Sunday 19 June 2016

This past week was memorable.  We had a zone conference at the Lampagano church building.  We attended because we are in that zone and had to take the day off work at the mission office.  This was President and Sister Dibb's last zone conference, and last time that they would see most of the missionaries who attended.They are going around the mission holding conferences. They taught that missionaries should have their pedigree chart, preferably pictures, on their Ipads, so they could show them to people, even people they just meet, as they discuss the eternal importance of families. At the end of zone conferences those who are going home bear their testimonies, and we heard from the Dibbs, which was wonderful. The office elders made a special slide show for the Dibbs (we were even in it) about their 3 year mission experience. We also went to Milano a couple of more times this week, once to buy a dryer for the Salatini (another senior couple who live in Milano, with whom we do a lot) and to take the office anziani to the Toyoda dealership to pick up a car that had been fixed. We also went home teaching one rainy evening to the sister who, along with her daughter and two dogs, are moving to Utah this fall.

Yesterday, our P-day, we went with the Salatini to Switzerland and then to a baptism in the nearby city of Como.  It takes about two hours in the car from where we live in Opera. Here are a few of the pix I took:















Along the way up the freeway, then smaller roads, the sizes of the hills increase. There are many small villages on the sides of the hills, then mountains.

Then you get to the border, where you just drive through if you have a Swiss pass sticker on your windshield.  If you don't, you pay 40 Swiss Francs (around $40).  It is good for he calendar year, starting in January, but only for the car it is stuck on. (If you go in Dec, you have to buy a new one in Jan.). Coming back there is virtually no hassle.  We immediately found Switzerland much cleaner and the roads were better, even though the people looked and spoke the same (they speak Italian in Ticino, the Swiss cantone, or state, we visited.)


The mountains get larger still and there are also McDonald's and Burger King everywhere.

And we could also see Lake Lugano, on which Lugano is situated.  We have missionaries in Lugano and Anziano Salatino, who we went with, served in Lugano as a young missionary.

They seem to  have better cars (more money) and there are lot of Swiss flags (red with white cross) hanging on houses, and it is more expensive to live there.  I give an extra 60 euros to our missionaries each month because of the cost of living in Switzerland.

We saw a lot of Swiss cows munching grass by the side of the road, and expected to see Heidi bounding down the hillside yodeling. (We did see her grandfather though.)

In this little village, which was one of our destinations, we saw this girl with her dog on a street with a red sign saying watch out for horses, and the bell tower of the little church we went to see.

We walked a ways (finding a place to park was hard) through the town to find the little old church.

We found it on the side of the hill, and went inside to see its famous painting on the side wall.  It was painted by artists from the school of  Leonardo da Vinci, who was in Milano at the time painting the famous Last Supper, etc. Painters had workshops, and had several painters, older artists and young apprentices, who got the jobs of painting the boring stuff, while the masters worked on faces, eyes, etc.  In this small village church on a hillside in Switzerland is a copy of Da Vinci's famous Last Supper, painted by some of the same artists that helped him in Milan.  Remember, they had no photographs to remember what they saw; they believe the artists who did this one worked from Leonardo's drawing papers, which were put on the wall to trace what was to be painted on the wet plaster.  Leonardo tried a new technique in Milano, he painted on dry plaster, which was a disaster; the paint did not stick and cracked.  But here, it was done in the traditional manner of painting on wet plaster, called fresco. Here is the fresco on the side wall, still bright after several hundred years.

There are some differences between this copy and the "original" but it is remarkable and certainly a lot easier to visit.  When we first went in the church was fairly dark, and there was no one there, but there was a sign by a light switch, that said turn it on to see the cenalaco (supper).


The names of the apostles are written at the bottom.  No one really knows what the bottom of the one in Milano was really like, because it was damaged and the paint is very bad, even though it has been somewhat restored.

There are scenes outside the painted on windows, which are not in the one in Milano; these are more interesting.  My pictures do not do it justice.




John, the beloved, sitting to the right of Jesus, is fairly feminine (think DaVinci code).

And between John and Jesus is the famous V space, as in Milano.

And the wall is flat, but there is perspective in the painting, it looks like you can see into it, although  you have to at least enlarge it.

Of course, there was a lot of other art in the church.  Everyone had to paint a Madonna with child, and a few saints, this one has the Father looking down from above.

A few crucifictions; these are statues with paintings on the sides.


And in the back were some pieces of wall that were probably within in the church many centuries before the more modern paintings of the 1500s were painted.

