Sunday school lesson

Sunday was a pretty easy day. We had our normal three hours of church, which was very nice. Sacrament Meeting had talks by a High Councilor and a member of the Stake Presidency. My wife was sustained as a teacher in Relief Society, and I was sustained as a Gospel Doctrine teacher, team teaching with Fabbrizio, who is also the Sunday School President. We both had over a week's notice that these callings were coming.

During second hour, I gave my first Sunday School lesson, #38 in the D&C manual, on spiritual and material self-reliance (not sure what the term is in English :-). I gave a bit of background on us and then plunged into the lesson. It went really well -- I  had everyone sit up front and got a lot of very good participation from the class. In my preface I said that I wanted a lot of comments, but brief ones, not discorsetti (little talks), which is often the style here. Everyone was quite intent on what the others were saying, and I had a good balance of serious and fun stuff in the lesson, pulling out a bunch of quotes that were useful. I love teaching!

My wife got to meet the longest-time member in Rome. He joined the church in 1967, so he would have been here during her first mission. I don't think they made a definitive connection from back then, but she loved chatting with them.

Afterwards: you guessed it -- food! Seems to be a very nice trend here, if unusual by American standards.

After church we came home for the rest of the day. It rained a bit, but the weather is still gorgeous. We caught up on some paperwork, did some calendaring together, and my wife took a much-needed nap. We're now ready to go for another week!