On Saturday we ventured to the area of Anzio and Nettuno to visit the American and British military cemeteries of World War II soldiers. It was a quiet and poignant day. Anzio and Nettuno are coastal towns and were a strategic point in the allied invasion of Italy that eventually liberated Rome and even more eventually Nazi occupied northern Italy.
The American cemetery was the easiest to find so we started there. It is a beautiful tribute to those fallen soldiers with gravestones either as crosses or Stars of David marking each soldier there. The markers contain the name and the state each of the soldier and there is a very nice large monument overseeing the cemetery which has information about the campaign as well as a bronze statue of two soldiers standing side by side. I was also impressed by the carvings on the front of the monument (you can see one here).
What surprised me about these carvings the most is the angel was depicted without wings. Mormons believe angels don't have wings. (But that's a subject for another time.)
As a Canadian, however, I wanted the opportunity to pay my respects to the Canadian soldiers who died in that area. We guessed that they were probably at the British cemetery which is less well known and in a location about a 5 minute drive from the American cemetery. It took some instructions from a couple of people to find it.
The British cemetery was in fact labeled as "The British Commonwealth" cemetery so there were Canadians there with the maple leaf on their markers.
I was also happy to see a Hindu marker for a soldier from India as well as a Punjabi marker:
The British Commonwealth cemetery is a smaller, more humble cemetery but still very beautiful and well tended. I was surprised that the markers weren't like the American cemetery; they were like normal grave stones, but what made me both sad and glad at the same time were the personal messages from family inscribed on these markers. Take a look at some of them:
Doesn't this one just break your heart? He left behind three little girls. Did they manage? What happened to them?
He was only 22 leaving behind a wife and son.
I was regretful I had no flower to lay on this grave. I hope others have many times over the years.
I think many of us can identify with this statement when it comes to our loved ones.
A sorrowing mother. Her caption says it all.
The caption is obscured a little. It says "Of this bad world, the loveliest and the best has smiled, said goodnight and gone to rest."
I hope Gwen eventually found the comfort she pleaded for. She was looking to the right source for that peace.
And this is an interesting one:
And among the sorrowing messages, there were also some messages of hope:
These were the graves that had names and a place for the family to express their sorrow in a few simple words. But there were many many graves that were like this:
The remains of soldiers they could not identify. There were so many in that cemetery. And the only thing they could put on the marker is "Known Unto God." Yes, they are. And I'm sure their families at home treasured their names even if they don't know where their remains were buried. But as I gazed at the monument at the head of the British cemetery, I thought about the importance of names:
Our names are symbols of us, our lives, what we accomplish and what we do in this life. None of us want to be forgotten. These families who provided inscriptions for these markers did not want their loved ones names forgotten because of who they were and what they meant to them.
It made me think about all of us who do Family History research; we search out names of our ancestors but why? It's not just a name we want. We want to help and honour the people who possessed those names. We may not know much of what they were like or what they did, but they were people who contributed to this world in their capacity. They were people who had joys and sorrows, loved and lost just like us. We want their names recorded and preserved. In fact, we are commanded to do so.
I am grateful to all those soldiers who endured the horrors of war - both those who died and those who lived for they went just trying to make a difference. They probably couldn't conceive how difficult it would be to go to war just as I can't conceive now what it's like to live through a war. But they mattered. Their names matter. All names matter. That's what our day at the cemeteries taught me.
Growing up, I can always remember that little bit of melancholy I would feel when New Year's Day would come because I knew that the Christmas holidays were just about over and I would be heading back to school within a day or two. In later years, when I was employed by the school system, I experienced that feeling again. People in Italy don't experience this because their Christmas holidays go for another week after New Year.
Technically January 6th is a Christian holiday called Epiphany which commemorates the visit of the Magi to the Christ child. However, most Italians call this day "Befana" which, according to tradition, is when a good witch flies through the air on her broom visiting all the children's households and leaving either a lump of coal in their stocking if they were bad, or a treat if they were good. Sound familiar?
My husband celebrated Befana when he was young and really didn't know anything about Santa Claus until he came to Canada. Now, of course, Italians embrace Santa Claus and many of the more British and North American Christmas traditions we are familiar with, but they haven't given up Befana. I found it a little disconcerting that right after New Year I saw witch decorations for sale as well as witches haunting the outside of stores alongside the Christmas decorations. It was like Halloween all over again.
Well, of course as missionaries we don't get holidays off, generally speaking, but we do get some of the benefits of the Italians being off or away. For one thing, we experience the joy of nearly non-existent Rome traffic and even maybe a place to park the car. Another is the chance to see presepes for an extra week.