The back of the church. This is a very small village church, not a large cathedral. In fact, it did not even have an organ, unless there was a little one hiding behind the only altar in the front.

The front altar did not have an altar painting at all, which is unusual.  The "choir" is behind the altar and I did not go there because there was a red rope I did not want to cross it.

One last look at the cenacolo (Last Supper) painting, you can see the preaching pulpit in the above two pics, to get a better idea of the perspective and what the church was like.

Outside the door of the church was a trattoria, or little family style restaurant, which did not appear to be open. If you can see the sign, the name of the trattoria is Trattoria del Cenacolo (trattoria of the last supper), and you have to cross over a very narrow passage over another narrow street below to get there.  All the streets in this village were very narrow, people with cars have to park out of town.

Again, they like to show their Swiss flags.

Typical window with flower pot.  By the way, we have red geraniums on our balcony and a basil plant that are doing well, better than these.

Turn around from the last two pics and you can see out of town, another hillside with cows, and an older Swiss gentleman (Heidi's modern shirtless grandpa) tending his garden, which was doing well. They can certainly grow things well here, and they are now getting ripe, even tomatoes are on in some places we saw.

Looking further up the hillside, another little church, probably with another cenacolo painting.

Even the "graffiti" on the Swiss walls is cool, although we have some new and artistic graffiti on walls near where we live in Opera.  Up the hill are grape vines.


To get to the church (LDS) we had to go past the town's soccer stadium, which, fortunately for traffic, there wasn't a game going on.

The fairly new, nice, LDS meetinghouse in Lugano, Switzerland.

Typical chapel, with movable chairs, so they could have other functions in the chapel.

We got to the chapel just as our missionaries were meeting with their ward mission leader (not in a white shirt). The tall missionary, with the sweater, to the right is Anziano Mocellin, who is French and only has one transfer to go before he goes home.  He used to be an assistant to the president, with their office next to ours.  It was good to see him again.  He wants to return to France and become a policeman.


We found a place to park near where this river, which comes from the mountains, goes into Lake Lugano. We walked trough one of the nicest parks I have ever been in.


Some very sweet smelling flowers were in bloom, probably not the red ones, and it was very beautiful and fragrant.

Some napping Greek in statue.

It was about 1 pm and we were hungry, so we went to this restaurant by the side of the road and had a seat outside under an umbrella.  We shared one pizza and a large salad, and each had a bottle of mineral water. The total tab was 34 CHF (about $34), which would have been about half that much in Italy, but it was good, the waiter was interesting, and watching the people walk past was entertaining.
.
And the restaurant had a saying on the wall, that "the things most beautiful in life are immoral, illegal or make you fat," by Bernard Shaw (maybe they don't know him as George in Switzerland).

We passed by several very old, as in 1200s churches along the way past very high end shops.

Inside a small, very old church. The monks sat in front and the common people behind, where they could see the murals on the walls.

we saw this guy with a wounded leg last Saturday in Como, but don't know what saint he is.

This before and after pix shows that they took an old monastery and did some remodeling (the frescos were removed), and built some very high end shops in this place.

But apparently put some of the old frescos back up in this church.  Here is its "last supper," perhaps also influenced by Leonardo--every monastery dining hall in the 1500s had to have one.  But this one had John (or Mary Magdalene if you read DaVinci code) leaning on Jesus' shoulder.

The colors were really bright, but you have to enhance the pix to see it well. A least Picasa makes mine pretty bright, try it.

This is the outside of what used to be a monastery, believe it or not.  Now it contains expenisve shops.


These men's jackets were on sale, 50% off, only 140 CHF and the pants, 79 CHF, which is about the same in dollars. These aren't dress suits either.  Notice the color combinations and styles.

Inside the monastery, they were all somewhat the same idea.  Places for the monks to live, a church for them to sing and pray, and a garden where they could walk around for whatever exercise they got.  Usually they also had gardens, where they grew their veggies and herbs.

To prove this was a pretty high end remodeling job, here is the most high tech public bathroom I have ever used.

When you wash your hands the water squirts out the side and into the toilet, which is mechanically and water cleaned, and it even smells good--this is Switzerland, remember. There was no fee to use it.

There is a Leonardo da Vinci Institute nearby in Lugano.

And churches with pipe organs on every corner.  They were having a concert in this one today (Sunday afternoon) I would have attended had I been there .

Pastries in the shops look good, but probably aren't all that wonderful, we have been told. Haven't bought one yet.

And nice salami shops with Italian salami.

