When we got to church, our mission president (Pickerd) and his wife were there visiting, so we got to sit with her, while he sat on the stand. She just finished her last big round of chemo for breast cancer and will start radiation treatments soon, so she couldn't shake hands or hug anyone as she would normally love to do. My wife enjoyed talking with her during the day. I told her my story about stealing the cookies, which didn't seem to thrill her for some reason!
It was our annual ward Primary Program, where the kids under 12 get to sing and talk. These are always cute, if a bit formulaic, but today was a real winner. There were nine kids in the Primary program, so each of them had at least a couple of small speaking parts, as well as singing with the group. The program started off with a bang, when the handicapped grandson of the chorister began screaming. They tried to ignore him for a bit, but then she took him out, and Jenna Perego filled in for her when the kids sang the first few songs. When Sam Perego, age 8, got up for his first little part, he said "Care Sorelle" (just "Dear Sisters" -- not brothers and sisters :-), but he started giving his second talk instead of the first, so his mom quietly and calmly asked him to give the other talk. He got embarrassed -- though nobody else would have known -- and he put his head down at the pulpit and started to sob hard, unable to continue. There was another girl, Lia, who's about 4 years old. When it came her turn she yelled out "io vomito" ("I'm going to throw up"); later she kept running up and grabbing the mic and screaming. She actually said her brief part at one point, faithfully repeating exactly what the Sister Frullo, the Primary President, whispered to her because she can't read yet; when she finished, the Sister Frullo whispered "brava!" ("good job!"), and Lia enthusiastically repeated that "brava!" When Levi Perego (age 6) had a hard time with his part, his sister Sarah came over to help, and he yelled "go away!' at her in English directly into the mic. There were about a dozen times when the entire congregation laughed really hard, and there were also a number of times when it was very sweet and touching. I told the Primary President that it was the best program ever!
My Sunday School lesson was on being a good citizen, covering D&C 134 and some other scriptures. We had a lot of very good discussion on what we can do improve our community. I made the point that we all like to complain about government, but that it's better to do something constructive to try to help. One story I told was how, as a young missionary, it really bugged me when an Italian would criticize the USA, even though as citizens we often complain about our own country. Several folks shared good things that they do to serve others. I closed with D&C 58:26-27, where it says that the Lord doesn't command in all things, but that we should take the initiative and do good things on our own. It seemed like everyone really enjoyed the lesson, and the participation level was excellent.
There are a number of GANS kids in our ward, plus a visitor (Francesco, in blue) today, some of whom are shown here with Ugo:
In the afternoon at home, we caught up on some Institute paperwork including November food receipts; if you discount the big Thanksgiving dinner, we were actually within a dollar of our small culinary budget. We also did some catch-up on blog entries, because the weekend has been so busy.
Tonight we went to the Institute, where we showed last week's First Presidency Christmas devotional, in Italian and in English in two separate rooms. The Italian group got to use the big screen TV😊
