A Very Busy September!

With Liz testing positive for COVID this week, we’ve been quarantined to our tiny apartment.  This on the heels of a very busy month that has seen us on the road 15 out of the 30 days of the month.  So now that we have all this unscheduled time on our hands, I thought it might be prudent to resurrect this blog!

Since our schedule has slowed significantly, it is quite fortuitous that this is conference weekend.  We had plans to have the young adults in the area along with missionaries join with us for at least a few of the sessions at our home.  Being eight hours ahead of Salt Lake City, this puts the Saturday morning session at 6:00pm Saturday evening.  The Saturday afternoon and evening sessions are then late during the night, making them perfect candidates for watching on Sunday during the day.  Since we’re quarantined, its also nice to watch them in English.  Watching them in Italian is always a challenge, since the translators need to speed up to keep up.  So, later on when we do watch them in Italian, we always slow them down a bit!  Thank goodness for modern technology!

Last night we watched about half of the afternoon session, turning it off at around 11:00pm and then picked it up again this morning.  We sure did enjoy Elder Rasband’s invitation to all senior couples to consider serving as senior missionaries.  For Liz and I, this has always been a goal and a dream of ours, and it was so sweet and exciting to turn it into a reality!  As an added benefit, several of our young missionary companionships started “sending extra love, to our very own senior couple”, and “we just listened to Elder Rasband’s talk. AMEN! Ellsworths, we love you so much!”, and “we thought about you too!!! We love you!”.  Their love for us is very sweet and much appreciated. 

The work we do here in Italy, along with all the work we see from the other senior couples we have the privilege of serving with is really remarkable.  We spent last weekend in Catania on the island of Sicily, so I could meet up with my old missionary companion, Vicenzo Fiscella.  We had the privilege of staying with Elder and Sister Hill, who serve as military relations missionaries attached to the Sigonella Naval Air Station on Sicily.  What an amazing ministry they have there, working with these families and individuals.  We also spent time with Elder and Sister Jones, who live and work in Crotone, helping to fortify a tiny branch there where he serves as both the Elder’s Quorum and Sunday School president and she serves as a counselor in the Relief Society.  What a hole they’ll leave in that tiny branch when they complete their missionary assignment—hopefully there will be another couple available to fill their shoes!  Liz and I spend most of our time working with young adults and young missionaries in Bari and in Taranto, and we love the friendships we’ve made and we will cherish the memories we have with these amazing young people.

Here are some pictures from September:

Our young adults from Puglia at the GANS Italia conference

Playing Cuccù (an Italian card game) with other senior couples in Rome.  The Vecchiarelli's each ended up with the lowest cards and were eliminated from the game!  But don't worry, you can always get back into the game if you can get someone else still in the game to talk to you!  We were in Rome for our "Permesso" or the application of our long-term permission to be in Italy.

One of our Cosenza YSA's trying his first ever s'more!  Yum!

Crossing the Strait of Messina to Sicily by ferry

P-Day with the Taranto District at Matera

Having Chicago Dogs for the Taranto District Lunch.  Elder Dastrup (behind Liz) is from Chicago!  The hardest condiment to find was the sweet relish, which Elder and Sister Hill in Catania (serving at the Sigonella base) provided us from the commissary (they also got us canned pumpkin and cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving!!).  Thanks!

Lunch in our home with the sisters serving in Bari.  Mexican is always a hit!

 

Getting Around in Bari

Now that we’ve been living here in Bari for the past five months, we thought we could share some of our experiences getting around here.  We have a car, a mission-owed Toyota Yaris, a hybrid electric that gets an astonishing 58 miles per gallon (4.06 liters per 100 km)!  We’re very grateful for this fuel economy since gasoline runs around $7.50 per gallon.  The car is pretty small, and we really have to move the front seats up when we drive others around.  Being a hybrid electric, it can accelerate quite quickly.  We’re also grateful to have a small car because parking here in Bari (and pretty much anywhere else in Italy) is such a pain.  I can’t imagine trying to park our Subaru Outback here—there just simply isn’t any room, even if you can find an open space.  We drove down to Lecce a few weeks ago to attend a district council meeting and when we arrived, I dropped Liz off at the door and then spent the next 45 minutes driving around looking for a parking spot—and they were all paid parking spots I was looking for!  Around our home here in Bari, parking has improved as it has gotten hotter.  Back in Winter and Spring, we often had to circle around for a few minutes before heading “to the fence”, an area that often had open parking about 300 yards away from our front door.

