Our purple home

Jolayne thought I should post what our apartment looks like here in Bari.  We are very fortunate to have such a wonderful home to live in for the next year and a half.  Here's a few pics.

Laundry area

Study/Office 

Purple TV watching area

View from our balcony to the piazza below

One side of our balcony

     The other side of the wrap around balcony

Purple Pizza/Pasta preparing place-say that 3 times

Purple living room

Purple bedroom

Modern conveniences!

 WE MISS OUR DRYER!  Here's my wonderful husband hanging out the laundry to be dried outside on our patio.  I will be happy to have soft towels out of the dryer again one day....no one has dryers here. We are also trying to get our landlord to install air conditioning since the apartment is set up for it.  It will get very warm in a few months...

Love the giovani missionari

The Young missionaries here are THE best!  So dedicated and hard working.  Had to say goodbye to a few special ones at last transfer but didn't get pics of all before they left.

This is Anziano Eldridge who we'll miss tons--he's off to Catanzaro.

Didn't get pics of the newest missionaries except for this one of Sorella McFarland and Sorella Hunter teaching at English class.  Sorella Hunter was at the MTC the same time as we were so we were excited to see her again.  

Italy...it's just not Canada

WE LOVE ITALY.  BUT there are some things that just aren't the same as Canada....like this....

Yup--that's a picture of our car dashboard and yes it was warm on the 15th.  Actually, we were in a parking lot and once we started moving it dropped to the true temperature of 25C.  The wind has been blowing almost like we were in a coastal city....  

Oh, wait, we are in a coastal city.  This is 10 minutes from our apartment!!!!!

And this is Castello Normanno right by the sea

Beautiful cobblestone but painful for the feet..

Saw this not far from us--a dental/physio office--we don't have chairs like that in our dental office!  Dave, maybe that would be something you could get to change up the office!?.....

Anyway... I love Canada but wouldn't trade this adventure for anything.  We do miss our family a lot and I felt I needed a hug yesterday so we opened one of our envelopes entitled "open if you need a hug" and this is what we found--3 Big HUGS! Thanks Holly, Cael and Lily.  Love you!

Kindnesses!

Had a short visit yesterday with this wonderful man, Guiseppe Signorile.  He is an artist and is now very crippled with age and can't do much but he did two pictures for us and signed them and insisted we take them home. He is 89 years young and loves to have the missionaries come for a visit.
We also took a lady to the dentist last week and she gave us a large card that her husband had made--a relief paper cutting of Ostuni. Beautiful!  The Italian people are so kind and generous.  If you do something for them, they want to give back 10 times more.

This one's for Chrystal

Thought you would like to see the quaint shops here in Bari-----

Oh, and here's one I didn't expect to see--Chris HATES the Ikea maze!

Helping with the GANS!

We have been asked to assist with the GANS (giovane adulti non sposati--or young single adults). We are to help the young single adult leaders bring a unity to their group and help bring back some that are no longer active.  They want us to assist with activities every Wednesday night and attend all conferences and devotionals.  We will also be teaching Institute class one day a week to 5 African guys that don't speak Italian well.  I think that will end up being my job.  We may include helping them with their Italian (which will not be my job!).  On top of that there are multiple less active members in both wards here and we alternate going to both wards..  So hard to get people's names straight.  Also, many are related to each other..."Oh that's the sister of Sister______and the mother of Brother _____is the aunt of ________"  etc...  The Sorelli (sister missionaries) have a tree drawn in the apartment of how everyone is related in the wards.
We wonder where the time goes as we are busy most days with meetings and contacting members.

Here is one sweet, spunky little lady we visited in the hospital last week--Sorella Schino--92 years young and not at all happy that she had to eat the terrible hospital food!

We also visited a man 89 years old in the hospital yesterday that loved Chris.  Didn't get a picture but we will be visiting them both often.

Just another beautiful day in Bari