Presepes is the name for nativity scenes and it really is a jaw-dropping art form here in Italy. At home, most nativity scenes I saw were just the stable scene with the shepherds and the three wise men. Here, presepes extend to the whole village and a whole lot goes on in these scenes besides the stable scene with Joseph, Mary and the Baby Jesus. As an example, I want to show you some pictures of a life-size presepe we accidentally stumbled on in our Saturday P-Day on New Year's Eve. We went to a little hill-top town called Castel San Pietro Romano and saw that they had an interesting looking castle there. When we got to the castle, we realized the town had set it up as a life-sized presepe.
The first clue was just outside the castle wall when we found the little shed that had the tax/census taker guarded by two Roman solidiers. The helmets on those soldiers were quite rusty.
Inside the castle courtyard, the "Little Town of Bethlehem" scenes unfolded before us. It was delightful.
What an interesting touch to have women selling birds in those stick cages.
And women checking out cloths. I can really imagine this would have happened in any little town.
The water in this waterwheel was real and the wheel was turning. It was part of a little stream they created that went right through the village.
Some of the mannequins moved such as this one doing the olive press.
The three Wise Men here are either taking a break from all that gift giving, or they're resting after the long journey before going out to find the Christ child.
These women look rather bored. Don't they know what an important event was unfolding in town?
Now the sheep were not mannequins...
But the cow was. I guess you can probably tell.
And now for the grande finale, in a little stone shed right in the middle of the courtyard...
I had never seen anything like this. I have seen many miniature presepes since being here, but never a life-sized one.
There are also live presepes with real people held in several of the medieval hill top towns around Italy. It was my intention to go to one. In fact a group of us went this past Saturday just the day after Befana to see the one in Greccio, the hill top town where St. Francis of Assisi first started the presepe. (That's right; St. Francis didn't start it in Assisi. He started the tradition in Greccio.) Unfortunately the weather turned bitter cold and, although it didn't snow on us, it sure snowed in unexpected parts of Italy including Sicily. When we got to Greccio, we realized that, in spite of our layers and winter coats, if we stayed for the live nativity, we were apt to freeze to death. So we had a wonderful lunch in a little restaurant we had all to ourselves, and then went to the nativity museum. This is where you realize how true artisans work on these beautiful presepes:
I believe this is St. Francis carrying the Christ Child against the Dove. I think it's gorgeous.
We were very taken by how this Christ child looked. I had never seen one like that before.
I actually like the fact that my camera flash caused that ray of light in the picture. It seems appropriate.
So many details. I think the people who make these are a little like the people who get together and make model train sceneries.
Here's a unique one. Some of the ones in the museum were very different and quite artistic.
I am so grateful to have had these experiences and to be in a place where communities don't just put their nativity scenes in houses of worship or in private homes. Entire communities embrace them and have them available to see in all kinds of public places. Although I didn't get to see it, I'm told that one of the major piazzas in Rome had prescepes on display throughout the piazza. Hats off to my fellow Christians for showing their faith as well as their gifted artisan-ship in this way.
I also appreciate these because I believe in Christ. He is my Saviour and my Redeemer. How wonderful it is to be reminded of this at this time of year in unexpected places.
A little while ago a friend put this poster up on her Facebook feed:
It made me laugh but it also made me think about my own judgments of how people parent. The thing is, you see, I am not a Mom and I never will be in this life. I married later in life and for my husband it was even later in life and so starting a family wasn't in the cards for us.
Now before some of you go all feeling sorry for me, know that I'm completely at peace with this. Sure, there were moments of regret but for me it's all okay. What I became instead was an awkward, bumbling step-mother to grown children and after that a fairly okay step-grandmother. Still, there have been lots of moments on this mission when I have thought, "if I had been a parent, it would have been good to teach my children this..." Or I might think, "Parents really should teach their children ________________ (fill in the blank) before they go on a mission."
Now I don't want those of you who are parents to start squirming in your seat and to feel like I'm about to lay a guilt trip on you. Know that I'm in no position to judge any parent and how they raise their children. But if I could take a few of the things I've seen and learned on my mission and apply it to a younger version of me who actually did become an "ideal" parent, these are some things I would want my children to know and understand if they chose to go on a mission:
#1: Mental illness is no-one's fault, and they will encounter it on a mission. They themselves may not become mentally ill (or they might) but if it's not them, a missionary companion or someone in their district will struggle with it at some point. If it's themselves, I would want them to seek and adhere to medical advice from medical professionals. I would want them to understand that serving a mission does not exempt them from taking medications for these problems if needed. If it's a companion or other missionary that they work closely with who is struggling, I would teach them to be compassionate and supportive of this missionary and to keep their mission president and mission nurse informed when serious problems happen.