Driving here in Italy is an adventure all its own!  It’s a little hard to describe it other than it’s all pretty aggressive.  Red stop lights seem to mean that only four cars are allowed to run them.  When making a left turn, I have to watch for other cars cutting around me on my left or even on my right.  Right-turn and left-turn-only lanes are good for going straight as long as you can quickly zip around the guy in the straight-only lane—or not.  And horn honking is an artform all its own!  I only wish I had a large air horn on the back of my car to respond to all the horn honkers coming up behind me!  The worst are the motorcyclists, which zip around and through and all over traffic like large swarms of mosquitos.  The most astounding thing for me is that all this traffic chaos doesn’t seem to result in very many traffic accidents!  In our five months here, I can only think of one or two accidents that we’ve come across.

The streets here present their own challenges.  Unlike the meticulous grid system laid out in Utah and other more modern cities, the streets in Bari have evolved over it’s 2,000-year history.  The roads meander between the many apartment blocks, with little to no attention to urban planning.  Very few of the streets have street signs, so navigating by street names is challenging.  Fortunately, Google Maps is a lifeline here for getting around.  In addition, Liz and I have developed a few of our own landmarks to get around.  We have “Tree in the Street”, “Skatepark Church”, “Cement Tire”, “Foot-Wide Sidewalk”, “Orange Pet Store”, and “World’s Worst Roundabout” just to name a few.  By now, I can navigate most of Bari without the aid of Google Maps.  The one exception is the part of Bari on the north side of the rail lines, where we rarely venture by car.  We’ve never driven into Bari Vecchia (Old Bari) due to it being in a dreaded ZTL, or limited-traffic zone, which comes with big fines of €80 or more!

Being assigned as YSA missionaries to the Puglia Stake, means we spend a lot of time on the road (nearly 15K miles in five months) to other cities in the Puglia and Calabria Regions, so we get practice on the local highways and AutoStradas (toll roads).  The highways are divided for the most part, with guard rails along the entirety of the road, with an occasional pull out every kilometer or so.  The pull outs also function as personal garbage dumps, some quite impressive.  Roadway shoulders are non-existent on the divided highways, though the AutoStradas do have some shoulder.  The two-lane roads are most exciting, especially in the no-passing zones, which really mean move over as far as you can because oncoming traffic is going to pass into your lane anyway!  As with the city driving, we’re surprised at the lack of accidents in spite of the aggressive and chaotic driving we see here.  Most astonishing is that there is no road rage—everyone seems to take it all in stride as they make their way.  My one disclaimer is that you’d better watch out for me when I get home and back on the roads in Orem!

Tree in the Street

Cement Tire

Foot-wide Sidewalk

Skate Park Church

Our Street

A visit by Nick and his family

We had the privilege of hosting Nick and his family here in Bari over the past 10 days or so.  One of the hardest things about serving as senior missionaries is leaving family behind, so being able to host them here in Italy was very sweet. Nick was pretty brave to bring the three kids across the pond and luckily he wasn't alone in doing so.  He was accompanied by his girlfriend Mandy, who we were able to meet for the first time.  They've been dating for several months, and she's an amazing person and gets along very well with Nick's kids.

Their flights over went very well, but then the challenges started once they landed in Rome.  The car seats they had checked on the flight weren't delivered with the rest of the luggage but instead went to the oversize area--and it took about an hour (including talking with Delta) before that was figured out.  Next, our pre-paid car rental was denied when I forgot to bring along my credit card.  This left us scrambling to book a different rental at about 5-times the cost of the original!  In the end, we were grateful to get a car, even at that price.  By then, it was getting late into the afternoon and Rome traffic on the GRA (Grande Raccordo Annulare or Ring Road) was stop-and-go.  It took us until nearly midnight to finally get home to Bari but it was sure sweet for us to get home and to actually have them with us!

