Milan

Today was a real tear jerker.  First, I had to get up SUPER early and say goodbye to mom and Tauns.  Saying goodbye wasn’t so hard, but getting up before 7 was brutal!  Just kidding mom, I cried myself back to sleep after you guys left L.  Then trying to get Jared out of bed made him cry too.  We woke up today planning on going to the special talk here in Milan.  What we didn’t know is just how many Brothers and Sisters from Milan it would take to get two inexperienced tourists to a meeting!  So yesterday we called a local kingdom hall that we had googled and a brother told us the English meeting was at such and such location at noon!  That was just too easy, right? Right…  So today we get a cab and drive to the kingdom hall.  We didn’t notice a kingdom hall but, since they’re so easy to spot, we saw some of our Brothers and Sisters walking outside.  We approached them and they showed us and walked us right in… to the Chinese congregation!!!  Ahhh!  This kingdom hall had Italian, Chinese and Spanish meetings that day but no English.  A brother who spoke Italian (and I’m assuming Chinese) but nearly no English did his best to help us but we were getting nowhere.  Soon we were surrounded by half the congregation (meeting had ended) and everyone had figured out we needed to go to an English meeting.  People were pulling out their cell phones, getting out maps and compass’, telling us bus lines to get to other halls but no one knew exactly what hall or what time the meeting would be.  All of the sudden the Brother gets an idea and grabs Jared and pulls him into an elders meeting going on in the back room!  He had remembered that you can look up meeting times and locations on JW.org which they did by using one of the elders log-ins.  We now had the location and time of the nearest English congregation!  Everyone was happy!  The only problem was, it now started in 20 minutes and it was across town.  A young brother raises his hand and tells us he wants to drive us there (single tear).  We get into his 4 foot long car and make it to the English hall so fast (and a lil scary) I think we were 25 minutes early. 

The congregation was sooo warm (of course)!  I actually think every publisher came up and introduced themselves.  Many were from Nigeria, some from UK, some Italians, but hardly any from US.  It was funny how many people we had to explain where Oregon was.  The second we said “it’s above California…” they were like “Ohhhh yes! California!”  Ha!

             We’ve been in Milan since yesterday and we really like it.  It’s a great city!  Although, everyone here is dressed like they’re in a fashion magazine and wears designer clothing with designer handbags.  So…Jared and I fit right in with our Ross Dress for less bargain clothes.  We leave for Barcelona tomorrow night.  It’s about 14 hours, luckily it’s on a sleeper train.  We are going to try and see Lake Como tomorrow since it’s only about 30 min away.  We’ll see.  Love you guys! 


P.S.  For some reason the internet here blocks a ton of stuff including Google blog post pics.  It's just text today but well get some pics up later.