Assisi

Just after midnight on Saturday morning we were awakened by an extremely loud thunderstorm. It rained some, but the lightning and thunder were enough to wake the dead for a little while. Fortunately, we both got back to sleep quickly. In the morning we got an email from our home ward stating that our (young) bishop was going back for a complicated followup surgery after having his gall bladder removed. He has had some serious health issues in the past, and our prayers are with him and his family.

We left at 10am for a lovely two hour drive to Assisi for the YSA conference here.  BTW, we always thought it was pronounced like "ah-sissy", but there is only one 's' at the end, so in Italian it is actually "ah-seize-ee." The drive was mostly on freeways, although there was construction for the latter half, slowing us down somewhat. My wife, who had been up pretty late working on her presentation, slept much of the second hour. The car was packed full with two suitcases, plus a bit of food and a bunch of bags of games and other stuff we brought from the Institute. When we got here, it took a cart and two trips to get it all in, but they let us check in right away. The hotel, Domus Pacis Assisi, is very nice. There are nuns and Franciscan monks walking around inside and outside. Our room is quite spacious, particularly by European standards. It took us a while to figure out how to turn on the AC to get the room freshened up a bit, but after that everything was great. 

The kids started trickling in from all over Italy, with registration from 2 - 6pm. The group is smaller than in past years for various reasons, but they obviously are having a lot of fun being here together.

Registration in the lobby

 

 

Reception desk

We ran into a couple of recently returned Anziani from our mission, including Anziano Rodriguez, who finished as AP last month.

We also saw Sorella Panebianco, who served as a young missionary in Milano at roughly the same time I did, as did her sister. She lives in Rome and was here doing grandma duty, with her daughter and son-in-law working at the conference. Apparently she rarely gets photos taken, but we got her to consent to a picture this time.

At 6pm we had an opening meeting, with a bunch of conference announcements, followed by a talk by a Franciscan Friar about St. Francis and his path to following Christ. Then we had the first meeting with our group of kids, about 20 of them, for whom we are the adult leaders for the week. We went around the room and had everyone introduce themselves, giving their name, where they are from, and a hobby or interesting fact. There are kids from all over Italy, from African, and from Malta. A bunch of them served missions in Milano, which built an immediate bond with me! At 7pm there were appetizers followed by a buffer dinner downstairs. After that there was a dance, with a DJ. Dances are very different from back in our day, and my wife wasn't really even tempted by the music, which shows how old we are!

 

 

There was a 10pm meeting for all of us "tutor" couples, as we are called, talking about logistics for the coming days. There is a bunch of info online for us, but it is in several different places (Facebook, gans.it, and WhatsApp), a little hard to find, but they seem prefer that way to printed paper. It will be a fun and tiring conference. We got to bed at nearly midnight. Fortunately the next morning would not be a terribly early one.