Special Times

A week ago today, my husband and I were attending church in Italy, partaking of the sacrament with

fellow saints in Rome. During our previous visit to Italy a couple of years ago, we had an American missionary translating for us, but this time, even though translation was available, we decided to forgo it and just enjoy the meeting in Italian. We loved being there, and though we could only pick out a few words here and there, the spirit was still present in abundance and I felt so grateful and blessed.
We met some very nice people during this visit to Italy while on our tours of the Vatican, the Colosseum, and Pompeii, and had more interaction fellow tourists than normal, so we got to know each other a bit. There was a young couple from DC, a middle-aged couple from England, a mother and daughter from Australia, and a wonderful gentleman from Ireland (who incidentally was on a European tour, and had just traveled to Rome from from Budapest where he had been robbed by a taxi driver.)
It was truly fun visiting with these people, and though we will most likely never cross paths again, the experience left a huge impression on me. We were all there from different walks of life and diverse cultures, but during those hours we spent together on those tours, we were of like minds. We were there to explore and learn about a people whose lives left a big echo in the winds of today - a people whose history affected so many things, and as we laughed and talked and gleaned knowledge, any difference there may have been between us were nonexistent.

Even now, I still think about these 'tour friends', and I pray that the ones who may be without God in their lives will one day find Him, and the ones who do have God in their lives will grow even closer to Him.
This is my prayer for every individual I am blessed to come in contact with.
And who knows? Maybe . . . just maybe, we will be fortunate enough to see one of our tour friends again one day.