Sii Una Luce

Monday was quite chilly, but at least the sun was shining. In the morning my wife took the young sister missionaries who live below us (Ricks and Bryant) to the Lidl grocery store for their P-day shopping. It was the first time she drove solo,  which she was really looking forward to. Lidl is much cheaper than Conad down the street, but harder for the sisters to get to without a car. They were delighted with the low prices, as well as the buffalo mozzarella, so probably this will become a regular Monday occurrence. My wife got some awesome bread with walnuts and "grano saraceno" (buckwheat) to try -- yum!

I climbed the stairs this morning for the first time since my leg started hurting a week ago -- only did six stories, but my leg didn't hurt at all afterwards. Tomorrow I'll try climbing up to the seventh floor a few times. It will be wonderful to put this episode behind me.

We are still trying to figure out what is going on with our new credit cards. Each one was rejected a couple of times with the new PIN, so we'll have to try it again until we get it working smoothly. On the way into town, we filled up the car at the Esso station just down the street, which usually happens once every couple of weeks. It's nice to have a hybrid with very good gas mileage (kilometerage? :-)

We also got the small version of our ZTL (Limited Traffic Zone) pass laminated and taped to our windshield. That way we don't have to remember to pull it out of the glove compartment each day as we enter downtown, which would result in a fine if we forget.

The afternoon was spent at the Institute working on lessons, including my three upcoming ones this weekend and Dee's FHE lesson. For some reason it was quite cold inside there, with the heat not quite kicking in for many hours, so we wore our coats. We also printed a bunch of different things, like lesson materials and some sheet music for choir Tuesday. There was a lot of messaging with Ugo and other GANS about various upcoming events; our phones were buzzing all afternoon. In the evening, Dee gave a very nice, brief FHE lesson on the church's "Light the World" initiative. In Italian, it's "Sii Una Luce" (Be a Light). We watched the video, and everyone got a copy of the calendar of suggested activities, using it as a base to discuss things we can do to try to be more like Christ. 

Another thing that came up today was a chance to help create a document for new senior missionaries, covering everything from missionary work to tips about traffic, heating, shopping, etc. The Hydes, a couple in Naples who each served missions in Rome in the 1970s and also a mission together in Milano a few years ago, wrote a first draft with nine pages of good stuff, and we added a number of things to it, as did a few other couples.

A young man from Peru, Brigham (now that's a Mormon name for you!), came to the Institute tonight. He served a mission in Peru and is now living with his aunt and uncle in Rome, hoping to go to university here. First he has to learn Italian. There are a number of the GANS who speak Spanish, including Sheyla who is also from Peru, so he fit right in. It was fun in our FHE; we had Brigham give the opening prayer in Spanish, and Anziano Misa gave the closing prayer in Samoan! We are definitely an international group.

Afterwards, we had pandoro cake, plus some homemade Christmas cookies from Trevor with do-it-yourself frosting and sprinkles. He is good at surprising us with treats.

That's Brigham on the left in the photo. Then we had a long game of Cover Your Assets, won by Anziano Waddell with a big surprise on the last play of the game. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. There were a couple of newbies to the game who acquitted themselves quite well.

When we got home, there were no parking spots nearby, so we had to park several blocks away. That happens occasionally, and it's worse for us because we get home late after almost everyone has parked for the night. It's not bad to get a bit of exercise, as long as our load isn't too heavy to carry, which fortunately was the case this time.

Our first Amazon order in a while arrived, including a new cell phone holder for using Google Maps in the car. The cheap holder we bought at the Chinese store broke after a couple of months, and this new one feels much sturdier. I also bought the DVD Momenti di Gloria (Chariots of Fire), as a followup to my FHE lesson on Eric Liddell last week. We hope to have a movie night sometime soon.