These fruits and veggies looked good.  The watermelons come from Sicily this time of year.

This is a street sign by the city police of Lugano telling you not to donate money to strangers, because you risk adding money to the pockets of criminal organizations.  It has a pix of little boy with his hand out, and says if someone asks for money, offer them food or something. Again, this is Swiss, we haven't seen anything like this in Italy.

We went down by the water, where the old houses are right on the lake.

We were sort of in the way in the last pix of the boat docs at the old homes on the lake.

We watched the parent swans with their baby.  He was pretty cute. The water was clean, but there were debris from the trees, etc., perhaps because of the earlier storm.

This sign says if you go straight, you can go to the Saint Gottard or Saint Bernard pass, or to Bellinzona or Milano (Italy), and more high end cars.

There was this Mazzeratti (or how ever you spell it) behind us revving up his engine.

We drove about 20 minutes back to Italy to Como and found the LDS church, where there was a baptism, to which we had been invited, again with missionaries with whom we work. This is the entrance to the LDS chapel in Como, on a hill side.  It used to be the home of a Catholic cardinal, and the pope (don't know which one) actually slept here, which not many LDS churches can boast.

You drive under the the Madonna and child to get to the parking, again this is LDS church property.

There is even a typical LDS meetinghouse sign on the side of the remodeled villa.

The chapel being prepared for the baptism.  The sisters asked me to play the prelude before the baptism, which began 20 minutes late.  Have you ever been to a baptism that started on time???

After the baptism, on the way home, we stopped by the "shop of gelato" or ice cream store.  We were the only customers and talked with the owner while we ate ours.  He gave us samples of kinds we were curious about, like licorice, green apple, black chocolate, etc.  He said he has owned and worked here for 40 years, making all of his own ice cream every day.  He is open from 11 am to 11 pm. At the end of the day, what he does not sell goes into a refrigerator, where it melts.  The next day he makes enough more to fill the container and re-freezes it.  He said he does not like ice cream and has not eaten any for about the past 4 years, although he said he does like pasta and pane (bread).  He is Italian, and this is a typical gelataria, which you find on about every street in Italy, and there were some in Switzerland, but they cost more and probably had the same kind of ice cream. We did go into a supermarket (Migros, which they had 50 years ago when I was there) in Switzerland and bought some wonderful 100 gram chocolate bars for only 50 CFH (Swiss Franks, or about 50 cents) each.

He had about 24 flavors.  You got up to 3 flavors in a cup for 2.5 euros, or a little over $2.50, which is very filling because it has so much cream.  We didn't need dinner after that so late in the evening.

It was a nice week and I hope you enjoy this. Write me a note if you read this blog.

12 June 2016

This week we worked in the office doing our normal duties.  On Thursday we went to Pavia to inspect two apartments, one with missionaries and one that we had inspected a week or so ago, where the missionaries had left it vacant following our going to help them clean (mold on ceiling in bathroom.) We gave them specific instructions about how they were to leave it (clean and ready for the next set or to turn back over to the landlord.)  The new mission president will have to decide whether to put missionaries back in it or have us close it. Anyway, the first (with missionaries) was okay but certainly not very clean.  We worked with them for an hour, on the bathroom and kitchen.  The pair included a big guy from the US and a small Italian from Rome.  Myrna helped the big guy with the bathroom, including cleaning the bathtub and ceiling. We bought some muriatic acid, which did wonders on the toilet and bathtub. As I was standing by the bathtub the elder accidentally sprayed me with water, in the crotch, but it was fairly warm and dried in about an hour. I  I helped the Italian in the kitchen. The tiled walls had not been cleaned for a long time and were pretty greasy, etc.Then we went to the other apartment, the one that had been closed, and saw that the missionary had finished the bathroom ceiling but had not done much else.  You may have seen the defrosting chicken in a previous post.  I had to clean the chicken bones they left in the sink, along with cleaning the stove, etc. They left food in the refrigerator, including milk, and had washed towels, but left them wet in the washing machine (missionaries in our mission don't get dryers, they use drying racks).   Myrna worked on the toilet and shower. We worked for about two hours.

Bathroom sink, they left a lot of stuff, which we threw out.  If this apartment is closed, we will have to go back and do a thorough cleaning. All of the senior couples in our mission are assigned about six or so apartments to inspect.  How much they actually clean is up to them. In fact, our mission president's wife thinks we should hire the work done and have the missionaries pay for it.








