Life in Savona
We have had an eventful first two weeks here in Savona.  Most of our time has been spent moving into our apartment, getting it cleaned up, (that took several days), getting to know our way round Savona like where we can walk and where we should drive, learning about where we can park and where we shouldn't (we already got a parking ticket!), finding out the best places to buy food and getting to know the people in the branch.  

We did find out that we will not be staying here in Savona.  The stake president in Genova wants us to move there and work with the Young Adults.   They are in the process of finding an apartment for us.  I am somewhat sad to leave Savona.  It is a smaller city and of course we are right on the Riviera.  Genova is a crazy city.  The streets are like a big bowl of spaghetti, with nothing straight or perpendicular. But we will see what happens. 

Someone suggested I just do a picture blog, since there is way too much to write.


So here are a few pictures to show just a little bit of our life here in Savona.

 This is the view from our apartment balcony. Yes, that is the ocean, or rather Ligurian Sea.  Yes, it is the Italian Riviera.

 This is what our apartment looks like from the outside.  Very typical Italian.

 Learning how to make REAL focaccia from Omar.  I haven't tried it yet.

 This is what our street looks like--Apartments on the right, the ocean on the left.

 Our branch Christmas party--before the food was served. This is also the chapel.

They asked Miles and me to "judge" the desserts at the Christmas party.  Tough job!  The "apple pie" won first place.

This is our little car we get to drive. Toyota Yaris. I'm so happy it is small!

Beautiful sunset across the street from our apartment!

We're Here!

 It seems to impossible to be true, but we are finally here in Italy.  We had a very stressful, crowded, hot, noisy flight from Dallas to London. The TSA there had a heyday with all my cosmetics I had packed in my carry-on bag. The lady dumped EVERYTHING out and asked me what every bottle and jar contained.  Beauty cream!  Hair cream! Body cream! It's all creams, lady!  It was quite embarrassing, but I had to let it go and move on.  The Milan flight was much better.  It was so amazing to open the window in the morning and see we were flying over the Alps!  We were met at the airport by President Allen and his wife and the two office elders.  We had four huge suitcases, two smaller suitcases, and our carry ons, so it was great to have help.  After a wonderful lunch and some preliminary business stuff, they took us to a really nice hotel to sleep. It was so good to get into a nice soft bed! We helped the following day with a missionary conference, serving lunch to a huge bunch of missionaries.  When I went to the market, I was greeted by these fine octopuses.  And the wonderful foccacia bread.  Guess which one I chose to eat!?  The next day we drove to Savona, where our apartment was waiting for us. There's a ton of work to be done there, but it has been slightly fun to clean and fix it up.

Missionary Training Center

After spending one week at the Missionary Training Center we leave for Italy in the morning!  We are excited and nervous.  It's hard to believe that after all the waiting, planning, anticipation, and delays, we are finally going!
It was fun to have our son, Brian, drop us off as we had done with him 20 years earlier!
We had an incredible time at the MTC and learned to much.  We don't know where we will be living in Italy, but we should find out when we get there on Tuesday, so stay tuned...

Wow...time flies!

We are going here...

Our Amazing Teacher!

                                       

With Christ, all things are possible!

We were sad to leave at the end of the week.

Dinner with our Italian Tutors.
(Missed you, Autumn!)

We're Almost There!

I know we said we were going to Italy on a mission for our church. Actually, we should have a month ago.  But, we are still here in Texas.  The reason?

The middle of September we took a little trip up to the Northwest (our favorite place), Seattle, the Olympic Peninsula, San Juan Islands, etc.  Had a great time.  Came home late.  Started laundry.  The next morning, I put all the laundry into the basket to bring it upstairs to fold.  It was super heavy and I was walking fast towards the bed to dump it all out.  Before I knew what was happening, somehow I tripped on a bag and down I went.  It was bad.  I’ve tripped here and there before and you know how you wait for a minute to see if everything is okay and then you get up and feel like a fool.  Well, this time, I knew something was really wrong.  I couldn’t move.  When Miles got to me (thank goodness he was home) and he was saying, "well, get up” and I went to push myself up and I had an excruciating pain in my left arm.  It was all floppy and I have never had such pain in my entire life.   I won’t go into all the ugly details.  

There’s too much to tell, but in a nutshell, I broke my arm.  And not a clean little break where they can put on a cute little pink cast and send you on your way.  I had a spiral fracture in my humerus going from about the middle all the way up into the ball of the bone.  It was in about 4 pieces.  I ended up staying 4 days in the hospital and having surgery where they put in a titanium plate and 10 screws.  Basically, my left arm got twisted in the basket or something and stayed back as I went forward.  The pain was worse than anything I've ever experienced.  

I've been going to physical therapy 3 times a week and it has helped me get my range of motion back.  I have a fabulous PT, (my son-in-law Xavier), who has worked wonders on me.  And despite the pain of the therapy, I know I have to do it to get my strength and range of motion to return.

So needless to say, our perfectly laid plans were delayed.  We will be leaving Texas on November 30th to go up to Utah for our training.  We go to the Missionary Training Center on December 5th where we will be trained for one week..  

We will be leaving for Italy on December 12th!  FINALLY!  It has been a pretty awful situation to go through, but I guess I’ll be the better for it.  We're just excited to finally start serving our mission!

Before

       

After

We are so excited to serve the Lord and the people in the Italy Milano Mission.  We will miss our family, but are so thankful for their support.  We report to the Missionary Training Center in Utah on October 24th, and leave for Italy on October 31.  We invite you to follow our journey.