New flag, new suit, hot water

Monday was a very good day, with several unexpected but quite welcome events. In the morning we went down to the apartment of the Sorelle below us, along with Anziano Balzotti, to look at some mold they had in one of their showers. We inspect their apartment every six weeks, so they turn first to us with issues. Turns out that the mold was pretty minor and they should be able to get rid of it easily. Then we looked at the toilet handles in the wall, for which the cover was removed.  We all kinda know how toilet tanks work and look in the US, but they are completely different here. The cover has been off for months, and instead of pushing a big plate to flush, they had to jiggle a small plastic plunger sticking out. Anyway, we figured out how to put everything back together and adjust the plungers so that it all works and looks much better! We learned some useful things and were quite proud of ourselves.

He then came up to our place and looked at our back fridge again. We remain completely baffled as to how cold air is supposed to get from the (very cold) freezer up to the (lukewarm) fridge, and indeed it hasn't worked since well before we got here. So I'm pushing for us to just buy a new one, having spent a bunch of time on it to no avail. The exact model from the Institute is still available for sale at the Mediaworld, the equivalent of BestBuy here. We really like that one and it's fairly inexpensive, so hopefully we'll be given the ok to just go buy it with our mission credit card.

We drove to the Institute a bit early to shop for a suit at the men's clothing store, Manifatture Lombarde, right on the corner. It advertises big sizes, which is a big deal for me, being so much taller than the average Italian. We walked in and asked about a suit. Gino sized me up visually, and the first one he pulled off the rack fit me perfectly! It's a nice dark color and heavier than my existing suits -- only 500 euro for a Cerrutti suit, so we bought it! The whole thing took under 15 minutes. They marked the alterations and will have them done by Thursday. That was easy!

In the main classroom at the Institute, where they teach the English conversation classes, there was an American flag. Makes sense in terms of promoting that class, but it bugged me and my wife that there was no corresponding Italian flag. So we bought one on Amazon last week, and we hung it up on Monday. Very nice!

 

 

In the afternoon we had a meeting with the Canfields, a senior missionary couple working out of Frankfurt, which is the administrative headquarters for the church in Europe. They are from San Clemente, and this is their third mission together. Their assignment is with LDS Charities, and they are trying to find good places for the church to partner with existing churches/NGOs in helping refugees. They were here in Rome to look for such a situation, and they found a promising potential fit: the Episcopal church about two blocks from the Institute! That church already has a good program, but it needs some help. It's not a done deal yet, but they wanted to see how the YSA kids could help support such a venture, as well as be blessed by it. After our meeting, the Canfields were running late for an appointment not far away, so I drove them over. They are very energetic and fun folks.

Ugo was there for the meeting with the Canfields, straight from the airport, and he brought some awesome cannoli for us to enjoy. Dee had been feeling a bit tired all day, but she later said "once I had dessert, I felt fine!" -- that's my wife 😁. Actually, she also took a decongestant about the same time, but she's sticking with the dessert theory!

We had a wonderful and unexpected event yesterday: some plumbers came to work on the Institute's hot water heater, which has not been working effectively since before we got here. It's a tankless design, but the sensor telling the gas heating element to ignite would not trip when we turned on the hot water in the kitchen. There was too little water pressure for it to sense the flow, so we had to run two faucets on hot, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen, in order to get any hot water at all. Then, because the bathroom water pressure dominated the kitchen, we had to carry a pot with hot water repeatedly from the bathroom sink to fill up the kitchen sink. Ouch. By now we were used to it, but it was a pain. So they did an acid wash of a valve inside, which apparently was mostly clogged with calcium deposits from the very calcium-laden tap water here. It worked! Now we have hot water with decent pressure in the kitchen. Yay!!

My home evening lesson was on how to feel the spirit, discussing 1 Nephi 17:45, Heleman 5:30, and 1 Kings 19:11-12. In the first scripture, the work "feel" is translated into Italian as "sentire", which can mean feel, or hear, or smell, or any sense, so perhaps the right connotation is unclear. Almost everyone had a good comment to share, and there was a very nice spirit present. Then we had a great dessert made by my wife from saltine crackers and chocolate:

 

 

Following dessert, we played a few rousing games of Uno.

Anziano Osmond showed quite a bit of dexterity and expertise in shuffling/dealing the cards, so I quipped, "well of course, his father works in Las Vegas!"

When we got home, I did a trial Zoom video call with Marilyn Faulkner from our home stake in Del Mar, who will be the guest speaker Thursday night at the online English Book of Mormon class. Zoom worked surprisingly well, given our low internet bandwidth here. We discussed how the class would work for her, and it was also nice to catch up a bit. Her husband Craig, with whom I worked on the stake High Council for a while, has been going through cancer treatments for the past year or more. Any of our problems seem pretty small by comparison. He's doing much better than earlier, with a survival prognosis of 5-10 years now, much more than what was expected at first. Modern medicine is pretty miraculous.