We then climbed three flights of stairs to the office, where we showed our appointment paper to a woman behind a glass window. She asked if we were married, and I said "yes, but only for forty years." She said "congratulations," and then I added "we're newlyweds". At that she laughed really hard and told us to sit down and wait for our name to appear on the big screen. Either I really charmed her, or our American passports counted for something, because our name came up almost immediately even though the sitting area was completely full. We went into a room where a woman took our documents and asked for a signature, then took a few of our fingerprints using a digital machine. She said that our permesso would be available at the police station near us in 45 days. My wife asked if it would be exactly 45 days, or possibly earlier. She laughed and said "What do you think this is, America? No way it will be early -- 45 days at a minimum!" We were with her for maybe ten minutes, then they sent us back out to wait again. Our name came up after just a couple of minutes, after which we went into a different room where they took a complete set of fingerprints and palm prints. Then we were done, all in just over an hour. Not bad.
After all that, we arrived at the Institute a bit early and ate lunch. Then at 2pm we had a Skype conference call with other senior missionary couples from around the mission as well as the mission president, sharing success stories, challenges, and ideas. It was the Garretts' last such meeting; they have been in Palermo and are doing great stuff. Anziano Garrett's sister is in our home ward, so we met them in Utah before they started their mission.
I also spoke with the Herways, the missionary couple for LDS Charities, about how to purchase the items for our upcoming service project for refugees. Italy has a lot of refugees these days, mostly from North Africa. At 4pm I taught my Seminary class on apostasy and restoration. There were only three kids, but we had a really good discussion, with them doing a lot of the talking. I also had them install an app on their cell phones to help learn the 25 doctrinal mastery scriptures in Italian. The app looks to be pretty well done, and they were pleased to see it.
This evening the Book of Mormon Institute class was down to eight students. Apparently the stake president's daughter -- one of my Seminary students -- was having a quinceañera (her mother is from Colombia) which took a lot of our YSAs away. Ugo's lesson was really good, covering Jacob and Enos. He is awesome at making the kids laugh one minute and then have a very serious discussion the next, applying the scripture to their lives. Afterwards my wife's casserole with pasta, chicken, bacon, and sausage was very well received.
