Ward talent show and Christmas dinner

Saturday was P-day, a fairly busy and very fun one. In the morning, I drove back down to the Institute to pick up several things that we had inadvertently left there the night before, including my wife's Samsung tablet and some pots and pans (so she could cook the sausage for the ward dinner). There were so many people there that night that coats were piled high, hiding our stuff. She stayed home to work on her talk for Sacrament meeting on Sunday. I later spent time uploading photos and videos from our Friday evening activities to the WhatsApp group and to the Institute Facebook page. Ugo wants us to post more stuff on Facebook, as that gets more visibility among both youth and adults (including leaders who set our food budget :-), so I am reluctantly entering the Facebook world. I have always stayed away from it because of all their privacy issues/missteps over the years, but I'm keeping my account pretty much just for the mission here.

In the afternoon, I also went to Conad to get some fresh fruits and vegetables for my healthy diet, which I'm not doing a very good job of following over here for some reason! Dee cooked the sausage and some fresh spinach to take to the ward dinner, which ended up being very popular -- among the first food items to be completely devoured.

My wife also remembered somebody who was a young member of the church (GANS age) when she was here in 1975, and it happens that he is in our ward. He is not very well and doesn't come out much, though his daughter is more active, so Dee figured out that connection and was finally able to contact him via WhatsApp. His name is Giovanni. After swapping messages and an old mission photo (not that she has changed at all in 42 years :-), she invited him to the ward Christmas party. He ended up coming, with his wife, daughter, and grandson, and it was great for them to share memories. Here are some photos:

 

At 4:15pm, we left home for the ward party, which was supposed to start at 5:30pm. On the way we stopped to fill up the car. Our favorite Esso station wouldn't take my new Andrews credit card or my ATM card, so I ended up using cash. Not sure whether it's a problem with the new card (which has been giving us some PIN-related grief), or whether the credit card reader there was having a bad day (which has also happened there), so we'll have to look into that next week. It would sure be nice to have a BancoMat card, which is Italian and shouldn't have these problems. 

We arrived plenty early for the party. Unfortunately, between the Italian and the Mormon propensity for being late, the talent show didn't start until at least an hour after it was scheduled. However, that doesn't seem to bother anybody here in the least. Finally it got started, with a very good turnout.

The skit (in Italian it's called a "sketch") by our missionary district was the first thing on the agenda, and it came off very well. All eight of us had a part, as well as Joyce, one of our GANS kids, who had a key cameo role at the end. The skit is basically in mime, with noises but no spoken words, and the audience laughed hard from the very beginning. My wife found it on YouTube and adapted it for our little group. We had only practiced it once, in a different location/setup, and the missionary (Anziano McConkie) who played the receptionist got transferred in mid-week and had never seen it, but he did a terrific job. We all had fun with it, and several of the missionaries are real hams, including some who strongly professed no acting skills at all! Without further ado, click here to see the video, with many thanks to our videographer David Perego.

After our skit, there were a bunch of other numbers, mostly musical, including piano, guitar, singing, etc. Joshua Perego played a piano piece that he composed. It's really fun to see another side of people as they show off their talents. Sam Perego, age 8, demonstrated his double-jointed fingers, arms, ankles, and knees -- not for the faint of heart, but it was amazing. The final act had everyone singing along with a well-known Italian song from the 1980s that we don't know. Here are some photos of the show:

 

 

 

 

 

After the talents were done, we started eating about 8pm. There was a ton of food, potluck style. Our ward loves to eat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bishop Perego's offering

We finally headed home a little bit before 9pm, much later than we had anticipated, but the party was still going strong. It was a great evening. My wife still needed some time to polish up her Sunday talk, and it was good to be in at a reasonable hour.