The next day (May 31) we took it easy on them all to allow them to recover from the long flights and work through the jet lag.  That afternoon we all walked over to Bari Vecchia (Old Bari) where we fed them a local original, focaccia bread.

On Thursday, we drove to Alberobello, a town famous for their trulli, or stone houses that look like troll houses.  After wandering around for an hour or so, we loaded up and headed over to the coast to Monopoli, where we got our first chance to play and swim in the sea.  Monopoli is an old city with a small beach, and the kids loved it.  Afterwards, we returned home to get ready for the next day.

Friday took us to Polignano a Mare, a quaint town perched atop cliffs overlooking a beautiful blue Adriatic Sea.  Friday was Republic Day so the crowds at the tiny, rocky beach below Polignano was super crowded.  But the kids were not deterred and we ended up spending a few hours jostling for a bit of space.  Afterward, Liz and I took the train home with the kids while Nick and Mandy drove home.

Saturday was a beach reprieve that took us to Gargano National Park, which forms the bump on the back calf of the Italian boot.  Our goal was Monte Sant'Angelo, a quaint town high up the mountain and overlooking the sea below.  There is a fantastic castle there that has some fun passages and a dungeon, so we thought that the kids would like it, and indeed they did.  Also a hit was the Santuario di San Michele Archangelo, a church built into a cave underground.

Sunday after church, we headed south to Salento, the very bottom of the heel of Italy, where the best beaches in Italy are found.  The area is also called the Maldives of Salento, because of their fine sand beaches.  We had rented a beach house just south of Gallipoli (not of WWI fame--that Gallipoli is in Turkey).  The next two days were spent playing in the beautiful blue waters of the Ionian Sea in the Gulf of Taranto.  We kept the kids well slathered in sunscreen and the only notable sunburn was on the tops of my feet which I have overlooked with the sunscreen.  Luckily, I've since recovered.

Tuesday, we headed back to Bari to clean up and get ready for the last few days of our travels with Nick and family. Wednesday, Nick, Mandy and Jacobi headed our early so they could stop in Pompeii on their way to Rome.  They had a great time and Jacobi loved it.  We left a few hours later and headed straight into Rome with Elladee and Jericho.  The drive from Bari to Rome is beautiful as it heads up the East Coast through olive groves, before turning west over the Apennine Mountains where you find many hilltop towns and wind turbines.  Once across the mountains,  you head north before finally reaching the outskirts of Rome.  It's a beautiful drive, but at five hours, it is a bit long.  Once in Rome, we checked into our AirBnB to get ready for our last full day together.

Thursday in Rome was nice.  Our first stop was the bone church (Capuchin Crypt) that Jacobi really wanted to see.  He has a post card of the crypt and was fascinated by it.  Next stop was the Pantheon where we recreated a picture taken of Jacobi six years earlier on his first trip to Italy.  Next was lunch at a street cafe then to the Spanish Steps on our way to the Borghese Gardens where we rented a four-wheeled pedal bike.  Jericho loved the pedal bike and all that evening and next morning begged us for "more bike".  

Friday we took Nick and his family to our absolute favorite site in Rome, the Rome Temple, on our way to the airport.  We love the beautiful gardens and the peaceful spirit that is always found at the temple.  Afterward, we headed to the airport and a teary goodbye to our beautiful grandkids.  Our long trip back home was a bit lonely, and it was hard to walk back into our apartment here in Bari and not have them here to greet us.  Ah, but such is senior missionary life.

We don't spend a lot of time talking about the beautiful places here in Italy, but try to focus more on our work and the people here we work with.  We love being here in Italy working primarily with the young, single adults, and find it is primarily ministering to the one.  Here in Puglia (the region of Italy where we live and work), the YSA's are spread far apart.  We work primarily in Bari and Taranto, though we also minister to those from Foggia (two hours north) to Brindisi and Lecce (two hours south) and to as far as Crotone, Cosenza and Catanzaro in Calabria (about five hours south).  We also love working with the young missionaries here in the Puglia Zone.  They are such an inspiration to us.  They work hard and we love doing what we can to help them in this great work.  We're also surprised at how fast our time here seems to be going.  We've now been out on our mission five months, which hardly seems possible.

