Nov 12 2010 Zone Conference in Rome!

Elder Nielsen in Rome Italy!
(more about this photo at the end of the post)

When the Italy Catania Mission was absorbed into the Italy Rome Mission on July 1, 2010 the Mission Home that had been in Catania was moved to Rome. Elder Nielsen hoped this would mean a chance for him to someday see Rome, and this week he and his companion traveled to Rome for a zone conference!!  Here is what he wrote about this amazing opportunity...

"This week was AWESOME!!!! I went to Rome!! How cool is that!?

It was cool to see the airport I first saw in Italy after such a long time too. The assistants picked us up and took us to the mission home. It was great to see President and Sister Kelly and the mission home was awesome too. Turns out it was one of the houses that Mussolini built!

It was so nice of them they actually got us a full fledged tour with the hop on/hop off buses. It was so awesome! ...they are two levels and they have an audio track to listen to as well. The narration was in English as was the Crawford's [a missionary couple serving in the Mission Office]! It was so much fun!

The first main stop we made was at the Coliseum! It was so cool to actually see it in person! It was huge! We took some pictures while the Crawfords gave us a history lesson. It was incredible!

From there the next thing we saw was the main house for the government of Rome etc. it was this huge all white building. There is a statue they have out front of a horse rider that is so big at least sixteen men can fit in the belly of the horse! ...there are tons of statues everywhere and they are all so huge! Sitting on top of the double decker bus (which is open air by the way) watching Rome going by was incredible!

From there we stopped at Vatican City. I have officially visited the smallest country in the world! They even had their own postal system.

 ...we stopped at this little street cafe and had some pizza which was cool. It was the classic tourist in Italy experience, we ate pizza on a side street cafe, had people play music for us etc.

Their group included the MP's wife Sorella Kelly,
the couple missionaries from Malta,

couple missionaries from the Mission Home,
the Elders, and other patrons

(he said they didn't have a lot of space for people to sit down

at this restaurant so they packed them in together)

From that we went to St. Peter's Square and looked around. The main thing we did was go to St. Peter's Basilica. It was so huge! And so decorated. We spent a good hour and a half there looking at all the stuff! It was pretty sweet! There was a lot of ancient art that I had studied about that I actually got to see. The whole square was designed by Bernini.

Also there was the famous statue by Michelangelo of Mary with Christ. So that was pretty cool! [this is known as the Pietà ]

After that we went to the Trevi Fountain. ...also there are tons of things we saw along the way. This tour took the whole day. I’m just mentioning the main things we saw. So anyway the fountain. It was so cool! There were tons of people though. We chucked a coin in as the tradition says* and then went and got some gelato. It was cool to see!

*A traditional legend holds that if visitors throw a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to Rome.

After that the Crawfords and Sister Kelly had to get ready for zone conf. but we had bought all day passes for the bus so they just let the four of us take them and finish it off. We decided to just stay up top and cruise Rome! That was really cool too because we got to see Rome at night! It was a blast! Man it was such a good day!!

Before the conference started I had my interview with President Kelly. It was great! He had basically read my mind and started off by answering a bunch of questions that I had which was great. We talked about his plans for Malta and I really appreciated his perspective and the way he is looking ahead. We then talked about my future with Malta. He asked me how I felt about staying there for the rest of my mission. I told him that I will go where the Lord needs me to go but I would prefer to finish what I have started here. He totally agreed and said that unless he gets hit with a bolt of lightning or something like that I will be finishing here! SO I am really excited about that! Then he gave me a really great compliment saying that there are few missionaries who could do what I have done... not only working here but being able to be here for so long and handle the stress of it. I don't know about all that but it was nice to hear! He also told me that every chance I got to tell everyone how cool Malta is.  Malta in a TON of ways is just like Oki! I love it!

The rest of the conference was great too! We had the zone leaders and then the assistants do their spiel.  Also Elder Jones gave his parting testimony and it was great! He did a good job!  Immediately after the conference we jumped into the van with the assistants and they took us to the airport. The traffic was awful! It took us almost two hours to get to the airport when it normally takes about 30 minutes.

We got checked in and everything went smoothly. We worked our way to the gate and on the way met this lady who was really struggling with her luggage and offered to help. She didn't speak any English and after a few minutes we were able to help her know she had to go and re check in to get her tickets. We waited with her luggage that she just dropped in the middle of the hall while she did it. As soon as she had her gate we helped her carry her bags. It ended up being on the other side of the airport and we had to run back to our gate since they were boarding but it was worth it. She really appreciated it. She kept saying thanks in Chinese.

We made it back and got on the plane in time. The flight was great.  We got little sandwiches which was nice. We stopped in Reggio Calabria to refuel and to get some more passengers. So it was different which is nice!"

When they got back to Malta they were allowed to sleep in (to recover from their trip) which he said was nice, and the rest of their week consisted of proselyting, Maltese lessons, Sunday meetings, FHE, dinner with the Branch Mission Leader at Surfside (a restaurant on the water) and Christmas shopping! He also shared this:

"One thing I have learned out here is that you have to be direct! You really have to work at sharing as much as you can in as little time as possible."

I asked Elder N about the photo at the top and this was his reply...
"They are a special contingent of guards called the Swiss Guards (because they are from Switzerland) it's their "calling" to guard the Vatican. Their uniforms were designed by Michelangelo hence their real old time look. Their expressions were like that because one we are LDS and it's their "divine calling to guard the capitol of the church". Also I'm sure they get that "can we take a photo?" all the time. We actually got a LOT of looks from priests and such as we were walking around."