Happy Thanksgiving!

We enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving meal today with all of the missionaries in the Bari district.  This included our two Elders from Foggia.  

We complied with current Covid guidelines from church leaders and ate outside at the church.  Dawn and I provided a number of items for the meal, but she assigned out lots of dishes and the missionaries came through with flying colors!  

Between the meal and the desserts we played a couple of fun team games with answer paddles and buzzers.   The prizes were "American" food items.  The winners of the games got to pick first, but every companionship received a prize.  

We had to finish the get together with a "chair picture."  Note the numbers each missionary is holding.  This is the number of transfers (6 week periods) each has served.  Someday, we'll be at the top of the list.  

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!

 

Senior Couples Retreat

 President and Sister Smith invited all the senior couples from the mission to come to Rome for a wonderful weekend of fellowship.  

We flew from Bari to Rome where my former companion, Richard May and his wife Debra picked us up.  They hosted us for the weekend.  

We attended the temple Friday afternoon, then all went out to dinner at Straforno.  It was delicious!

Saturday morning, we gathered at the visitor's center for some fun get-to-know-you games, led by Anziano and Sorella Mott.  For getting the correct answers in "Cash Cab" we earned chocolate euros.  Our team didn't do too well at Book of Mormon Baseball, but we all had fun. 

We divided into two groups for the afternoon.  One group headed to downtown Rome where they boarded golf carts for a tour of the major sites.  Our group drove about 40 minutes outside of Rome to Bracciano, where we enjoyed a spectacular tour of this medieval castle.  Our tour guide, Melissa, spoke excellent English and the castle tour exceeded our expectations.  Fabulous!  

We finished the evening with a 4 course dinner at an agri-tourismo just outside of Rome called Oasi Kadir. Wow, it was outstanding.  

Posing with President and Sister Smith is Bishop Michele Calabrese.  He volunteers at the office and handles apartments. He has a great sense of humor.  We finished the weekend attending church at Roma 2.  Then the Mays took us back to the airport for our return flight to Bari.  Wonderful weekend.   

 

Around Downtown Bari

 Check out this amazing bas relief wall sculpture at our local OVS department store in centro.  It shows some of the history of this beautiful city.  

Here's a sweater shop where the miniature manikins display the colors of cashmere.  Your choice, just 149 euro.  VERY interesting.