Katie Arrives in Milan! August 22, 2012

I got an early early phone call on August 22, from the Mission President himself, telling us that Katie had arrived safely and was in downtown Milan doing street contacts right then. She would be coming back to have a nice dinner and then being assigned to a city north of Milan called “Bergamo” (pronounced Bear-gahm-o) a beautiful medieval town of about 120K, full of cool art and architecture at the base of the Swiss Alps . She is to be trained by Sister Padula from Argentina. He was happy to hear that Katie spoke Spanish because Sister Padula doesn’t prefer to speak English. He told us of the sacrifices Sister Padulla had made, selling everything she owned, giving up a budding operatic career and coming without any family support to Italy. He said they are excited to have Katie’s bright face and happy personality in their mission, that the sisters are really leading out in the mission and he could tell Katie would fit right in. 

When he hung up I was in shock… I cried for about a half hour… is all. Of course we googled it right away:

And of course the link to the article about 17 deaths from an earthquake last May came up first. :( WHYYYY???? The Lord protects missionaries, right? Right!

http://earthquake-report.com/2012/05/29/earthquake-and-aftershocks-northern-italy-may-29-aftershock-as-powerful-as-the-may-20-mainshock/

Here is a link to a short video about Bergamo. Katie spends a lot of time right in these places. She loves it and says Bergamo is so beautiful it looks like it’s out of a movie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQxxk_MHzY&feature=endscreen

Here is a link to an artsy video about young Italian adults running around the city at night. Another view of the places Katie sees every day/night. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kKFoVyCdXI&feature=related

Here is an article that gives a lot of detail about Bergamo… for the true Italy enthusiast…

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/travel/19bergamo-overnighter.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.levart