On Sunday, we got up to find that it was cloudy and cold. Rain occasionally wandered through the area as we headed over to the guys' apartment for a meeting. There we sadly discovered that we had no idea which of the buttons to press to ring into their apartment, so we were patiently trying them all when one of the apartment dwellers left, thereby granting us access to the hitherto safe realms of the building. We managed to find the apartment and sat down to await news of what we would be doing that day. As expected, some people were to begin cooking, while others were to purchase groceries. Still others were to go to the park and see if there were any refugees there. Quickly we divided up; my group headed to the tram stop to get a tram to the bus stop to get a bus to the Coliseum. As we did, it began to rain lightly, which was not a Good Thing; when it rains, people who live on the streets go find shelter, and are much more difficult to track down.

We got to the Coliseum, descended from the bus and climbed the hill to Colle Oppio park, site of Nero's ancient palace. (This picture was taken in 2008; hence the sunshine.)
 
There's not a lot of the palace left; Nero was rather unpopular right before he killed himself, and following the Year of the Four Emperors, the Flavians demolished his giant complex of buildings.

The park had a few Romans in it, but nobody who looked like refugees. There were several people walking their dogs and a few strolling about, but not many; the rain was beginning to fall harder and it was quite cold. After looking around for a bit, we decided to go and get lunch (and American coffee¹) and then head back to the apartments. We figured we'd go find refugees at the train station that evening². After lunch, we went back and found that there wasn't much to do until about 4:30. The cooking was well in hand (and given the size of the apartment kitchens, not much room for helpers anyway) so a group of us went out wandering around Trastevere.

We wandered through the streets for a while, eventually arriving at Santa Maria in Trastevere.


We toured the church and found it truly fascinating. After that, we decided that we needed some coffee, so stopped at a café next to the Partisans' Memorial, commemorating those killed fighting the Nazis in WWII.
 

After heading back to the apartments, we loaded up with food and headed out to the bus, which we took to the Piramide stop. From there we walked down the Ostian Way to the station.

We found our first refugee pretty quickly and stopped to speak to him, although it turned out we had no languages in common. We did establish that he was from Afghanistan, which surprised me a bit; he had a pronounced epicanthic fold, and I didn't know that this was common in Afghans, although it seems to be. We gave him and a friend of his some food and each a kit with a toothbrush, soap, etc. We asked if there were others around, and they guy said there were some a couple of streets over. We headed along in that direction, and a few minutes later, the guy passed us, and then came back with a couple more guys. Here we split up; one group went on ahead, and the rest went back to an open spot by the station where they could set up.

The group that went ahead found a group of Romanians and gave them some stuff, and then got a phone call saying, "Come back quick!" We did, and found that the first guy had gone and gotten all of the other Afghan refugees around, so there were about 30-40 of them. We quickly revised the plan, which had been to eat with them and instead distributed all of the food possible. While we were standing around talking with them (there were two or three who spoke fairly good English) a couple of them came up to me and asked me if I had "engine." I stared at them blankly, and one of them said "book" and made the book gesture with his hands. I looked more confused, and he repeated his first phrase again, and this time I understood him. "Do you have injil³?" he asked.

We did indeed have injil. On our last trip, thrilled to have a Farsi speaker, we had purchased a bunch of Farsi Bibles and New Testaments, which we had not found a home for. I asked what language, and it was his turn to stare at me blankly. I started naming laguages I know are spoken in Afghanistan: "Dari, Pashto, Farsi, Urdu ..." "Farsi, Farsi!" he interrupted. So I handed out three Farsi copies of John's Gospel. It was amazing to me that these guys would ask for these, but I'm glad they did.

After a while, everyone had eaten, so we told the refugees we would be back the following evening with more food, and went home.

And that was Sunday.

¹Some of our group really want American coffee; I'm not sure why, as I find Italian coffee to be quite good, as long as you know what you want. Of course, we decided to go to an Afghan place for lunch, and it's possible that they just didn't want to get any Turkish coffee, consumption of which results in being unable to sleep for 3-4 days.
²Many of the refugees sleep at the train station, so they can generally be found there in the evenings, no matter the weather.
³The Arabic word for "Gospel".

But I've been to Rome. Twice.

Once again, in darkest winter, halfway through the night, like in a German carol or something, a bunch of us went off to Rome to work with refugees. This time, we were leaving from OKC, not Dallas, so we got to sleep in until ... wait, we actually had to be at the church 15 minutes earlier than last time. Hmmm. Anyway, we got to the church, got loaded up on the bus and headed off to the airport to board our several flights to Rome¹. We got to the airport, unloaded and then split into groups to go check in (it's cheaper to purchase tickets in small groups than large, paradoxically). We had two groups going to Chicago, and two going to Cincinnati first, then on to Chicago. The groups going to Chicago had no difficulty; we got checked in (some of us had paper tickets and had forgotten how that worked), went through security and then got breakfast, little knowing the saga that was going on outside.

One of the Cincinnati groups went through with no trouble; the other group contained our pastor, who was also driving the bus. After dropping off, he and another guy went to go park the bus in the long term parking, where they managed to damage a sign, and thus had to fill out an accident report. They eventually made their flight, but it wasn't easy.

Meanwhile, the rest of us had merrily gone on our way to Chicago, where we arrived to find that the airport was covered in ice. We skidded a bit on landing, and then had to bump over ice ruts all the way to the terminal. Nonetheless, we got there okay. As I was standing up to get my carryon from the overhead bin, having just turned on my cell phone, it rang. I answered it; it was our pastor's daughter, who asked me if we were in Chicago. When I answered yes, she asked if I knew if the flight to Italy was on time, because their flight from Cincinnati to Chicago had just been cancelled because of the weather. I had to say that I didn't, but that I'd check as soon as I actually got somewhere to check.

We got off the plane and made our way to the international terminal, which involved riding a small train. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the empty Alitalia check-in desk. As we were standing there deciding to go get food and then  check in, a lady came out from the back room and told us that check-in would open at noon. (It was about 10:00 AM). She then thought for a moment and asked if we were connecting through Chicago or originating there; when she found out we were connecting, she said she could go ahead and check us in, if we didn't have any luggage to check. Since we didn't, we were quickly checked in and wandered over to the food court to grab a bite and discuss what we were going to do in Rome without the other two groups.

Eventually, we all ate lunch and got bored, so we went through security to our gate; we were the only ones there, what with it being four hours before boarding and all. I got a text message from Karen saying that they were on another flight and would be arriving by 1:30 or so, so we figured they would make the flight. Meanwhile, much of our group crashed at the gate:


Kevin and I walked around for a while, seeing what we could see, like strange Oklahoma women sitting on benches:


After a while, the others arrived and we boarded our flight for Rome. I don't recall what the movie was - so in between sleeping, I read World War Z, which is quite good, BTW. We crossed Britain and France in darkness, and arrived at the Alps about dawn:


A few hours later, we landed in Rome, *eventually* got all our luggage, although Kevin had one suitcase that had clearly lost a fight with a wookelar somewhere on the way, and then got into three vans to head to Trastevere. Interestingly, all three van drivers appeared to have different ways to go; ours, who had indicated that he should lead, appeared to be relying on a GPS unit, which shut off in the middle of the trip, so that wasn't much help². Eventually we got to Piazza dei Mercanti and decanted ourselves into the street, where we met the gentleman from the apartment agency.
View Larger Map(our apartments are the two on the left and two across the street; the entrance is behind the tree.)

¹Eventually to Rome; first to Chicago and/or Cincinnati.
²Of course, he was ignoring the directions it was giving anyway, so maybe it wasn't that much of a hindrance.