As we were walking down the street we saw a museum owned and operated by the City of Como. We went in and the young man who sold us our ticket noticed our name tags and told us he is a member, who served his mission in Sicily a few years ago.  The museum is in an old home of a very wealthy family, who probably owned it for centuries.  All of the rooms were well decorated and now have interesting displays.  This is a very old pipe organ, which has been restored and is played for concerts, etc.  Notice how beautiful the walls in this room are.  The entire museum is like this.  It would be wonderful to tour even without the displays, which were unique and very interesting. This part of Italy has been inhabited by people since at least the ice, stone and iron ages, many centuries before Christ.  You may remember, from National Geographic a few years ago, they found an ice age guy who had been preserved in a glacier, and they were doing tests of his body.  That is not too far from Como and the museum has lots of stuff from those very ancient times.





In the following pictures pay attention also to the walls, ceilings and floors of the museum itself, they were spectacular.













These are artifacts from the 9th century before Christ dug up in the 1970s near Como.













Beautiful marble floors.
















Roman lamps from the time of Christ.  When Christ talked about having oil in your lamp, this was the kind he was referring to.









These little gods were worshiped.  These things were probably brought to Italy during the mid 1800s, when rich people were in awe of Egyptian artifacts, and everyone had to have a mummy in their house. In fact, the mummy that Joseph Smith bought which contained the Pearl of Great Price had been in Trieste, Italy before coming to the US and making its way to Nauvoo.












Another nearby room where there were large wall paintings from the 1600s.

12 June 2016





Our cleaning lady, Sorella Cano, has worked for years to become an Italian citizen and finally made it.  Myrna made her a cake and the mission bought pizza for everyone in the office.  This is President and Sister Dibb with Sorella Cano and cake baker Myrna.












These are the missionaries in the office that day.






On Saturday (yesterday) we went to Como, a city about an hour north of here.  It is on a lake, which is shaped sort of like a V, with Como at the bottom.  The lake starts in Switzerland, and a few weeks ago we went with the president and the office elders to Bellagio, a little town at the top of one of the fingers.

We easily found a parking garage downtown and parked on the 6th floor for almost 7 hours and paid 9.50 euoro, which was a good deal. We went to check out this town to see if Amy and family want to go there.  They should, it  is cool. We walked toward the duomo, always in the center of any Italian city.  We went in the duomo and saw they were having a service, which the usher said was an ordination of new priests and would last another two hours. I did get to hear the organ and choir, which were very beautiful.  When we got home I googled and found a Youtube of a similar ordination that day in the duomo of Milano, which you can find by going to Youtube and putting in ordination of new priests milano italy 12 june 2016, so yesterday must have been the ordination of new priests day.




We went to the lake, only a couple of blocks away from the duomo.  The history book says that Julius Caesar found the area around the lake swampy and ordered it drained, so the city was built up next to the lake, so this must be the equivalent of Nauvoo in Italy.  This was a father swan carefully guarding his wife who was sitting on four eggs.









We walked a few blocks to the funiculare, or tram which runs up the hill.  It took about 6 minutes to get to the top and cost 10 euros.













Where we could see the city of Como.













After about an hour on top we came back down on the funiculare, which goes and comes every 15 minutes.










We went into the duomo and found they were having a very well attended and impressive service.  I got to hear the organ and choir and learned it was the ordination of new priests, which lasted almost 3 hours. When I got back home I googled to see what I could learn about it, and learned that at the same time and day in the duomo of Milano they were ordaining 24 new priests, which was all on Youtube (already), so yesterday must have been the graduation of seminary and ordination of new Catholic priests day in Italy, maybe in the world. (We had seminary graduation in our stake this week too, but the priests were already ordained, and we graduated girls too.)

