YSA Helping Hands in Sardinia

Disaster in Sardinia

Italy declares state of emergency in Sardinia after deadly cyclone

(Reuters) - A cyclone killed 18 people and made hundreds homeless as extreme rainfall flooded eastern parts of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italian authorities said on Tuesday. The government declared a state of emergency after Cyclone Cleopatra dropped 450mm of rain in an hour and a half overnight, causing rivers to burst their banks, sweeping away cars and flooding homes across the island.

Lorenzo, Daniele, & Alberto

Helping Hands

Friday evening, five of the Roma Young Adults along with their leaders went with a group organized by the Stake to do service in Sardinia for the weekend in cleanup efforts. 

Countryside north of Roma

Apartment Inspections

We drove to Elder Wortham and Busdicker’s apartment way out in the country. It was a beautiful drive, but the mission is moving them into a closer apartment because of the time and gas it takes to get there.

Elders Busdicker, Wortham, & Andrew

Institute

Sisters Furlanich, Pace, and Roberto

Five of our Young Adults went with a group organized by the Stake to do service in Sardinia for the weekend in cleanup efforts, so our numbers were down for Institute Friday evening. Sisters Pace and Furlanich came with Roberto one of their investigators.  

Daniele D'Apuzzo and Anziano Andrew

Daniele is a YSA member who is studying to be an actuary

Italy Coast to Coast

Trip to Pescara

Seagull on the sign

Walking on the beach

We drove to Pescara on the east coast of Italy to do inspections of the missionary apartments. There are some nice toll roads that we drove on to get across Italy from Rome. 



We arrived at 10:30am and were able to inspect both apartments for the Elders and Sisters.  We found a little Paneficio on the way and bought some pastries to give to each apartment we inspected. 

The elders told us about the huge rainstorm two days before where the water in the streets was up to their knees. Although Pescara is located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, there are large mountains nearby with three main rivers running down to the coast. Pescara's streets flood periodically when there are big rainstorms.  

Adriatic Sea

That night, we stayed in a hotel about a block from the beach. Tourist season was over, so it wasn’t very crowded. Friday morning, we were able to walk on the beach. There were lots of branches and trees that had been left from the flood, but it was still fun to walk along the ocean and watch the waves. We were glad we came when we did because as we left for L’Aquila to do two more inspections, the skies were cloudy and more rain was on its way! We enjoyed meeting all of the elders and sisters in Pescara and L'Acquila.

Institute

The Andrews with Martina

We said good-bye to Martina Acquaro this week and had a going away party for her. She just received a job offer to work in Paris at a hotel where she had worked the year before.  We will miss her! She has only been baptized for about a year, and she was on the YSA counsel and helped plan activities!

Bon Voyage to Martina (right)

Speed game for Scripture Mastery

Super Saturday
We were asked to prepare scripture mastery games for 25 youth at the Super Saturday seminary activity and reminded all of our seminary students to be there. Amazingly, there were closer to 45 youth, and we had 6 girls attend from our ward! Wow! The YW President made a special effort to have several Young Women come to the Super Saturday and stay at her house that night so that they could participate in the YW Sacrament meeting on Sunday. 


Roma 3 Young Women

The Young Women had their Sacrament meeting program today and did an wonderful job! It was amazing to hear their testimonies of the gospel and so much fun to work with them on their  musical number! 

Sister Martinez, Sara, Ester, Angela, Paola, Pamela, Debora, Sharline, Sister Gasparro (President)