Switzerland

(Here are some of my favorite pictures. It was very hard to choose because there were so many, and they are not in order).  The children's night of songs.
Ice! Ghiacchio! And, ah, the life-filled sound of rushing water! 
This huge half-circle window is the window to our (the girls': Federica, Chiara, Matilde, and I) room! There are no screens, so I could just crawl out of the window and be outside, overlooking the river, the mountains, and also a set of stairs sided by wildflowers of many colors, where I loved to sit and read my Bible when I had the chance, listening to the beautiful music of the ringing bells from the church tower in the city. 
Christiano, the Elena's little boy. He was the one she was pregnant with when her husband died. He is SO cute! 
One of the city streets in the city where our hotel was. Just walking through on our way to the mountain trail. 
Sunburnt me with Micheala (Miki), Elena's other child. She is 5 years old, and she is so precious! By the last day she was calling my name, sitting on my lap during the mass, holding my hand, falling asleep in my arms when it got late the night before, and asking me to eat lunch with her :') it was such a HUGE blessing to me, because I had origionally been so drawn to Elena on that first day that she met me with a hug and kiss, and now I got to not only know her and her sister, Daniella better, but also get to know her kids, or at least her daughter, Miki! What a joy! 
Francesca (left), Rosa (middle) and I. Francesca is the worship leader and Rosa is in the choir. 
(Middle:) Daniella (Right:) Elena. It turns out that my two friends from the Pilgrimage are sisters, and we got to spend a lot of time together on this trip! Gosh, they are so great :') There was this really funny, cute old man who was taking this picture, and he couldn't figure out how to push down the button to take a picture! this was about the 4th time he tried, and that's why we were all laughing so hard. 
"Il Nostro Castello", our castle |  This was our hotel!!! 
My new friend Annalina (who is going on the GS trip) with horses. She loves animals and wants to become a veterinarian. They were giving horse-drawn carriage rides through the mountains!
During the paint war! This paint-foam-ball-shot was MY work, from the complete other side of the field! I felt really bad; I hadn't expected to actually be able to aim that well! But we all had a great time
It's WAR! Stefano in the backgroud in ammunition mode, and Chiara and her friend, Matilde (who was making cookies with her that first week), in the middle. 
That is an avalanch of flour being thrown on the paint-covered victim on the blow-up toy in the middle! 
My friend Monica (HILARIOUS to talk to in English because she is SO funny! She once told me that her "beautiful husband loves to kitchen." I think she meant wonderful husband who loves to cook! ;D) getting ready to get very dirty! 
Take me to your leader. (This is our leader). 
My new friend, Julia. She, like many other kids here, loves English. She is really nice and is also going on the GS trip this week! 

Cows enjoying the beautiful Alps! 

Not a bad view, eh?
Lunch at the "top" -ha!- of our climb (walk!) (what I am trying to say is that we were by no means climbing up cliffs or trecking through extreme conditions; just enjoying the beauty from a lovely, not terribly steep trail! -I very much enjoyed it that way! ;) ) 
Marco and Stefano! 

You don't find these in New Mexico! (Stefano and Marco counted at least 25 on one of our walks, but I don't think they weren't paying much attention, and I saw much more!) 

Wow, what a week! I don’t really know what to say except that God has truly led me to and on this journey, and I have been blessed out of my mind the past few days! The wonderful thing was not only getting to see such magnificent, awe-striking pieces of God’s creation in the Alps in Switzerland, but getting to experience His beauty with people who loved to worship Him, seek Him, learn about Him, and apply what we learn to our lives. 

Incredibly, I am actually leaving again tomorrow (we just got back today) for another week in the Alps in Switzerland, this time with the “youth group” of the church, called GS. I was personally invited by the priest who is the GS leader, and some of the friends I have already met (such as Maria and Sylvia, and a girl named Annalina who I met on this trip) are also going. It is so great to be able to talk about, not only culture, but also spiritual perspectives with people my age. I think I really needed this. In fact, I know I did, because God has brought me to this time for a reason. Incredible. 