Luke & Liz

At the beach at Monopoli

Jacobi's first panzarotto

Sleeping in

Riding the train with Papa

Jacobi at the Castle at Monte Sant'Angelo

Nana with the kids eating gelato

Sunset at the beach near Gallipoli

Jericho and a sweet Vespa!

An Elladee-sized door in Ostuni

The bike ride at the Borghese Gardens

At the Rome Temple

Missionary Life

 It hardly seems possible that we've now been here in Italy for over three months.  I remember our boys describing the passing of time during their missions where the days seem like weeks, and the weeks seem like days.  

Yesterday, Liz and I headed down to Lecce, a city of 100,000 people located in the heel of Italy.  Our Taranto missionary district had their weekly district council at the branch meeting house so we headed down to join them.  The drive from Bari is very beautiful and one of our favorites, as it follows the coastline down with the Adriatic Sea to our left and miles and miles of olive groves to our right.  On the way down, we decided on diversion and left the main road to pass through Ostuni, know as the white city.  It is built on a hill overlooking the valleys of olive groves and the sea to the west.  The church has been working on producing the Book of Mormon videos, and they recently filmed the video for the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees, found in Jacob 5, at an olive grove in Ostuni.  The video segment is still in post production, but when you're finally able to view it, you can catch a glimpse of the beauty all around us here in the Puglia Region.

After our district council, we had made arrangements to take the sister missionaries in Lecce out with our car to find and meet less active members in the area.  In our efforts, we had a curious encounter with a black cat.  We stopped to look for a family in a several story apartment building.  Thinking that the family lived on the fifth floor, we took the elevator up and all got out.  When it turned out to be the wrong floor, Liz and I headed up and the sisters headed down looking for the right door.  On our way up, we passed a black cat, siting on the staircase.  On our way back down the the fifth floor, we startled the cat and he jumped on to the window sill as though he were trying to get out.  Good thing the window was closed as we were very high up.  One floor down, we met a woman who described the cat as a stray that had wandered in and couldn't find it's way out again.  As the sisters were equally unsuccessful in finding the family, we decided to head every further up the staircase.  As we again passed the now very agitated cat, it gave each of us a menacing and threatening hiss and snarly as we passed.  I passed last, and as I did, it ran and jumped up behind me and over the opening in the staircase, barely catching the opposite stairs heading up and ran up to the floor above us.  A miss and that cat would have dropped several stores to certain death below.

Now we were all a bit jumpy and decided to take the elevator up to the top floor bypassing the menacing cat on the floor between us.  However, once we reached the top floor, we discovered the cat guarding our exit from the elevator.  I managed to shoo it away but it gave us all a start to find it there hissing at us as we got out of the elevator.  Unfortunately, we weren't successful in finding the family we were looking for, but we did find a couple of people yesterday.

We love serving as missionaries in this beautiful land among this amazing people.  We miss our children and grandchildren, parents, siblings and friends, but we truly love being here.  We'll try harder to keep this blog more up to date and relevant.

Love, Luke & Liz

Our first trip to Calabria

A week ago we made our first trip to Calabria (the 'toe' of Italy) to visit three branches, located in Crotone, Cosenza and Catanzaro (also know in the mission as the Three-C's).  We left last Friday morning to Elder and Sister Jones' place in Crotone.  They are a senior couple there working to help shore up the little branches there.  In their branch in Crotone, he serves as the Elder's Quorum and Sunday School President and she serves as the Relief Society First Counselor.  Outside of them and the missionaries, they regularly have six members in attendance.  While in Crotone, we were able to visit with Katia, one of our sweet YSA's.

