Arrivederci Roma

Well we are on our way to Crotone today via train, its a long way and takes about 8 hours. I really do love traveling in Italy by train, it is a very comfortable way to travel, watching the countryside glide by. Unfortunately there is no WIFI on this train so I have to use my personal hotspot when we pull into a station, we are currently sitting at the Naples station so I have good cell coverage.  

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Roma Manzoni English Congregation meeting. It was about a 2 km walk from our accommodation and we left ourselves too much time and got there way too early, the was a brother there who just dropped off his family and they invited us to a nearby cafe for a coffee before the meeting started. When we entered the cafe there was already two groups of witnesses having a study with two seperate refugees before the meeting.

The world is a small place, turns out that Thomas and Melanie Mueller are in this congregation, many of you may have known them when they were in Paradise Point congregation, I can’t say I really know Tom that well but Melanie was in my congregation when I was a kid back in Geelong. Her father Andrew (Michaels brother) and Helen Clarkson have been visiting for a while. The unfortunate thing was that Thomas was giving a talk in a neighbouring congregation so we didn’t actually get a chance to see them but we are going to Rome for the English assembly next week and I hope we see them there. 

That was surprise number one, surprise number two was that the brother giving the talk looked and sounded familiar, it turned out that he was Owen Jepson’s brother. Owen was our first book study conductor we had when we first moved to Runaway Bay all those years ago. 

Well we have now arrived at long last to our destination, Crotone. The trains progressively got smaller until we boarded a bus on train wheels. Trying to get 60kg of luggage up into these things was my workout for the month, the love I had at first had cooled somewhat by now. It was so good to see Pacer, Talia, Marco & Victoria, the people we had spoken so much to over the last 2 months organising, planning, we felt like we knew them so well. They gave is such a warm reception.  

More to come.