This past summer (June 2008), we had a youth conference here in the mission home for the youth of the Napoli (Naples) and Firenze (Florence) districts (unfortunately, Sardegna could not come because of the expense of coming from the island). We are always impressed at the strength of the youth here. Because President Acerson is over three districts (Firenze, Napoli, and Sardegna), we decided to invite them to the mission home for some fun, learning, service, and for opportunities to feel the spirit. They are the future missionaries and leadership of the church here in Italy, so no investment in them is too great! Here's a picture of them at the villa (mission home) on the morning of the last day.
We had all kinds of miracles happen to help us pull off this big project in only a couple of weeks. One of which was the service project opportunity that appeared at just the right moment! I had hoped to have some type of service project planned for them, but didn't really know how to go about finding one. I thought we'd just pick up trash from the neighborhood if nothing else came up. Just before the youth conference, I met with the missionaries in our area to finalize some plans for classes they were teaching and other activities they were going to help with. While I was there, they mentioned a "Helping Hands" service project that had just been announced at the "church property" as the members like to call it. I got very excited about having the youth help, but they said it was only for the men in the stake. I didn't let that stop me and called the stake president who said, of course, let them come. Not only that, but he invited us to bring our lunch and enjoy the property after the project was finished. We decided it would also be the perfect spot for our closing testimony meeting.
What a blessing it was to be there. What a tremendous opportunity for the youth to help clean up the property where, it was hoped, a temple would be built someday!
Here are quite a few pictures of that day. I hope you will enjoy seeing members, missionaries, and the youth of the church here in Italy work together in making the future temple grounds beautiful.
After the property was cleaned up, we had lunch and then our testimony meeting. Some very sweet things happened that day. The youth expressed their love of Jesus Christ and of the restored gospel that was now on the earth. A special forces officer who is stationed at the American base in Napoli told them what we were all thinking: that someday they would return to this property with their children and even their grandchildren to visit the temple. That they would try to find this very spot and tell them about the day when they helped clean the temple grounds and then stood and bore a strong testimony of the divinity of our Savior, Jesus Christ and spoke of their commitment to living the commandments so that they might be worthy to go through the temple that would be built there someday. It was an experience I'll never forget.
For more information on the temple site, click here.
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