Ugo had invited both stake presidents and all six bishops from the Rome area to a meeting at the Institute while I taught the Book of Mormon class in the evening, and then they would eat with the kids. Most of them had never seen our facility, so this was a big deal -- a great opportunity to impress them and get more support. He had encouraged as many kids as possible to show up. All that went out the window. Even the bishops bailed due to the transit strike, so Ugo ended up postponing that meeting. Most of them have cars, but driving (and, more to the point, parking) downtown is really tough, particularly when public transit isn't running so there is more traffic anyway.
Also, we had no idea whether anyone would actually be there in person for a meal in the evening, so that changed the type of food to buy and how to prepare it. Dee needed something that could scale from 2 to 25 people without much notice, so it couldn't take hours of prep or oven time. She decided to get some fixings for warm sandwiches, which could be done on little notice and saved for later if not needed. To give me time to work on the Powerpoint presentations for my lessons, she went alone to Lidl to do the food shopping in the morning. It's one of the few times she has ever gone out on her own in the car, and I was a bit concerned because she had been so weak for so long, but it was a wonderful gesture to help me and very much appreciated.
She came back from the store, the car laden with food, and called me from the street to come on down. I brought a few things down on the elevator to the car, and off we went to the Institute. At 2pm we had a Skype call with other senior missionary couples and the mission president to share ideas on how to improve our work. It went a bit long, and all the while our phones were going crazy with updates from Ugo and others, changing plans for the evening. At 4pm I started my Seminary class online, but only Donatella logged in. Valentina was really sick, and we don't know where the others were, so we decided to postpone the class. Thus, I'm now a week ahead on lesson prep for that!😀 The poor kids couldn't even get home from school today without the public transit running.
By then we decided to tell everyone not to come in person for the evening lesson, even if they could, and that there would be no food. That simplified things quite a bit, also because Ugo needed some sandwiches for a faculty meeting Saturday, and he unexpectedly hadn't been home all week. His week was crazier than ours, by far. So we decided to use the sandwich fixings Dee bought for Friday at the Saturday meeting instead.
Because I normally don't use Powerpoint presentations for my lessons, I asked Ugo if I could borrow his, which he has used in teaching this class before. There just wasn't time for me to put one together at the last minute, and online you really need slides to be effective. Ugo sent me his slides, but they were all in English (he had taught the class in Utah). So my wonderful wife spent a couple of hours translating them for me, freeing me up to do other lesson prep. We are a great team! I kept waiting for her to collapse, but she went strong all day.
Anyway, a few minutes before 7pm, with us expecting nobody in person for my lesson, the intercom rings. I go to answer it and ask "Chi è?" ("who is it?"). The answer comes "Stefano Da Ponte", at which I burst out laughing. Stefano lives up north, near Como, and he is always the one and only student online at Friday night's class. So it seemed he would be the only student in person this night, while everyone else normally here in person would be online! You can't make this stuff up.
Turns out that Stefano is from the Lecco Ward, where Ugo's parents live and which we have visited many times. He finished his mission in Rome about a year ago and was here Friday for work, returning Saturday, so he decided to drop by. It also turns out that we know his grandparents, the Dal Zottos, fairly well, starting from 1976 in Monza and up to the present day in Lecco. So we enjoyed figuring out numerous connections in our small Italian Mormon world. Here is a photo:
A few more kids ended up there in person, some of whom were clueless about how they would actually get home afterwards. Ah, to be young and carefree! The public transit ran from 5-8pm to let people get home from work, so they were able to arrive ok, but class doesn't end until 8:30pm. This is the third major strike in under four months, all on Friday when it hurts us the most. Romans are just used to it. Sigh.
My lesson ended up going ok, I think. It's hard catering to both online and in-person students -- I need more practice at it. We got some good discussion going, on Mosiah 18 - 29. I told a few personal stories to emphasize the points that Mormon made when he edited the story, and they seemed to be touched.
Meanwhile, my wife relented and put out the few sandwich fixings we already had in the fridge, plus some of her wonderful homemade soup. The small group was quite happy about that and ate together for a while. We gave the Sorelle a ride home, because the transit strike stranded them there after a missionary lesson. It has been a strange week, but things are getting back to normal.