When in Rome! Day 3

This morning we purchased a day pass bus ticket and headed for the Rome Temple! We had to catch 2 busses to get there and when we got off the first bus, it was pouring down rain. (The forecast said no rain today!) We waited for about 10 minutes under a vending machine shelter and caught the next bus. The temple is gorgeous! It is much smaller than it looks in the pictures! It was pretty special when we went into the Visitor's Center-- my cousin Nancy (Palmer) Eastwood has a daughter (Jane) currently serving there... to our surprise, I spotted a Sister Eastwood!!! She just happened to be there! She said she wasn't even supposed to be there today, but the schedule got changed to exactly the day we were there! This was the only day that we could've gone to the temple, so it was pretty neat that it worked out to see her! One of the Senior sisters said that there are angels up in heaven arranging these things for us here on the earth, and I believe it!!! She didn't know who I was, so I introduced ourselves and told her how we were related! It was so fun! She took us on a tour around the entire Visitor's Center and she took our picture outside on the grounds. I immediately messengered Nancy and sent the pictures with us to her. She's in Hawaii, so was probably asleep when I sent them. BTW, the Christus and 12 Apostles are laser copies of the ones in Denmark and they are made of Carrara marble-- so BEAUTIFUL!  What a cool day! There is a stained glass mural at the VC that isn't in any other place... it shows the parables and stories and stories of Jesus mostly from the New Testament. It is such a cool mural to look at-- we kept noticing new things as we looked closer. It even depicted my favorite story of Peter walking on the water to Jesus by depicting Peter in blue (symbolizing the water) and a puddle of water near his foot. There are so many more, as you look closer and a person can be more than one person in the scriptures-- like the woman at the well is also the woman with an issue of blood and the adulterous woman. So cool! We stood in front of this mural for a while with Sister Eastwood and her companion looking at all the different stories and parables! Sister Eastwood is going to attend BYU this summer and wants to meet Brooke (if she's still up there) and Katelyn! She is super cute and so much like her mom! We thought about doing a session, but we weren't really dressed appropriately and I didn't have my recommend... by the time the recorder called it in, we probably would've missed the session and the next one was a bit too late for our schedule. We walked just across the street to a brand new mall called Porto di Roma. We walked around there for a bit and debated getting some lunch at a restaurant Sister Eastwood recommended, but we were kind of full still from breakfast. We decided to get some gelato instead. The flavors are so good! We walked around the mall for a bit and then walked forever trying to find the bus stop! We had to walk in the grass and up this embankment to get to the upper level where we then backtracked to get to the bus stop-- what should've taken 6 minutes (according to Google) took 20 minutes! We did make it back to the hotel though!!!  Tonight we had our Edward Jones Theme evening and dinner at Meo Patacca Restaurant.  It was many courses and by dessert I was stuffed!  I only ate a little bit of my main course and the dessert.  It was sooooo good though.  We sat next to some really nice ladies-- Kathy Hogan and Joyce Cardon from Farmington, NM.  Joyce is actually a member, but I'm not sure if she is active... anyway, we talked to them about our day today and they were both so interested about the temple.  Kathy has had the young missionaries in her home teaching her.  She said she's been through 5 sets of missionaries!  She loves it when they come and she always has them wear clothes they can come help her in her garden in!  They were very interesting women to talk to.  Joyce's dad was a POW in Italy during WW2 and escaped miraculously and was able to return home.  It was a pretty cool story-- only 2 from his camp made it out of the 7 that escaped.  They were very malnourished, etc.  Anyway, it was a very cool story!  They are both very interesting women!  It was a very enjoyable evening!!!  The food and music both were so good... picture taken with one of the performers-- he played the guitar.