Alright, so, here goes for a quick re-cap of the week. Walks, in the mountains: pictures say it all (even though there’s only a few of them!). An incredibly crazy game where everyone split up into teams and each of the four teams had a theme (the two I could figure out were Indians and Star Wars!) and then people were pulled down a giant “slip and slide” on a blow-up toy, while people on either side chucked everything from foam balls soaked in paint, to flower, cut grass, and even tomatoes- all out in the cold rain!!! Haha, this was seriously hilarious; it was The Weekend style, except, I think, more brutal (rotten tomatoes and buckets of paint in the pouring rain!? You’ve got to be kidding me!), and with all of the adults! From what I’ve heard, I have some of this wonderful madness awaiting me this week with the GS trip- and this time, I’ll probably be on the front lines! AIUTO (HELP!) ;D 

One of the most precious times to me was the second night when they had a kids night of songs and skits. It was SO much fun, and I practically started crying, because the kids songs were SO cute and funny, and each one had all these different hand movements, and parts that kept adding onto each other with more and more movements- it reminded me SO much of all of the different songs with hand movements that the Senate kids taught us on our choir trip! Kat, Jamie, Sam, Andrew, probably a million more, but gosh, I saw your faces in my head and imagined how much fun we would have doing these wonderful fun songs, and I seriously nearly started crying! But it was definitely fun to do anyway, in the theatre that was FILLED with kids, with the funniest movements and words! :D One song was about a crazy trip on a boat, that started out with something like “Una barca, mamma mia, dove andiamo?”: a boat, mamma mia, where are we going!?” It was SO funny. Sorry; I’m tired so I’m not very good at good descriptions right now (just exclamations!). 

Another really hilarious time was the last night show where they sang another wonderful compilation of children’s songs, made-up ones with jokes of people in the community\group, and some completely random Irish drinking songs (they were in English, so the lady beside me asked me “do you know this song?” HAHA!)! They also did an incredibly funny spoof skits making fun of a serious play that had been done the night before. Because the “making fun of” was friends finding things to laugh about together, it was absolutely and simply hilarious, though I, of course, could understand nothing!  

This not-understanding was most painful for me during that play (that the jokes were of the next night). It was entirely comprised of three men’s monologues about their encounter’s with Jesus Christ. The three men were Pilate, Herod, and one of the other men who tried Jesus before his crucifixion- I never could quite figure out who it was because the name is different in Italian. The words were not memorized- each one was probably about twenty minutes or more!- ; they read scripts, but… it was incredible. It was seriously INCREDIBLE acting. Because of the nature of it, the entire essence of it was in the words. I could tell, just from the acting, from the voices, faces, movements of these truly incredible men, and also from the impact that it had on Stefano as he watched it, I could sense the heart-changing immensity of the depth of its worth, in message and communication to the human spirit. This is not a very good description; I am having a difficult time explaining. But it was beautiful. That is what I am trying to say, is that it was beautiful. There are some times when humans are able to connect with an idea that is bigger than us, and express it in a way that brings it so closely to earth it is able to be FELT in the hearts of people. And when the idea is something as huge as God coming to earth as a man and being tried by humans to be crucified- it’s huge. It’s huge, and deep, and afterwards I felt angry and heartbroken, and I cried very hard because something so beautiful was right before me, RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES, and I could not have it, just because I could not understand the words in which it was spoken. “Did you like it?” a lady asked me afterwards, and I shook my head in frustration, “I didn’t understand.” “Yes,” she said, understandingly; “it was very deep; profound.” And that was when I started crying, because yes, I knew. I knew that it was deep and profound, and I also knew that I could not enter into its fullness, and it was very, very hard for me. 

