Church! Church! Church! I love going to church! I got up early this morning and we greeted by the cutie little lady of the house with a delicious display of tea, breads, yogurt with fresh fruit, and freshly made glazed donuts. Yum! The set up was this adorable sunroom with a little old wooden table, the room was wall to wall windowed with a tranquil view of a beautifully designed backyard full of luscious greenry and flowers. I love the spring! Have I ever mentioned how much I love flowers?? ;) After that I quickly got on mormon.org and found the address for the church in Caserta and Napoli. We’d decided to go to church in Caserta and would from there go and see the gardens of the Palace there.
I got ready, google mapped the church, googled images of the actual building to I would recognize it, figured out the metro etc., and then started to work on my blog a little, and started sending a couple emails when I overheard Babak and the old man talking in serious tones. Something about Passports and Iran. After about 5 minutes they came into the living room where I was. I pretended to be oblivious to what I now understood as basically Babak trying to keep us from getting kicked out for him being from Iran. I later learned that the reason everyone was giving us such a hard time was because there’s this fairly new law that is strictly enforced, particularly with regard to Persians. Everyone has to require passports in order to house people and they have to report all their patrons’ information to the police and apparently particularly for Iranians they’re like crazy. So, even though Babak explained our situation to him last night when he called and the man was like, “No problem, as long as she has her passport you’re fine,” I guess sleeping on it freaked him out so he was pretty stress-flustered. There goes 9 o’clock church…oh well! Napoli it is! That’s great! I’m soo excited.
After about an hour they had everything figured out; Babak was able to get a hold of someone and then like his roommate and and and…all I know is the guy agreed that as long as he could provide his passport number he’d let us slide. Phew!! That would have been awesome…walking around Napoli and traveling to church with my pack…ha! Heavenly Father loves us!
We start walking, get down to the National Archeological Museum, our B&B was like four blocks inland from it, and Babak looks at me and says, “Where from here?” Ummm, huh? You’re the one that kicked me off the computer because apparently being 26, girl, and/or from the US means that I’m incapable of reading a street map?? Apparently he didn’t even end up looking at the map I had pulled up because that’s when the confusion started. Awesome. Welp, I guess we’re going based off the first couple directions I figured out. These basically consisted of the Metro station to get on at, the general vicinity of the church, and the address which I’d luckily written down in the PB (which Babak soon just confiscated so he could lead the way…lead the way by asking by showing the address I’d written down J ). It was so fun! I love being slightly unaware of where I’m going because those are the times that you usually see some of the most memorable things, meet unusual people, and create some of the best memories. This was definitely one of those occasions. Let’s just say it was a good thing we left 2 hours early to make it for sacrament. The adventure included a regular subway, this funny down-the-face –of-the-cliff type metro which had staircases along both sides and in retrospect I’m pretty sure we could have walked down the stairs more quickly. But it was surely a unique little ride. Oh yeah the metro station ticket machines were ALL down and the guard just kept saying, “well, you need to just buy a ticket.” Ummm, I know my Italian is pretty limited so I could be mistaken but Sir I think those signs written in man’s hand writing and posted on ALL the machines in the station clearly indicate through words and symbols like circles with line crossing through words like bigilettos and servizi with “X”s crossing them that no matter how much money I put in that little slot it’s not going to give me a ticket in return. Nope, sorry. Hear that cling? Yup, still spittin’ my coins back J
For Babak. Well, let’s just say I think he’d say it was a memorable experience as well…just don’t know if in the same light as me.
The view as we walked and then again from inside the little church were breathtaking. With every step all I could think is how people really live here. It was fun walking from stop to stop and listening to Babak trying to describe to people where I was wanting to go. All the conversations pretty much ended up with dynamic Italian conversations that always ended with a bunch of looking around and facial expressions of thought about “Oooh! Mormoni Chiesa” (Oooh! Mormon Church). I love that when I travel and in the end if I throw our “Mormon” people suddenly know what you’re talking about. It’s so fun!
In the end, it was a really nice and friendly man up the street sitting in this little guard shack that was our final angel on our path to church. They were very excited to see us and curious of how we knew of their little branch. I shared our connection and we were off to Sunday School…the elder and I decided Gospel Principles would be the best option for us today. Babak’s second Christian church experience. Haha J What an amazing experience.
We were escorted down a hallway. Second door on the left. Sat down and listened at the Elders taught and bore testimony about the restoration of the Church. It was beautiful. The people were so nice. It was remarkable how much it made me feel like I was right back on the mission and made me miss that time of my life. We met a lot of people. Sacrament was really fun and interesting too. Before the opening hymn they handed me a cute little handmade pamphlet with the lyrics to the Italia national anthem on the inside and a little color penciled flag on the front.Then the youth were presented at the head of the room and lead us all in singing praise for their grand country. Then all the talks were about respecting your government and standing by your leaders even during times of difficulty. It was really good, kinda funny because they were all making comments about “the north” and “the south”, and the whole time I was praying that Babak would get something positive out of the lesson because I can’t imagine that was his favorite topic.
After sacrament this really short but totally sharp looking brother, probably in his late 30s, comes up to the elder I was talking with and said something to the effect of, “that’s great, but I’m Napolitano, not Italian.” He had a knowing half smile and eyes just waiting for reaction. The elder looked at me and said, “Obviously he missed something during sacrament.” We all just laughed.
Afterward the elders escorted us to the metro a different way than we came and it was probably one of the coolest little walks I’ve ever gone through IN MY LIFE! We went up a little bit from the church and turned down this alleyway at basically the top of the hilled street. From there we wined around some corners that I probably would have never gone through by myself (although come to think of it I did start down that way on the way down the street). It was soooo cliché Italian and rustic and amazing! I love elders for knowing all the little nooks and crannies.
The church is true and I love it! I think it might be even truer in such a gorgeous location...just sayin' :)
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