Happy Halloween, missionary edition

It was a busy day, but well worth it thanks to the Halloween gathering. My wife spent a bunch of time in the morning looking up fun and quick Halloween games on Pinterest, and then sent me to the Chinese store to buy a things for the games: ping-pong balls, orange/black plastic cups, etc., for the games.We ended up only doing a few of the games, but they were very popular. 

We have matching black rings and watches, and today we each put on matching orange watch bands.

It was Taco Tuesday, with pretty light turnout, probably because everyone was coming tonight. The best part was when a couple of the kids started asking us about what Italy was like when we were here as missionaries in the 1970s. One said, "were the streets the same?" We were puzzled, and so my wife said that traffic was just as busy and crazy. He then asked, "were there cars, or just horses then?" I guess we seem pretty old to them!

We spent the afternoon cleaning up after Taco Tuesday, doing lots of dishes, and my wife prepared sandwiches and Rice Krispie treats for the evening. Lots of people brought treats, and there was not a shortage!  I also ran out and got a copy of the key for our new cabinet, which has been hard to find, and I printed copies of our new ZTL pass on card stock. 

By late afternoon everyone started showing up. We're not sure how many were there, because I don't think that everyone signed in, but it was pretty full and everyone was having fun. Everyone ate a lot, and the costumes were great. We gave three prizes for the best costume; the grand prize winner was Adrian, a nice young man from South America who is preparing to go on a mission. I'll just show a bunch of photos for you to enjoy. We got home late!

 

Best costumes: Adrian is 3rd from left, next to Ugo

Off to bed now. We will sleep in tomorrow morning.

Busy Monday

We got a lot done today! There were a number of things on our to-do list in the coming days, and we got most of it done already. First off we went to Lidl to buy food for us and for the Institute, then we went to the mission office to get some documentation (e.g., a photocopy of Pres. Pickerd's passport) to use in getting the ZTL pass, as well as his signature on several docs. On the way back we passed the open market, so my wife ran in and bought a couple of blankets for the twin beds in the back bedroom, which will get used on Wednesday night. We then ran back by the apartment to drop off everything we had bought, as well as picking up a couple of things we had forgotten to bring, such as the beef for tomorrow's Taco Tuesday. Even before leaving for the Institute we were tired!

We got there a bit early, which was good because I had a 2pm appointment  to renew the ZTL at the Archives office. That involved walking a few blocks to the train station, buying subway (Metro) tickets, going ten stops on the Metro, then walking a few more blocks. Turns out an appointment was superfluous at that hour -- everyone is home for lunch and a rest -- so I got right in.  The guy was very helpful, despite not being exactly happy with how we filled out the paperwork last year or this year. Next year I'll know how to fill it out better. In any case, I left with a new pass printed out (it's just black and white with a QR code on normal paper), and a 797 euro charge on the mission  credit card.

My wife was at the Institute cooking for FHE while I was gone -- we don't have to stay together as a senior couple, unlike the young missionaries. She also made up a nice new sign-in sheet for the Institute. Every young person has to sign in when they enter, and this helps us log better what everyone is doing.

When I got back I worked on my FHE lesson, using a talk by Ardeth Kapp from October 1984 entitled "Striving Together" which has one of the best, most insightful, and favorite stories ever. I also got to help out our visitor for later this week with embedding a video into his PowerPoint presentation, which is much more complicated than it should be.

My wife made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese filling, which were awesome!

The lesson went fairly well, I think, with a good-sized group, and afterward we played a couple of spirited games of Uno, with some interesting rules we'd never seen before.

By the time we got home we were pretty tired, but it was a very satisfying day.

Relaxed Sunday

Today we went to church and enjoyed all three hours. Joyce Hernandez gave her mission homecoming talk in Sacrament meeting, which was very touching and had some great stories. She spoke about how hard it had been many times and how much she learned from it. Next week I'll teach Sunday School again; Fabbrizio took his turn today. It was a fifth Sunday, so Bishop Perego taught the third hour combined lesson on tithing. He is such a great teacher, as well as standup comedian (that's my wife's description :-).

His parents, our close friends Alberto and Raffaela, were in town to watch all five grandkids while Ugo and Jenna were in Albania for the last few days. We were going to try to go see them Saturday, but both they and we had too much going on, so we just had a nice visit at church.

