look a bit scraggly, but they are some of the best missionaries ever! We had a maxi conference in Taranto with Bari, Cosenza, and Taranto zones all meeting together. We had "sports"-some serious and some not so serious, food, skits, food, training, food and testimonies. It was fun to see them all together and feel of their energy, love and testimonies.







I started to take this picture with about three missionaries. Others saw and jumped into the picture. We love them all!
The field in Taranto may look green, but there are some rough spots there when you are playing soccer. Ouch!!

Christmas Eve Fieldtrip

This is Caltagirone. They are famous for their ceramic work and nativities. The view from the top isn't so bad either. Of course, it was a beautiful day as well.
The side streets and path were interesting inside the city. Here is Jim's backside as he explores a very narrow passageway.













On our way home we stopped at the Commonwealth War Cemetery.
There were over 2,000 British troops that died in Sicily. This was the beginning point of the Allied invasion into Europe. The British came up from Siracusa, the Americans from Gela. Both cities are on the south side of Sicily.












I even found a headstone the reads like the British spelling of my maiden name.

P-days are great!

Christmas Eve Fieldtrip

Here is yet another photo of Etna. Isn't she beautiful. She does have snow on her and if you drive up to the tourist area, you drive into snow! Please notice the orange trees in the foreground and the spring green grass. It is a sight to behold.



Pic 2, We took a fieldtrip with our office couple, the Stinebaughs, to Caltagirone. This is a castle along the road. Sicily is hilly everywhere.







Caltagirone has many, many nativity scenes that you can go see. This one is animated and so beautiful! No, I did not buy another nativity--I already had one:)
We climbed steps to see the cathedral at the top--but the view down was pretty amazing, too!

Mission Home Conferences

This December we had a Mission Tour with the Area President and his wife (Robert C. Oaks). So we did the whole mission (3 combined Zone Conferences and 2 firesides) in about about 4 days. We covered a lot of country, saw a lot of missionaries and had amazing training and teaching from Pres. Oaks and his wife.

Then we had mission home conferences during December where the missionaries came to us.
Pic.1 shows the amount of food it takes to feed missionaries for these conferences. Thank goodness I have help (Roberta Battezato and Sorella Stinebaugh).





Pic 2 Show the first time through the line. . . . Anz. Stubbs, Anz. Pfeiffer, Azn. Ipson, Anz. Viehweg, Anz. Wilkinson are loading up. A mere four hours after this meal, the "snack bar" had to open. There were those that were hungry again! Amazing!

The aftermath--There are still 3 more loads of laundry in the other room. It was a lot of work, but soooooooooooo enjoyable. We loved hearing the testimonies, experiences, and feeling the energy of these amazing missionaries.