#2: I would want them to know how to clean a bathroom and to have that be a regular part of their chores. One of our duties as senior missionaries is to do apartment inspections. There are some missionaries who do a pretty good job of keeping their apartments clean and some who really, really, really don't. On one apartment inspection we did, the two missionaries complained that when they had been put it that area, it took them four days to deep-clean their apartment because the previous missionaries had left it in a disgusting state. As one of them said, "These are my friends. How could they do this to us?" Another thing that happens is the mission has to pay for expensive repairs because of silly things these kids (because let's face it - they ARE kids) do. We are working on educating these young people about cleaning and taking care of their apartments, but still, I think would want to teach my hypothetical children that church funds are sacred and not well spent on preventable apartment repairs.
#3: I would tell them that they are going to be a "have-not" missionary. Oh, I don't mean I would leave them without proper clothes or the things they need and I wouldn't leave them without occasional fun money for Christmas and their birthday. But I would want them to learn to budget and live on the monthly money they get on their church debit card for food and personal items. I would want them to learn how to do without when they can't afford something that isn't an absolute need. There are in our mission "have" and "have not" missionaries. Personally, I'd prefer my hypothetical children to be "have-nots."
There. That's what I would do if I could project this on to a past me who is living in an alternate universe where I became a perfect parent. Ha, ha, ha! As if I could ever be a perfect parent. Does such a person even exist? Okay, enough of that.
Well, getting back to the topic of apartment inspections, it was our privilege to go to the island of Sardegna a few weeks back to do the inspections of the apartments there. Sardegna apartment inspections is something that rotates through the senior couples in Rome because we have no senior couple serving on the island to do them. So it was our turn.
Sardegna is a place I've long been curious about because my sister-in-law's children have relatives there and rave about it. What they mainly rave about are the beaches in the summertime, but November really isn't the time to see beaches. In fact, we hoped we would see some beaches but it didn't happen on our travels.
Now you're probably thinking, but what about that picture? Because you're seeing palm trees etc. Well, this was taken at the port of Olbia early on a very chilly morning when our ferry first got in. But it is an awfully nice sunrise, isn't it?
Now this is what kills me about this Mediter-ranean climate. Even when we are wrapped up in our toques and scarves, we can wander past blooming bushes and trees. It just warms up my little Canadian heart.
And here's another thing that warms up my little Canadian heart: thick dark Italian Hot Chocolate for breakfast. Nobody, but nobody, can do Hot Chocolate as good as the Italians can, in my humble opinion.
We saw mountains, lots and lots of mountains. But when I look at this picture, I realize that the photo doesn't really do justice to the magnificent mountain scenery we saw near Cagliari. Oh and we saw lots of sheep too. More sheep than you can possibly imagine.
And another big thrill was to see one of these: a Nuraghe (a.k.a. Nuraghi). Nuraghes are pre-historic structures that you find here and there throughout Sardegna that date between 1900 and 700 B.C. Historians don't really agree what they were used for and don't have a lot of information about the civilization that built them. But because we climbed right up to this one and peeked inside, it looked to us like a meeting place with a hole in the top where the smoke from a fire would have come out of, similar to a tee pee. It was a thrill for us to see that we could get this up close and personal to a Nuraghe.
It must sound like all we did was have fun and games on Sardegna but not true. We spent the first two days there just driving to apartments and doing inspections and it was exhausting. It was the third day, our P-Day, when we finally had some time to see the sights. So now my curiosity about Sardegna has been satisfied, though I may never get to see one of their magnificent beaches.
It doesn't matter because I have seen and experienced so many wonderful things here. Everyday I realize what a blessing it is to be here, to serve a mission, to associate with great people and to get to see the wonders of Italy. I couldn't ask for more.
A week ago Saturday we finally did something we've intended to do since we got here which was walk a little bit of the Appia Antica. It was a beautiful day with just a little bit of autumn crispness but still sunny and mild.
The Appia Antica is an ancient Roman road that apparently extends all the way from the sea coast at Pozzuoli to the Colosseum in central Rome. It is perfectly straight because the Romans didn't believe in windy roads. There are ancient mausoleums along the side of the road as the nobility liked to be buried there, I guess so people would notice them and remember them as they would make their way to and from Rome. We took this picture below of the monk walking along the road with a walking stick, just as if he'd stepped out of the middle ages. You can also see the remnants of some of the mausoleums in the background.
The Appia Antica is a famous road from the past. In a grimmer part of history in about 70 B.C., 6,000 people who fought with Spartacus in the slave rebellion were crucified, their crosses lining both sides of the Appian Way. In a more positive part of history, it is recorded in the Bible that The Apostle Paul came to Rome on the Appian Way (Acts 28: 13-15).
