Zone Conference, two lessons, no internet

I forgot to mention the other day that we asked the Sorelle from Rome 1 to measure their bathtub so we could get a shower curtain for them. They just recently moved into a new apartment which has no shower, and we would like to fix that for them, as their assigned apartment inspection team. Unfortunately, they didn't have a ruler or tape measure, so I asked them to measure everything using the internationally recognized unit of length: Preach My Gospel books! It works. 😀

Friday was a very long but wonderful day. It started early. I wore my new suit, which fit and felt comfortable all day. With Zone Conference starting at 9am across town, we left here at 7:15am to go by the apartment of the Rome 1 Sorelle to look more carefully at the bathtub/shower situation, then give them a ride to ZC -- they live fairly near to the church over there. The shower curtain plot  had thickened a bit when we learned that we were not allowed to make any holes in the walls to mount the shower curtain rods, but we came up with some ideas in the meantime.When we got to the apartment, we were able to measure the room carefully. We also asked if they ran out of of hot water sometimes, and they said yes. So I took over the hot water heater cover and tried to adjust the hidden thermostat like we did in the apartment below us, but this time the knob had some kind of plastic lock which I couldn't figure out how to remove in the few minutes we had. We'll go back when we have the stuff for the shower curtain contraption ready to go.

Zone Conference was very nice. We delivered pillows and a kitchen knife to the Ladispoli Anziani, and a customized short shower curtain rod to the Ladispoli Sorelle; all the Ladispoli missionaries now think we are wonderful. The focus of the conference in the morning was strengthening our testimony of Christ and the restoration, as well as how effectively we can teach about it. The President and the assistants did a very nice job teaching and leading a discussion, as well as showing some statistics about how the mission is doing. There were four senior couples and nine young pairs of missionaries. At lunchtime we needed to leave to head over to a busy afternoon/evening at the Institute. We'll catch the afternoon session later at the other Rome zone conference in a few weeks, which will be on a Wednesday when we have time off. It was good to be with our young missionaries and get to know them a bit better.

We got there in time for some final lesson prep. At 4pm I taught my Seminary lesson with just Valentina in person and Donatella online via Zoom. She broke her foot and is on crutches for a while, but the online thing worked pretty well. Luis was sick, and he felt even worse when he saw the (very American) cookies my wife had baked for them!

 

Nobody showed up until about half an hour before the Institute Book of Mormon lesson at 7pm, but then things really started hopping. Matteo Salerno had put out a message on WhatsApp that he received his mission call that day and wanted to open it after Institute. Everyone got really excited. I asked him privately if he was sure he didn't want do it with his parents and family first. So what he did was give it to his parent to open; they read it, put it back in the envelope, and gave it to him to bring to Institute! He swore that he hadn't seen it yet when he got there. 

 

Anyway, there was a huge flurry of messages from everyone about that event. We had a decent turnout for my lesson:

The lesson went quite well, I think, on Alma 1-7. We spent most of the time on chapter 5, discussing all the wonderful introspective questions Alma asks. They had a lot of good things to say, and I made them think. When the lesson was over, Matteo got up to read his mission call, to Calgary, Alberta, Canada! His older brother Daniele and a bunch of others had also showed up for the grand opening. He enters the Provo MTC on May 1st. Everyone was really excited for him.

 

 

 

 

 

We also had an investigator from Cameroon named Junior (shown below wearing a sports coat) who has lived in Italy most of his life, at the class all evening, and he seemed to enjoy himself. My wife made her pasta casserole with ham and cheese covered with bread crumbs, which was devoured. 

 

 

 

 

 

After such a long day, we were both happily exhausted. When we got home, the internet wasn't working. Apparently Vodafone cancelled the old DSL service but didn't get the new fiber working as planned Friday. Sigh. Their tech support had already closed for the day. I tried the new modem to no avail, and then I collapsed into bed, with dreams of megabits dancing in my head.