Friends in the Mission Field

Eight senior missionary couples met in downtown Rome to visit the apartment where the Apostle Paul resided (see previous post). Afterward we went upstairs to see the beautiful church of Santa Maria in Via Lata. This picture is the perfect souvenir of our unique and special shared time together.  

On another day, a kind friend from the temple, invited us to join with friends from the Ancona, Italy ward for homemade pizza at the Patron Housing courtyard. Eleven of us gathered around the table for a delicious "united nations" meal. Countries represented where Croatia, Venezuela, Peru, Nigeria, U.S.A, and Italy. We laughed and chatted in a variety of languages and had a delightful time. 

Friends truly do make life sweeter!!

14 Beautiful and Special Acres

We just had to save and share this really cool aerial view (screen shot) of the buildings of the   Rome Temple Complex. It is a beautiful and peaceful space. We feel blessed and honored to be there every day. 

Four major buildings surround a traditional Italian piazza. In this image you can see the Temple, Patron Housing (square building to the left of the temple), Visitor Center (directly opposite the temple) and Chapel (to the right of the temple).  Mingled among the olive trees (400-500 years old), palm trees, fountains and stone planter boxes filled with flowers, are multiple piazettas with stone benches for quiet moments. 

The complex sits on an elevated knoll in the northeast of Rome near the beltway and freeway interchange. The property was purchased in the late 1990's. Before any building can be built in Rome it must be carefully inspected for Roman ruins which is done by digging trenches every 10 to 15 feet across the property. The day the Rome Italy Temple property was to be inspected, Church members in Rome held a special day of prayer and fasting. No ruins were found over the entire property, yet an old Roman village was discovered just 100 yards beyond the property boundary line.  https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/rome-italy-temple/

"A temple of God is the most sacred place of worship in the world - a place where heaven touches the earth, a place where marvelous blessings are bestowed, and a place where we can feel closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as we strive to become more like Them."   

(https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/why-latter-day-saints-build-temples?lang=eng)

Appreciating the Apostle Paul

We are in Rome, Italy for two years. The Apostle Paul was in Rome, Italy for two years. We came here to serve in the temple, he came here to be tried before the Emperor Nero on charges of heresy. We roam freely around Rome, he spent his time under house arrest in rooms that we were able, through special arrangement, to visit. We walked away from this experience with a great appreciation for the Apostle Paul's courage, mission and teachings. 

Located under the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata church, a portion of this space was once thought to be a crypt. In the 1600's further excavations revealed much more.  Our visit took us backwards in time. It seemed like every step down the ancient stairs took us 100 years into the past.  

Interesting features included a 1st century deep, dark, well that still has water in it...

Remnants of frescoes that had once decorated the walls of the apartment, believed to be 8th-century...

Large limestone foundation stones...

A column with a cross carved on it and a spiral inscription that reads: Verbum Del non est alligatum ("The word of God is not bound").  

A 17th-century altar on higher ground topped with a marble relief showing Peter and Paul reminiscing while Luke listens... 

The space pictured here was the most recent to be unearthed, in 2016, and is believed to be a bedroom. It could have been in a space like this that Paul wrote some of his epistles and last letters to early Christians. Paul was martyred in about A.D. 65.

The following observation is from Reverend Matthew Cowden: "This house once looked out onto the Via Lata which was the parade route to the city center where gladiators strolled in great triumph to receive their green victory laurels, literally a ring of bay leaves placed on their heads. Up the Via Lata, Roman generals paraded to the city center to receive their laurel leaf crowns made of gold. From the front doorway and windows looking over the first century Roman porch, Paul would have witnessed this victory parade very regularly over the two years he was held here.

One could easily imagine Paul contemplating his own, inevitable martyrdom from this view as he writes, 2 Timothy 4: "I am now  ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not only to me only, but unto all them also that love [him]."  

https://www.matthewcowden.com/2016/10/23/pauls-house-arrest-apartments-discovered/

Castel Sant'Angelo

Our visit to this unique structure enabled us to to retrace the entire history of Rome, the "Eternal City", all in one place. Famous stories, movies, operas, executions, and historic events took place or were inspired by Castel Sant'Angelo. 

 Its construction was commissioned in the first century AD by Hadrian, the Roman emperor, as a mausoleum to house his remains and those of his descendants.
(Below is a rendering of what the mausoleum might have looked like.)

Unlike other Roman monuments, this mausoleum never fell into disrepair over the centuries.  It thrived through an uninterrupted period of transformations. It went from being a tomb to being fortress, from a prison to a Renaissance dwelling and from a barracks to a national museum. Here are some of our favorite snapshots from our visit to Castel Sant'Angelo....

Lavish rooms of the Pope's apartments.

View from the top into the courtyard where stacks of cannonballs
waited to be thrown down on attacking armies.

There's the Vatican is in the distance. 

This is the Passetto (built in 13th century), an enclosed, elevated half-mile-long walkway that, over the centuries, provided passage from Castel Sant'Angelo to the Vatican City for popes and prisoners.  

A tourist and a seagull enjoying the view and breakfast. 

The name "Castel Sant'Angelo" is from a medieval legend that in 590 Michael the Archangel appeared before Pope Gregory the Great to announce the end of a plague. 
There is his statue, behind us, at the tippy-tippy-top of the castel.