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.