Malta - Week 9
Transfer week: Five trips to the airport, sad good-byes and happy hellos!
This week started off with all the missionaries getting a phone call with the news of their transfers! There were a lot of changes in our Malta District! Elder Chandler was getting transferred and Sister Paulo was going home. We were losing two very strong missionaries! But, we were getting three new Sisters and one new Elder! This was exciting news!
Monday morning, we said Good-bye to Sister Paulo.
Sister Paulo was an amazing missionary and served well. We have loved working with here. She will be missed! She and Sister Christeche flew to Rome together. Sister C went to Rome so she could stay with other sisters while awaiting her new companion's arrival.
Good-byes are never easy!
We started a new session of English Classes and changed our nights to Monday and Wednesday hoping it would make it easier for people to attend. Without the other 2 sister missionaries, we didn't have enough teachers for all three classes. So, we combined the Intermediate class with the Advanced. It was fun to teach a larger class for a change.
We had a great turnout for our Game Night on Tuesday.
All of the towns right now are decorating for the upcoming Holiday, The Feast of Mary's Assumption.
St John's Co-Cathedral was magnificent! It is dedicated to John the Baptist. It is one of the most impressive baroque churches in the world with nine decorated chapels on its two sides. So Magnificent!
It has been said that entering it is much like stepping into a jewel box! That is exactly how I felt when we walked in. This is one of the most ornate cathedrals I have ever seen.
The painted ceiling panels featuring scenes from the life of John the Baptist are absolutely stunning!
In addition to the main chapel, this is one of the 8 lateral chapels.
This famous art piece, The Beheading of St John is an internationally recognized masterpiece by Caravaggio.
There are almost 400 people buried here. The entire floor is covered with marble tombstones that mark the graves of the sons of Europe's noble families from the 16th to 18th centuries. Each tombstone is intricately inlaid with precious-colored marbles depicting symbols and Latin inscriptions proclaiming the merits of the Knight. I found it interesting that a lot of them had skeletons pictured on them like this. I found this explanation online: Although there is a profusion of skeletons, strangely enough the end result is not macabre but celebratory: death is the moment of salvation and only the body is being returned to the ground.
.jpg)
.jpg)
The views of the chapel from the balcony are so stunning, I couldn't pick just one, I had to share them all.
The clock tower tour was delightful! Climbing the 99 steps of the narrow spiral staircase was definitely worth it.
Views from the clock tower.
After visiting the Cathedral, we hurried to the airport to pick up Sister Martinez. She is one of the new sisters joining us in Malta. For some reason, she arrived a day earlier than the others, which meant she had to spend the night with us. She is from Colombia and speaks primarily Italian and Spanish, with very little English. She will be an asset to our work here, as many in our branch and our friends in Malta are from Colombia. Communicating with her was somewhat challenging, but we managed to get by.
Our first stop was Dominos Pizza with the Elders!
That evening, our English class faced an unexpected challenge. When we arrived to the church, we discovered a water leak from the rooftop tanks had shut off the power to the upper floors where our Intermediate and Advanced classes are taught. Steve scrambled around trying to fix it, with no luck. With roughly 50 attendees present, we did not want to send them home. Instead, we decided to merge all three classes. With Steve teaching and several translators assisting, the session surprisingly turned out to be a great success.
After class, Elder Chandler took the opportunity to bid farewell to many of the friends he had made while we were there.
We were so sad to say good-bye to another one of our amazing missionaries!
He wanted to take this one last picture before he left! Pretty clever!
One more trip to the airport with crazy rush hour traffic and another sad good-bye! I didn't realize how hard it would be to bid farewell to our cute missionaries! This is the hardest part of our mission!
We headed home for a few hours and then returned in the afternoon to pick up Elder Wilding, Chandler's replacement!
We still had yet one more trip to the airport. The sisters were supposed to arrive at 9:00 PM, but their flight was late. We ended up taking our last trip to the airport at about 10:00 PM. When we picked them up, it was dark and we only had room for their luggage in our car, so they had to take the bus home and meet us there. Pictured: Sister Martinez, Sister Vedovi a brand new sister from Brazil who speaks only Portuguese and Italian, Sister Hobby from Australia who speaks only English and Italian and Sister Christeche who speaks Portugese, English and Italian!
On Friday evening, we had the pleasure of having dinner at the Jacksons, a family who also work at the US Embassy and moved to Malta the same week as we did. They have three adorable children whom I've had the opportunity to teach in Primary on several occasions. After trying to schedule a dinner for over a month, we finally made it happen, and it was certainly worth the wait! Carey is a fantastic cook, and the meal was amazing. They also invited the Elders and gave them treats from their recent Amazon delivery from the States. Regrettably, I forgot to get photos of our meal. Their home was beautiful, with a spacious kitchen with a full-sized sub-zero type fridge. They also had a swimming pool with a large patio—the first I've seen in Malta! It was fun to see!
Comments
Post a Comment