5 June 2016

Today was a televised conference instead of regular church. The meeting was held in two of the three chapels in Milano, with two stakes represented.  We went with the office elders to the Cimiano building, which isn't the building we usually attend.  They drove us to the Rogerado station and we took the metro, having to change trains at Centrale, and then we walked the block to the chapel, getting there about 10 minutes early. We left 90 minutes early to get there on time. The meeting began with a half hour of stake business, a hymn, prayer, sustaining of three new high counselors and other stake business. The stake president of the east stake (we are in the west stake) gave a 20 minute talk and it was excellent. I had never heard him before.  He talked about getting things for "free" which are worth about what you pay, He spoke of being in a business meeting where his associates wanted to change their way of doing business to make more money, except it was dishonest, which he helped them realize and not do. Then the meeting from Salt Lake City began.  Elder Christofferson, an apostle, who came here in March was the presiding authority, along with the presiding bishop and young women president, who all spoke.  They all spoke in English and there was Italian translation, from Salt Lake, so you could barely hear the English. Sister Bonnie Oscarson speaks relatively fast and her female translator had to speak quite fast to keep up with her. Bishop Caussé, who is French, spoke in English and spoke about temples, and how Europe is getting more, including the one in Rome. He did not specifically say when it would be completed (no one is speculating), only that it would be a great blessing to the people here and they should be preparing to use it, including doing family history.  Elder Christofferson spoke last about coming to Europe in March, including his seeing DaVinci's last supper in Milano and his meetings with us (in the same chapel where we went today). Then he transitioned into the atonement and how we need to make it a more significant part of our lives. It was an inspired talk specifically for the saints in Europe, which he obviously understands very well now.  All in all, it was a very inspiring conference, and was very specific to the needs of the saints in Italy, much more so than general conference. The chapel was full, as I suspect the other one was.  It is so inspiring to see Italian families with their little children, the men with white shirts and garments underneath (it was warm today, they didn't turn on the air conditioning, but opened the windows--the chapel is on the second floor--and a pleasant breeze was blowing, so there weren't many coats).  While waiting for the missionaries to finish chatting (for 45 minutes) before we could leave, I watched a young Italian family get ready to walk home.  Their little boy, about 3 or 4 years old, had a scooter he was going to ride home, and his parents helped each other put his helmet on, he was really cute, as well as was his sister, in a stroller. I thought that the Church should have videoed this family, it was so inspiring to see the future of the Church in Italy.

We came home with the elders and had the last of the lasagna I made the other day. Then, I had an appointment to play an organ at 3 pm at an old church, about 9 minutes south of here.  We were there at 3 and the door opened, we were cordially greeted and we climbed up the creaky wooden stairs to the organ, which was behind the high altar.  The organ was from the 1800s, and has not been restored.  It is a little off in some of the less-used stops, but I enjoyed playing it.  Myrna recorded me.


This old organ had something (to the left in the pix) I have not seen many times.  A gauge which shows how many stops are pulled.

The pedal board was short (no heel-toe playing needed) and had fewer notes than modern pedal boards, and only one manual, which can be divided between upper and lower voices. It is very traditional Italian, and I played some Italian organ music I have downloaded, by Frescobaldi and Vivaldi, who both inspired Bach. Their music plays beautifully on this kind of pipe organ.

Anyway, it was an inspiring and fun Sunday. We came back home, read from the scriptures together, and then came back down to the office, where I am typing this.  Myrna is now in with the president and Sister Dibb, and one of the office elders, trying to figure out how to do the baptism reports in a more timely manner, which Myrna is just beginning to be responsible for.  She will have it whipped into shape in no time, I am sure. She is very diligent in her callings and I enjoy working next to her every day.




  

4 June 2016

We got up this morning and it was raining and fairly cool, for June. About 9:30 we headed south and stopped at an old church whose organ I had seen but never played.  Myrna waited in the car for me to see if I could play it.  There was no one there, but the church was open, as they usually are in the mornings (they close from about noon until 3 pm.)  I walked up the wooden staircase behind the altar and saw the organ and since no one was there, I flipped the switch and the blower came on, so, without sitting at the bench, I pulled the principale 8 stops to see if they would play (there was an electronic organ on the floor in front of the altar, which is usually a good sign that the antique organ does not work.)  Anyway, it played beautifully.  So I tested a few more stops and they all played, although the trumpet was quite flat, as they usually are.  I really wanted to sit down and play it, in fact, have Myrna come in and video me, but Myrna tells me I need permission. So I went outside and found the phone number of the paracco, the priest in charge, and called, but no one was there.  So we left to go further south, with an idea of going to Piacenza, which was 45 minutes south.

After walking around for over an hour, we were tired so we came back home and had lunch.  Then we waited until 3 pm, when the church with the organ would open back up and headed back down.  It is 6 KM and takes about 11 minutes to drive from our home to that church.  The church was again open but the priest did not answer his cell phone again.  I was able to get through to the assistant, who said he was out of town and I would need to speak with the priest.  Anyway, we headed back down south to the Certosa di Pavia to better prepare for where we will go when Amy's family comes.  We got all the way down to Pavia and then headed back home. On the way back the priest called saying he received a call from my number.  He told me I could come back tomorrow at 3 pm to play it, which I hope we can do. He said at 4 pm he has 15 baptisms to perform, which sounds like a lot. Maybe they are having a sale or something.  I didn't take many pix, but here are a few.


