Jan 23, 2015.  Today’s blog is dedicated to the lady across the street who has her daily wash hung out to dry by 8 am and to our youngest son who appears to be calling out his father for not contributing to the blog.  Sister Bullock decided that getting the wash out to dry by 8 am was the right way to go since it would be dry by the end of the day.  I hope that is true, however their side of the street faces south so they get some actual sunlight whereas we only get the reflection of the real thing…. Kind of like the sun and the moon, the celestial kingdom and the terrestrial etc.  Anyway today we got a couple of steel brackets to bolt onto our balcony and ran almost 20 meters of clothes line, so we are ready to hang out with the best.  I would attach a picture but I don’t want the whole world to see our dirty laundry; hmmm, I guess it would be clean though.

We applaud the Italians for the ecologically correct decision of hanging their clothes out to dry instead of using energy consuming appliances.  Of course it helps to have a climate conducive to that.  If we were to try that at home this time of the year everything would be stiff as a board by the end of the day.  It has also been fun to see all the wind generation units on the hills nearby, they seem to be turning a good part of the time so chalk one up for renewable energy.

Since we have a mission vehicle, we are expected to get it washed and cleaned weekly which we did today for the first time.  While we were waiting for the car to be cleaned we had a chat with the owner.  He asked what we were doing here in Crotone and we talked about our mission.  Like most Italians he thought maybe we were just representing a particular catholic church.  Once we explained that he asked how old I was and I told him.  He told me I looked well for my age.  I asked him how old he thought my wife was and he said 40-50. When I told him her age and he was somewhat amazed.  So that was an opportunity to talk about the Word of Wisdom and how we believe our bodies are a gift and as the scriptures teach, a temple of God.  We gave him a pass along card with the address of the church.  I think we will probably be going back there again.

Now that the car is clean I can actually see where I am going; it will probably scare the daylights out of me to see all the other drivers coming at me in the roundabouts.  Whenever I try to stay within the speed limits I seem to become a traffic hazard with all the others trying to pass me, unless the drivers are older than me then I am trying to pass them since they are always under the speed limit.  The Italians seem to have their own set of rules for driving, but it seems to work for them.

Tonight we had a welcome home party for a newly returned missionary.  She served her mission at Temple Square for most of the time.  This is the second returned missionary here in the branch, which I think is quite remarkable since the branch has fewer than 70 members and very few of missionary age.  We are trying to think about what can be done to serve the needs of that age group here.  We didn’t realize how good we had it back in Colorado with the singles ward and weekly Institute class; how that would bless the lives of young single adults here.