Saying Goodbyes

To our branch:

When our group came to Siena, our numbers more than doubled the branch... and there's only about 30 of us total. It has been such a wonderful experience to get to know the members of the branch and learn from their example, testimony, and commitment to the gospel.

Unfortunately I don't have a picture with the members, but this is our entire BYU group with the Branch Missionaries.

Probably one of the coolest things that we've been able to do for our Branch is help them with their genealogy work. Their genealogy center here has hundreds of thousands of names that need to be entered into the church data system. After spending our Tuesday and Friday nights at the Church, our group entered in about 50,000 names.

The branch made a poster for all of us to sign for the bulletin board. You probably can't read it, but it says that we completed 48.000 names from 9,000 different families- from the years 1562-1732. Even though there's still a lot more names to do, we were all more than happy to be able to do our part.

To the Everett Family:

Our BYU Professor, Peter, his wife Leah, and their three kids have been our second families on this trip. I'm sure it can't be easy to handle 24 students... especially when they're all girls. But we've had so much fun getting to know them and learning from Peter's endless pool of knowledge- not just about art, but about anything in general.

And last, but not least, our host family:

They were more than we could have asked for
I will miss:
-having Ben as out personal chef and culinary teacher
-finding my room surprisingly clean everyday after coming home from school... even when I forgot to make my bed
-two full-time comedians at the dinner table
-excursions to unknown places in Tuscany
-and of course, chestnuts...they will forever remind me of my Italian family