Forty Seven Years Ago

December 20, 2015

Forty-seven years ago when President Waddoups was serving in Lecce he taught the gospel to two sisters.  The older sister joined the church, but the younger one never did.  After all this time, the young missionaries found the younger sister.  She still had a picture of the two missionaries who she knew when she was a young girl.  President has been anxious to meet her again, but Lecce is a long way from Rome and it's been difficult to find time to go there.  After our final zone conference, we were only two hours away from Lecce so we decided to go see her.  She did go to church with us while we were there.

Dream

February 5, 2015

This is the man who had a dream about Michael and was so shocked when he walked into an LDS church for the first time and Michael was there.  He had his baptismal interview today.

Lecce

December 20-21, 2014

President has had this strong feeling that we needed to attend church in the little Branch in Leece.  It's nearly an eight hour drive from Rome and since we already had to drive part of the way there to do a zone conference on Monday anyway, we decided we would just drive the rest of the way there and go to church.  The Branch was excited to have us come and asked us to speak.  (President speaks and I read my pre-prepared talks in Italian, but they always seem to fit right in.  It's a miracle!)  It was the Sunday before Christmas and I felt a little bad that the Branch was stuck with us talking.  I spoke about the light of Christ and President tied it all in with Christmas and the gifts we can give to our Heavenly Father by being good missionaries.  It was perfect.

The really amazing thing about being in church in Lecce is that the missionaries had an investigator in church that day.  (He is the third person from the left on the second row.)  It was his first time attending church.  They had met him and given him the lesson on the Plan of Salvation, but this was his first time in church.  He was so in tune with the spirit and already had a testimony that he had found what he was looking for, but the real miracle was that he had had a dream and in his dream there was a Sacrament table and President Waddoups.  He didn't have any idea what a Sacrament Table was or who the man in his dream was until he went to church on Sunday.  No wonder President has had such a strong feeling he had to go to Lecce.  God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform!

Lecce Branch

Lecce Relief Society

Missionaries in the Piazza

Lecce Castle

December 20, 2014

Winter rates are always a welcome relief.  We found a room in an old castle that had been converted into a hotel.  It was only a five minute drive from the church and a ten minute walk from the city center.  We met the missionaries serving in Lecce and President helped them find someone to talk to about the church.

Murmuration

December 20, 2014


From late November thru December swallows migrate to certain areas by the hundreds of thousands.  They form what is called a murmuration.  As groups of birds arrive, they join the other birds already in flight.  It creates all kinds of different formations and the color changes as the birds turn and the underside of their wings is displayed.  This is the second time we have seen it.   We pulled off the side of the road just before we got to Lecce and took pictures.  It was a sight to behold.

Lecce to Rome

October 2, 2013

Family we visited in Lecce.  The father is a meno attivi (less active) member.  The rest of the family aren't members, but should be.

Brother of the meno attivi.  He is active in the church.

Member of the ward.

Family and missionaries

Amphitheatre in Lecce

There's actually a funny story behind this picture.  The missionaries called their contact in Lecce to see if he knew where a hotel was where we could spend the night in Lecce.  (The contact is a non-member.)  Supposedly everything was all arranged and all we had to do was pick up the key.  We picked up the key and then had to drive a couple of blocks to where the room was.  A man went with us to show us the way.  (It was really just a short distance away, but with all the one way streets everything seems further away when you drive.)  The missionaries carried our luggage and went with Michael to the room and I stayed in the car that was parked in an alley in case I needed to move it before they got back.  The room we were supposed to stay in hadn't been made up from whoever stayed there last so they moved on to another place.  We ended up in a two story apartment with a tiny kitchen and bathroom on the main floor and three beds upstairs and only a tiny, spiral staircase to get there.  It was quite an adventure.  We have lots of those.

Alley in Lecce we had to walk down to find our accommodations.

Mail drop

Street sign for the street Michael lived on 45 years ago when he was a missionary in Lecce.

Doorway leading to apartment where Michael lived when he was in Lecce.  The man looking at him wasn't very pleased.  Evidently the building is now a police station or something.  I thought the man was going to take my camera away when I took the picture, but he didn't.  When Michael told him he used to live there, the officer just gave us a nasty look and told us to get out of there.  In our defense, we didn't see anything that said police station or anything else.  There were about twenty other officers, but they were all standing on the opposite side of the street.

Here's the story the missionaries told us about these little buildings.  In the olden days, when migrant workers would help harvest crops, they were allowed to spend the night in these tiny little igloo shaped stone buildings.

Roof top

Little village across from the church

Mosaic mural on church

It's grape harvesting time.