Chad Webb and tons of kids

Friday evening we had a visit from Chad Webb, who is the head of Seminary and Institute for the entire world. Basically, Chad is Ugo's third-level manager. He had helped approve renting the Rome Institute location a year ago, which was a big deal because there are very few standalone Institute facilities in Europe. He had just arrived from the US and so was rather jet-lagged, but he and a few of the people under him were there to check out our Institute campus in person.

Ugo got the word out to all the GANS to be there if at all possible, to make sure that that Chad and his people saw the place packed, which it was! Our attendance sheet (everyone has to sign in when they walk in the door) didn't even fit on one page, which is hasn't happened before as far as we know. 

There were over 25 kids in the Book of Mormon class; there wasn't even room for me in the room, so I bowed out to let a student have my seat.

Ugo was given the go-ahead to start looking for a larger facility downtown, which is awesome and what we had hoped for.

My wife spent the entire day shopping and cooking. She has cooked more in these three weeks than she had in the last ten years at home! She made two crock pots of sloppy joes (disorindati giuseppi :-), plus four pans of chocolate lava cakes, for the meal after class. Everything was devoured before the kids went home. They absolutely loved the cakes! Kids were hugging her and just eating until they were stuffed. The young missionaries were a great help, cleaning and washing dishes and serving food as needed. We got home late after cleaning up -- nobody wanted to leave!

I taught my Seminary Doctrinal Mastery class at 4pm, after a bunch of prep. There were four kids in person (including Ugo's oldest son Josh), plus one teacher who participated online via Zoom. It took me a while to get all the tech set up, to show my Powerpoint on the big-screen TV and online, but it all worked out. At a few points the kids had to help me with some Italian words/grammar; e.g., what is the word for "nerd" (me), is the word for "manual" (manuale) feminine or masculine, etc. Overall, I think I did pretty well language-wise, and the content went well. As with most teenagers, they were a little reticent to participate with a new teacher, but they had some good comments and seemed to enjoy my stories.

It was a wonderful day. It has been three weeks since I passed out on the plane, and we're all better and feeling like we have been here forever (in a good way). Maybe someday we'll get some down time again, but in the meanwhile we are being blessed and love being here.