On Saturday, we headed to Cosenza with the Jones'.  They went with us as far as Santa Severina, a tiny village perched on the top of a hill protected by a foreboding castle.  The castle was in remarkable condition and very nicely restored.  After touring the castle and the nearby Duomo, we had a lunch outside in the main square before getting back on the road.  The Jones' headed home while we continued on, up through the mountains of the National Park of the Sila, in the toe of Italy.  As we approached Cosenza, we dropped off the mountain in a series of switchbacks, passing through quaint little towns as we did so.

In Cosenza, we had an activity planned with the YSA's in the branch, and we had four of them in attendance.  It was delightful to meet these young adults and visit with them.  Gigi, who also serves as a stake YSA leader, organized the activity.  She is originally from Brazil with Italian heritage, and she's currently getting her missionary papers started and will soon be heading into the mission field.  Another of the YSA's was Lord from Nigeria, who's only been in Italy since January where he is attending university on a scholarship.  He's also a returned missionary, having served in Ghana.  In all, it was a very enjoyable evening.  Afterward, we headed back over the mountains to the Jones' home.

On Sunday morning, we caravanned with the Jones' to Catanzaro to attend church.  It was a very lively branch where most of the members are native Brazilians.  I was asked a few days earlier to speak in sacrament meeting.  We had a lovely time and enjoyed being with the saints there.

After church, we then headed directly home, about a four-and-a-half hour drive.  In the process, we were able to catch glimpses of all three of Italy's Seas, the Tyrrheanian, the Jonian, and the Adriatic.  It was a very beautiful road trip through mountains, olive groves and plains.  Once home, we prepared for the second leg of our four-day sleepover with the Jones', as they came up to Bari to attend Zone Conference on Monday.  They also stayed until Tuesday where we took them to Matera to see the Sassi there.

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to drive the Libertà Sisters to see a less active member who lives about 30 minutes away.  It was a sweet visit, and I had the opportunity to give her a priesthood blessing.  Later that evening, we were asked by the Poggiofranco Sisters to sit in a lesson they had scheduled with a man who attends their English class.  It also was a very sweet experience for us.  As Liz and I walked home that evening, we talked about our remarkable day and reflected on the amazing experiences we're having together here on our mission in Italy.

We love you all and we're very much looking forward to participating in General Conference this evening.  The 10:00am session will be live for us tonight at 6:00pm.  We'll watch the second and third Saturday sessions tomorrow, followed up with the Sunday morning session again Sunday evening.  We'll likely watch the last Sunday session sometime next week.

Love,

Anziano & Sorella Ellsworth

Castello di Santa Severina

With the YSA's in Cosenza

At Matera with the Jones'

Transfers

 This week we experienced our first transfers in the mission. It is a strange feeling to be saying goodbye to missionaries we have grown to love and also excited to be welcoming the new ones and realizing that everyone will move in and out but us.

We said goodbye to Sorelle Beus and Thompson in the Bari District as well Sorella Groberg and Anziano Wilding in Taranto District. We have loved working with each of them.  

One of our responsibilities is helping with transfers so Wednesday and Thursday we did a lot of trips to the train station. On Thursday we had a mix up with luggage. Right as the train was ready to leave Sorella Beus realized that her backpack with all her study materials didn't make it out of the car. She was transferring to Castellammare which is about 3 hours from here. Soooooo, road trip for us!

Friday morning we got up early so we could get Sorella Beus' backpack to her early. We were there by 10:00 am. With our scheduled cleared until 7:00 pm we decided to take a little side trip to Sorrento and then we drove the Amalfi Coast. What a spectacular drive. In the summer it gets really congested and they have put restrictions on the amount of cars. But in March it isn't too crowded yet.  And by too crowded I mean no traffic jams. In every town there were cars parked for at least a kilometer from the town. The Amalfi Coast is incredible and draws crowds year round, but in the summer the traffic can get backed up by 5 or 6 kilometers. It is a crazy drive full of narrow roads and hairpin turns. You are also on the edge of a cliff the entire drive. It has been rated one of the best drives in the world! We can see why! It was spectacular! We marveled as city bus drivers made the incredibly tight turns around curves in the road. That is some driving skill for sure!

