GANS BBQ

Our GANS – Young Adults – had a BBQ on Saturday. It was great! And well attended, I don't know so much by the GANS themselves but each set of missionaries (7 companionships, not counting us) had at least 1 or 2 investigators there.

I love these people

Funny Francisco

 

Cool Anziano Cowden - the birthday boy

GANS friendships

 And boy did we have plenty to eat. Italians love their BBQ, at least the Sicilians do. We had pasta first, always pasta – good thing we love pasta. They came out with this huge gigantic pot of pasta with fresh cherries tomatoes and melted mozzarella. But this was just the Primo (first) plate (as it is called in Italy.) Then we had grilled pork, the secondo (second) plate, but it did not stop there, there was grilled sausage links and some other kind of pork. So much meat, it was all seasoned in a delicious citrus marinade.

First course of pasta

Our grilled peppers and eggplants

Waiting for the meat

MMMM..... so good

While the 2^nd and 3^rd set of meat was grilling, lots of grilling like 2 hours of grilling, we had grilled eggplant and fried pepper strips. My tummy was full and my taste buds rejoicing. Ha! But of course we still have to have our dolce (sweets or dessert). I brought about 6 dozen chocolate chip cookies and there was a wonderful chocolate cake too. Almost all was eaten – although some of the meat was sent home with others. We ate and ate and ate for about 2 hours. Activities centered around food is always a good thing. 

Craig is always good to help grill

There was some volleyball in between meat courses and lots of fellowshipping and meeting new friends. 

Sorella Littlefield always with a smile

Sorella Frogley was our ace

One of my favorite outcomes from the activity was Elizabeth, she is in the English branch, a recently returned missionary from Ghana, and Florianna, she is in Palermo 1 ward and recently returned missionary after serving in the Milan mission, became friends. Florianna is working on a visa to the United States. Her parents and siblings moved there during her mission. So she wants to go to BYU but needs to take an English exam before she can go. Elizabeth lives here with her mother and wants to attend BYU-I and needs to take the English exam also. Elizabeth already knows some of the information about where and how to take the English exam so she was sharing with Florianna this information and also helping Florianna with her BYU application because she has already completed her application to BYU-I. I loved seeing them work together and help each other. 

This is one of the purposes of GANS activities, home evening, and Institute. But the even better part was I saw pictures on Facebook with the two of them and a couple of other GANS hanging out together. WhooHoo!