Outside of church with organ I want to play.  The church was actually built in the 1100s but it was re-built in the 1600s and again in the 1800s.

On Tuesday morning, Myrna and I drove down to Piacenza to check out a missionary apartment where the sister missionaries are moving out.  One went home on Thursday, with 17 others (only 2 came in this week), and the other was transferred, so no one is now living in this apartment.  During July we get about 20 new missionaries and the new president will need to decide what to do with this apartment; either put more missionaries in it or close it, which is a lot of work (for me because I have to close the utilities, etc.),  Anyway, we wanted to see what shape it was in and encourage the sisters to clean it well before leaving.  In fact, we stayed about an hour and helped them clean. Then we drove north to Pavia and checked out another apartment, this one occupied by elders, who are also moving out.  We also and helped them clean. These are typical missionary apartments in our mission.




The street where the Pavia apartment is located. It is on the 5th floor of the apartment building. Parking is always at a premium, but neither set of missionaries have cars.  They walk or ride the bus.











Living room, where the sisters study.  They said the pix on the wall were they when they came, and when they come off the walls need repainting because the sticky pulled off the paint. We didn't take them off, because if missionaries move back in, they can keep the pix.










Kitchen was also okay. This is a typical Italian kitchen, pretty little.










But the elder's apartment was a different story.
Myrna began working on the bathroom, and one of the elders got on a ladder and started using a washcloth with a bleach mixture to clean the mold off the ceiling, as we instructed him. I took the cloth into the kitchen and kept wringing it out with new bleach solution.  My hands smelled strongly of bleach all the rest of the day. The mold was pretty gross, but it came off with a lot of scrubbing, and bleach solution.

Italy is so humid that mold grows easily and it must be cleaned continually or it gets pretty gross. You probably don't want to see the rest of the pix that I took for comparison purposes. I hope that when we go back in a few weeks both apartments are clean and ready for the next set of missionaries, or to be closed.

One of my ideas for today was to go to back to Piacenza, where I served 50 years ago, where we went this week to check out an apartment, but it didn't work out.  However, as I requested, Kevin sent me a scan of a slide that I took 49 years ago of a boy in a red t-shirt and I wrote a little "tender mercy" story about it.  Maybe you have heard me tell this story when I have shown this pix over the past five decades.

In 1967, I was called to be a senior companion and to open a new city, which never had missionaries.  It is Piacenza, about 45 minutes south of where we now live in Opera. (We went there on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, to inspect an apartment.)  I was sent from Torino, which is about a couple of hours away by train. I arrived about 11 am and my companion, a greenie, coming from the US, was to arrive during early evening.  My most pressing job for the day was to find us an apartment, because I did not have enough money for a hotel. In those days we paid for all of our expenses and found our own apartments; we weren't reimbursed for anything.  Anyway, I arrived at the train station in Piacenza and thought that because a lot of people were coming and going, and they sold newspapers there, it would be good place to try to ask someone if they knew of an apartment we could afford. (We didn't have cell phones then.) Of course, I prayed continually to find someone who could tell me about an apartment.  I bought newspapers and looked and asked people, but didn't find anything that seemed promising.  So after eating lunch at the train station, I thought I would walk towards the duomo (cathedral), which is always the center place in an Italian city. However, very close to the train station is a city park, and I had a strong feeling to walk through the park, which was beautiful that spring day. I had my camera and I was even taking pictures of flowers, etc. There weren't many people in the park, and those I asked seemed annoyed, let alone knew of apartments.  I found a secluded place and prayed more intently than I had ever prayed before. Shortly thereafter, I saw a boy playing in the water. He was all alone, school was in session and I wondered why he was even there.  Since I was taking pix of flowers, etc., I took one of him before he saw me.  When he realized I was there, he responded in a friendly manner.  I told him I was looking for an apartment and he immediately said that his grandfather had apartments for rent and he would take me to him, which he did.  We walked together quite a while and found his nonno, and within a short time I had rented an apartment we could afford in a decent part of Piacenza. One of my current assignments in this mission is to pay the rent and utilities for our 100 or so missionary apartments, so this now seems more amazing. Anyway, by the time I walked back to the train station to pick up my companion, we had a roof over our heads and I had gone to some little shops (they didn't have supermarkets then like they do now) and bought some food. Finding that boy was a tender mercy if there ever was one, and, even more important, I knew that the Lord had heard me and answered my prayers.