They headed back up to Milano this afternoon on the fast train, but we'll certainly see them again sometime. They were laughing about having to be formal with us as missionaries; e.g., using the formal Lei form instead of the familiar Tu and having to use only handshakes. We quickly disabused them of that notion with big hugs and using Tu, as always -- at this point they are almost family. It's good to be senior missionaries, with more flexible rules!

We spent the afternoon at home, catching up on mission paperwork and working on my Family Home Evening lesson for tomorrow night. It's good to have a nice wireless printer and scanner here; I use them regularly for lots of things. Tomorrow afternoon I head downtown to try to renew our ZTL pass, which allows us to drive downtown and expires in less than two weeks. I had to fill out and print a bunch of forms I downloaded. Elder Thacker left me some good documentation on what to do, but I need the mission president's signature on both forms, which I'll get in the morning at the mission home.  It would be great if it can all be done in one trip, but I wouldn't be surprised if they require some other document and thus a second visit, which is why I am starting early.

I also did a write-up on how to get a codice fiscale in one day and shared it via email with some senior missionaries from the office who have been here longer than us but still don't have theirs. They will also let other senior couples around the mission know about it.

We did some calendaring together for the fairly busy week coming up. There is always shopping to do, particularly for food for the Institute, and we figured out when we can do that for the next few days. It's pretty chilly today, and we actually turned on a space heater in our apartment. We think that the built-in radiators will come on soon, which will be nice. The system is controlled by the management, not the tenants, so we have to wait until it's on to use it, hopefully before it gets too much colder.

Another Saturday at home

We didn't get in the car at all today -- very nice. In the morning we walked to the open market to look for some clothing. It is starting to get a tad chilly here at night and in the morning, so we each wanted a bathrobe for around the house (also because we'll have guests one night next week), and my wife wanted some long-sleeve pajamas. We also bought a light bedspread to use as another layer of blanket.

On the way home we stopped at the local hardware store to get a couple of keys copied, as well as a slightly larger tool chest to take with us on apartment inspections. One of the keys, for our apartment, is an unusual type for Americans, though I had similar ones in Switzerland decades ago. It has indentations, not ridges, and I believe it is supposed to be more secure. 

Usually it costs only a euro or two to copy a key, but this one cost over 12 euros! We didn't find that out until after he had made the copy, but we just gulped because we wanted it anyway. The other key is for our new cabinets at the Institute.

In the afternoon we walked to Conad to get some food for us, and also to the Chinese store to get a few things. We spent the rest of the day in the apartment, catching up on bills/paperwork and doing some minor rearranging. Our 3TB network attached storage (NAS) device is now installed and I did my first full laptop backup to it. I also tacked down the DSL phone cable around the room and over the door frame to the the top of the bookshelf, which is the new location for our modem, router, and NAS. I fixed two doors in my Ikea desks (Micke line) which made a horribly loud squeaking sound whenever they were opened. Turns out there's a set screw that spaces the door out from the frame a bit, and now they open silently.

My wife's mom is in the hospital, having fallen three times yesterday. She didn't break anything, but we are concerned and hopeful that they can figure out what's going on. My wife spoke with her mom and her dad this evening (morning California time), but we still don't know much.

Tonight daylight savings time ends here in Italy, a week before the US switches, so we get an extra hour of sleep. We're looking forward to a good day at church tomorrow, without a meal as far as we now!

Phone returned. Two lessons

In the morning we went to Metro, where we found Maddalena, who returned my wife's phone. Apparently it had been left on a shelf right next to some cookies, which are always distracting for certain members of our family (not that I'm naming names here!).

My wife made some Snickerdoodle cookies to say thanks. Maddalena said something to the effect of "can you believe it?  I'm an honest Roman". Last year she found an envelope with over 14,000 euros in it and turned it over her manager instead of putting it in her own pocket. Great lady! We were so delighted to get the phone back -- it saves us both time and money.

We also did some shopping for tonight's dinner while there, then headed to the Institute, arriving just in time to open up, with a ton of stuff (two heavily laden trips) to carry up from the car. My wife put herself directly to cooking "church potatoes" with ham and chicken, but she had to cut up frozen French Fries to make the equivalent of hash browns, which aren't available here as far as we know. It was way too much work, and she says she'll never do it that way again. The result looks good, however.

