Italy, my love.

We spent a few weeks in Italy this summer visiting family and at the same time visiting our past location of ministry. 

Italy has an interesting shape, it looks like a boot with a heel and a spur. It is kind of a small country, smaller than California alone. It also has two big islands part of it: Sicily and Sardinia. People ask me all the time how is the weather there and it is hard to give a response because for such a small country the climate varies greatly. If you go down to Sicily you can find that it is as hot as here in California but much more humid. And in the winter season you get storms, lightning, thunder and winds like no other! In the center south, in the coastal cities you find  a very warm climate, but you still get winters. In the north often it looks like there are rainy season and really rigid winter. 

But in Italy it is not just the weather that is various! Italy is made by 21 regions and each one of them is characterized by its own dialect. You can easily say that there is a dialect for every city and town, some of them are very similar with just a small nuance of difference, others are completely different and the reason lays behind the many occupations by foreign powers and influence of the country that have dominated my beautiful country. 

Food is various. Every region has its typical foods, if you go down to Sicily you find arancini, granite ai gelsi, cannoli etc., in Puglia you will find "orecchiette alle cime di rapa", wonderful pastries while the Florentine steak is found in Tuscany. Sometimes even silly things like a croissant change their name as you travel from south to north, the south will call it cornetto and the north would call it brioche. And they will look at you weird if you don't use the right name in the right place!

You can find a ton of history all throughout the land. Once a friend from Sicily was telling us that wherever you dig in Sicily you are most likely to find something ancient. One friend from Siracusa told us of a builder in the city. As his crew was digging down in order to lay a foundation, they find a statue. They looked at it and then buried it in concrete because if they would have said something the whole worksite  would have become an archeological site. In Sicily you can see temples like the ones you see in Athens. In fact in the third century, Siracusa was the largest Greek city in the world! Pompei and Ercolano hold the beauty of cities destroyed by the past, and is from sites like these that we can learn a lot about our history. Florence collects our arts but in every city or town you cam find ancient piece of our history, some are unknown to the world but still so precious. 

We visited Rome with our kids this time around because I wanted them to get a glimpse of their past! We also stopped at Saint Peter's Basilica. Many years have passed since the day it was built, but things are still the same. You have crowds and crowds who go there and pay to see the inside of the basilica, reliquiem and to see the pope. When I stand there and look and this huge building I am reminded that this is where everything started. I have those words that keep on going into my mind "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from purgatory springs". The basilica was built on the deception of people. Coin upon coin was paid with the hope to have a place in heaven. Martin luther was shocked when he saw what was being built and the deception behind it. And so the reformation was started! Even today the basilica is a sign of the richness of the pope and the catholic church and it is also a sign of deception. The encouragement to buy your salvation from the catholic church is always there, it is masked in different forms but it is there. 
The truth is that even if Italy is made up of so many beautiful things: food, climate, places, people...most of its people are lost deceived by an old tradition and religion. 
As you walk through those marvelous roads and you meet the people, you always have to remember that they are lost and don't have any idea of the spiritual truth spoken in the Bible.
 I think the reason why I love Italy so much is that I see not just the beauty of a country but also the need of a population!