The part we walked was a cobble-stoned road full of cyclists and strolling families along with the occasional car. I loved it there. It had such a special feeling to it I can't quite describe. You could feel the history of the road as if the shadows of ancient people were still walking there beside us.
I've given this blog post this title in part because of this day. But it's also because of all the people who've come to Rome since we've been here. In October our mission was visited by yet another high ranking church leader, President Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He makes the fifth General Authority we've met in person since we got to Rome just under a year ago. I'm sure if we lived in the heart of Salt Lake City, we wouldn't have met so many.
Here's a picture of President and Sister Nelson with President and Sister Pickerd. I stole this picture of the Pickerd's blog: pickerdsitalyromemission.blogspot.com.
President Nelson is the most senior of the apostles in our Church. Can you believe he is over 90 years of age? In his previous career he was a reknowed heart surgeon. I was amazed to read recently that he was at one time challenged by another church leader to learn Mandarin Chinese so he took the challenge and is now fluent. Where did he find the time? He is one very smart man.
We had a mission conference with President Nelson where he talked about the Abrahamic covenant and how it relates to us today. It was very interesting. He has obviously studied it considerably because in our follow up studies on the subject, we found three previous conference talks he gave on that general subject.
You can find those talks here:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2006/10/the-gathering-of-scattered-israel?lang=eng
As well as here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1995/04/children-of-the-covenant?lang=eng
And here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/covenants?lang=eng
In October we were also visited consecutively by Hermes' two daughters and their husbands. This is one of the privileges of being senior missionaries is being able to host family while we are here. We had so much fun! We did take them to see places we'd already been like Civita di Bagnoreggio but it's nice to show people we love all the places we love.
This is Georgia with her husband Malan having strawberry crepes in Nemi.
Nemi is a beautiful little town not far from Rome that overlooks a volcanic lake in the valley below. It's also famous for growing strawberries.
I also love the look on Georgia's face with these invisible men buskers in central Rome:
The day after Georgia and Malan left, Francesca and her husband Jerad came to visit.
This is them at Civita di Bagnoreggio. It had been really foggy that day and when we arrived we couldn't see the town at all but fortunately the fog burned off so we could get some pictures.
And this is another nice one of them at Ceveteri, which is an ancient Etruscan cemetery or what they called an Etruscan City of the Dead that archeologists have excavated. The Etruscans believed in burying their dead in these cave like mounds that resembled the houses they lived in in life. It's hard to describe but it's a very interesting place.
Both visits from the girls and their husbands were happy times for us. We were sorry to see them go.
And speaking of being sorry to see someone go, we will soon be saying goodbye to Elder and Sister Sears from our mission. I'll start with talking about Sister Sears:
Although in her life outside the mission, she is a published writer with a Master's degree in theatre, she has been our Mission health specialist. We call her our mission nurse although she is quick to say she is not a nurse. But she has been the one to help our young missionaries (and occasionally the old ones too) through difficult and not so difficult health challenges, both mentally and physically. She said she was shocked when she was first put in this position and wondered why they would ask her to do it, given her background. But she has also testified to us, "Whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies." She says that sometimes she is on the phone with missionaries who are describing their symptoms and she has no idea what to say and all of a sudden she just opens her mouth and out comes advice that is exactly what the missionary needs. I think she has also been like a Mom to many of these young people and they will miss her a lot!
Now about Elder Sears. He has been our mission technology specialist (a.k.a. computer geek) and we do not know what we will do without him. After he leaves, when we have a computer problem, we will have to call the help line in Salt Lake City. This is not a happy thought for us. I'm sure he won't miss our whining about our computer problems though. But just the same, he has contributed to our mission invaluably and he will be terribly missed!
As part of their send off, on Saturday five of us couples went for lunch at the most charming little restaurant about 30 minutes north of Rome in a town called Sacrofano. It was already a favorite restaurant of Hermes and I and I can happily report that our entire group give this restaurant 10 thumbs up (or twenty if we use both our thumbs). So if you're ever in Rome and have access to a car, make the drive to Sacrofano and go to Al Grottino Ristorante. You won't be disappointed.
Here are some of the pictures:
And after you eat, there's a charming little medieval borgo (town section) that dates to about the 1100s and is fun to walk through just around the corner from the restaurant.
So in the same way that all roads lead to Rome, they also lead away from Rome and unfortunately it means that we have to say goodbye to people we love.
Vi vogliamo bene, family and friends... and that includes you, Anziano and Sorella Sears! I hope your roads and our roads will lead us back to Rome for a happy reunion at the temple.