As deeply-affecting this experience was in a sorrowful sort of way, another experience the next night came that brought joy in an unbelievably incredible way! It was that final re-cap night with the joke skits, funny songs (not the same as the children’s night of songs, but with some of the same ones again), and also some songs by the choir, which is directed by a man named Rami, and it is so beautiful to listen to! Well, I was eating lunch with Rami one day, and it came up that I love to sing. He asked me if I would like to sing a song with Francesca, the guitarist who sings most of the songs. I told him yes, and incredibly, it actually worked out! So, for two days (we had this conversation on Thursday and we actually did it on Saturday), I was thinking of a song: “Glory Be to our Great God,” the one that Cris and Amy chose for their wedding. I thought that they would like it because of the chorus, “Alleluia, glory be to our great God.” I had no idea what to expect, if I would be singing it alone or if I could do harmony with the other lady who leads most of the songs- or if I would get to do it at all! But Saturday afternoon came and Francesca met with me for 10 minutes in which I sang her the song and she figured out how to play it on her guitar. Now, this part was quite nervous for me because when I first started singing and she started playing along, it sounded pretty awful; the guitar, neither notes nor rhythm, seemed to match the singing in any way, to me. In a matter of minutes, though, she had the melody figured out. It was very different from the “real” melody, because there are no minor chords. She speaks very little English, and I speak very little Italian, and such being the case, I decided within a matter of seconds that trying to explain a “minor chord” (they use MANY minor chords; it’s not that she wouldn’t know what it is, just to try to explain it!!!) and where to put it, and how it’s supposed to sound….pretty impossible! So I just let it stay the way it was, in a much less mysterious, but much more uplifting version of the melody. Also, I soon realized the rhythm pattern that she had taken up. I think that the real song is probably normally sung on the off-beats or something weird or complicated, so I followed her into a completely new type of rhythm for this song, that again, sounded much more laid back and happy. It was a strange transition of a song into a completely new, but still the same, song! (wow, I am very tired, this is terrible grammar, and I hope it even makes sense. Sorry). So that was set. Now the truly incredible part came: we went into a room where 8 other people had gathered, all members of the choir. They were singing an English song and so I was asked to help harmonise with Francesca for some parts, and sing the rest of the parts with their choir! Now, these people are all adults with these AMAZING voices, in a huge church choir that does INCREDIBLE harmonies, and I got to sing with a group of them! Also, in the last few minutes of practice before this whole event started, I was practicing singing “my” song with Francesca, and other choir members came to listen and started singing, and soon the entire group of 8 people were all singing “Alleluia, glory be to our great God” in 5 different harmonies, and behold: this simple and beautiful song that I learned for my cousins’ wedding was being sung by an Italian choir, me leading. I mean, this doesn’t even seem real to write this now, because I can’t even really believe it happened. At the very end of the re-cap festa, with the pictures of the whole trip, skits, songs, jokes, all of that, we went up and sang the song that they had been learning, which was so beautiful, and I have had it in my head ever since, even now; I wish I could just transmit the rich harmonious chords to you through these words, but I’m afraid that I only have a video which doesn’t seem to upload to the blog, and it doesn’t do the music justice anyway. Then we sang the other one that I had taught them. I sang alone on the verses, with Francesca singing some harmony while playing the guitar, from the lyrics that I had written out for her. Then on the choruses, three men and four other women all joined in on all of these different levels that they picked out in an instant, and we were lost together in the depths of incredible music. The most wonderful thing about it was that the words were true: “Glory be to our great God.” Francesca translated the last verse for them, at my choosing, because it talks about all of nature praising God, and as I had said before –and was even more on my heart being in the incredible mountains and having such a difficult time with the language- this idea was very dear to me because God’s praise transcends all languages and goes to all peoples. I ended up getting a whole lot of attention afterwards too, but to me it had nothing to do with me- it was just a gift that had been given to me, and oh the complete joy of that experience! After we had been practicing with Rami (the choir director) listening, and as we were all walking past him to go out the door, he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a hug, and I can’t express how much that meant to me. I think it meant, overall, -that people were blessed, that the other main singer who I admiringly looked up to all week came to me and told me she had cried while I sang, that Rami, a highly skilled and rather intimidating man to me would show such kindness- I think it meant overall that God’s spirit was able to connect us beyond what any outward things (like the same language or even religion) could- they loved to worship God, and when I came and showed them this song, and sang solely by the grace and power of the Spirit, they understood that I, too, loved to worship God, and it truly was all to God’s glory that we were all worshiping Him, the One True God!  
Bravissima! :D 

I guess that’s it for tonight. Francesca, by the way was even more intimidating to me than Rami, by the way, partially because I never saw her smile, which is very uncommon in this group! But as I got to spend more time with her that day, also eating dinner with her before we went to practice, I was very blessed to get to know her. And during the joke skits she was laughing so hard she was falling over onto me, grasping my shoulder and nearly falling to the floor!!! I was laughing practically just as hard just watching her! :’D Before we left the hotel this morning, she took me aside with a little mp3-like device and recorded me singing the song again so that she could learn it and play it again. I wish I could do the same with every beautifully amazing song that she and the other lady have sung and played this week! But I don’t think we’d be able to sing worship songs in Spanish and Italian the way they can in English! And also, by the way, I have been able to understand more Italian the past few days than I ever have in my life, and I have had a few (SIMPLE!) conversations solely in Italian that I would never have been able to do before. I’m getting there. It’s just when there is such depth that I just really can’t get with my simple vocabulary. Imagine taking a page out of a book or something, and randomly deleting everything except for, say, one every five words (that’s when it’s good!), and everything else is just a blank page. That’s how it feels to listen to talking in which I understand more and more verbs, parts of speech, conjugations, etc, but from which you really CAN’T get the big picture of what is actually being said. Well, there’s only one way to get there and that is doing just what I am doing. One step at a time. 

I really hate not being able to be in touch with anyone during the week. Without the blogs and e-mails, I have missed my family and friends more this week than ever before, and it has been very present in my mind. And yet, it is obvious that I am supposed to be here. I am gaining more than I cold have gained in any other way, in any other situation possible, and I am so immensely thankful I can’t really even quite take in how blessed I am! So just saver the incredible gift we have of being able to be connected through our prayers, and I hope that you have a truly wonderful week. 
God bless <3