I taught the Seminary Doctrinal Mastery class at 4pm, with five students this time, which is a much nicer number. We had a good conversation about the Godhead and how we can relate to them and learn from them.

Tonight I taught the GANS BofM Institute class, subbing for Ugo who is out of town. His parents are here to babysit the kids, so we'll get to see them in church on Sunday. My lesson, 2 Nephi 1-8, went pretty well, I think. My style is rather different from Ugo's, with lots of questions that make them think and interact; it seemed to take them a while to figure it out, but they seemed to be paying attention quite well. 

Afterwards we had my wife's wonderful food, which is now all gone, as well as arancini (a Sicilian specialty rice ball) made by Francesco. 

Everyone had plenty to eat!

It was a good day, but we are exhausted and glad to be home. I like the words of Nephi: "we lived after the manner of happiness", which I explained was a choice, not something that just happens. We are very happy to be serving here.

New cabinets. Phone found!

This morning started off with a 10:30am district meeting at our Roma 3 chapel, which is a 25 minute drive from here. Anziano Wright is our new district leader (DL), and he did a very nice job of directing the meeting and leading the discussion. It's amazing to see these young kids taking on leadership roles and thriving.  I guess we did that 40+ years ago, but somehow these kids seem way younger! 😉There are four young elders and two sisters in our district, and everyone shared something about how the Lord has blessed them and how we can do a better job of sharing the gospel with everyone around us.

We then got to drive to the Institute from a completely different direction, arriving just in time for our 12:30pm Institute council meeting, where we discussed issues and brought the new Ganziani up to speed. Claudia is the council president, and she did a great job. 

Two big pieces of news today. The first is that we got some metal cabinets (and a new couch) delivered from the Roma 3 chapel. The kitchen has been very crowded, and these cabinets allowed us to unload a bunch of stuff there: cooking supplies/food, paper goods, etc., to free up a lot of space in the kitchen cabinets. It also allows us to see more easily what we have a lot of (plastic forks!) and what we are running low on. My wife spent a bunch of time reorganizing the kitchen to take advantage of all the newly freed space.

Lots of paper goods

Food stuffs and our stuff (to be kept  locked)

New couch, decorated for Halloween

The cabinets also have locks, only one of which we will use for our own things and for food we don't want to get "grazed" by the kids. We needed to switch the only working lock from one cabinet to the other, and Oscar was amazing at doing that. He actually figured out how the lock pins work and adjusted the locks so that both cabinets now lock using the same key. He's a EE student at the Sapienza University nearby and obviously very talented with mechanical and electronic things. Here he is working on one of the locks:

Oscar's English is amazing, and he always likes to learn new words and phrases. When I mentioned the kids "grazing" for food, he asked what that meant and really loved the imagery! Unfortunately, we have only one key. When I took it to the hardware store around the corner to get copied, they said it is a very unusual key blank which they don't have. The proprietor took a photo and said he'll contact his supplier to see if he can get one.

Our second big piece of news happened in the early afternoon. There was a flurry of activity on the Whatsapp group for the Institute, asking if someone had lost a phone. Someone in the message group who lives up in northern Italy had received a call from a woman who works at Metro, saying that she had found a cell phone. Apparently this employee looked through the Whatsapp history and pulled a phone number from the very long message thread and called it. She said that the phone had a purple case (bingo!) and asked that the owner contact her. I called the gal from the Institute group who had received the original call and got the number of the Metro employee. When I called her, she asked for some identifying info  on the phone, and when I said it was a Moto brand phone (not very common here), she said "yes, that's it". We will go pick it up Friday morning on our way to the Institute; it's considerably out of the way, but we are delighted! This woman said that normally they just throw phones away, but she felt somebody would care about this one and took the time to track us down. Awesome!

I also helped Kristen Hall setting up her first online Zoom session from home for the English BofM class, which all went smoothly. After the English classes finished at the Institute, we got to come home by 9pm, earlier than usual.

I am looking forward to doing some gospel teaching Friday evening and spent some time reading the scriptures and preparing both of my lessons. That process always benefits me perhaps more than the students, and I love the spirit that comes with it.