The other excitement this week was Stake Conference in Taranto which is about a 90 minute drive from here. We decided to stay overnight in Taranto since we had been asked to speak in the GANS class on Saturday as well as the general session Sunday morning. The GANS class was really great because we were able to meet several of our young adults who we hadn't yet. Speaking in both meetings was nerve wracking for me  but Luke handled like a champ!

The Sorella of Bari

Sorrento Coast

Amalfi Coast

Amalfi Coast

The Missionary Life Continues

Liz and I continuing to adjust to missionary life and we continue to work on our Italian.  I've got the advantage of having previously served as a missionary in Italy, so I have a good understanding of the language.  Liz is still working hard and doing well, though it can be frustrating for her on occasion.

This past Sunday we attended church at the Taranto 1st Ward in Statte.  They met in a lovely old building converted into a chapel.  The members were warm and welcoming and we enjoyed seeing Sisters Groberg and Gray, the two young missionaries assigned to that ward.  After the meetings, we were invited to have pranzo (lunch) with a family that lives within the ward boundaries.  We were surprised to find out that they live 40 miles away, in the city of Bernalda.  They had a remarkable conversion story they shared with us--and we love hearing the member's conversion stories.  They then fed us a scrumptious lunch of many courses.  We had fried cheese balls with fresh cheese and olives as an appetizer.  The first course was a hearty serving of an amazing lasagna.  By now we were pretty full.  But wait, there's more!  The second course was breaded fried chicken filets.  I had to beg off part of my second helping of the chicken to Liz for the assist!  Next was French fried potatoes.  Then finally, the end was in sight.  She served us some very yummy gelato, then we had our pick of pistachios and brazil nuts.  In all, we were there about three hours and we such a lovely time.  Our host confessed that her dream would be to be able to serve a pranzo to a dozen people each day.  She also told us that when she hosted missionaries (the sisters were with us), that she felt like she was hosting the Savior.  We were a little embarrassed with the comparison, but grateful for her sincere desire to serve us.

After the pranzo, we had to get home fairly quickly to host the young adults in the Bari wards to our weekly family night.  We got to drive past such beautiful scenery on the way, past yet more olive groves, blossoming peach and apricot orchards, green fields with cattle grazing, mountaintop villages made of stone, and deep canyons and rolling hills.  This region is Basilicata, in the instep of the Italian boot-shaped peninsula.

Then this past Wednesday, we drove up to Foggia to inspect the Elder's apartment there, then to take the Elders out on a preparation day activity of their choice.  They chose well, and we headed East into the Gargano National Park.  We drove up a very steep, windy road to the city of Monte Sant'Angelo, 2,600 feet above the Adriatic Sea spread out below.  After stopping for a picnic lunch, we headed up to the old part of the city to see the Sanctuary of Saint Michael the Archangel.  This is a very old shrine with the main chapel having been dug deep in an underground cave.  As we descended down the grand staircase, it was interesting to see many of the dates carved into the soft limestone.  One I noted was written in pencil by Angelo, from the city of Gifoni, dated February 1664.  I considered all that had happened since that date!  

After the visiting the Sanctuary, we headed back up to the top of Mount Gargano to the Castle.  With Liz being such a castle buff, we had to see the castle too.  And it didn't disappoint.  The oldest part of the castle, the Giant's Tower, dates back to the year 979.  It has bee nicely restored and you can access many parts of it, including some gloomy prison cells, and a very nicely restored principle residence that shows what it likely looked like in its heyday.  The views from the wall were truly amazing, with vast views to the South over the Adriatic, and views to the North over the Umbrian Forest.  It was overcast, but the clouds gave our photos great lighting and effect.

Afterward, we were able to get our Elders back to their apartment in Foggia a little after 5:00pm, so they still had some time to visit with their families before resuming missionary work.  We drove home in time to attend the Poggiofranco ward council.  We truly love our work here and love being missionaries in this remarkable land.

District Pranzo after district council

Our first "chair stack" to show how many transfers we've been on our mission

Appetizers

First Course, Lasagna

Second Course, Chicken

Third Course, French fries

Then, gelato for dessert

Then nuts if you're still hungry!