Even bigger Taco Tuesday!

Doug and Dee wrote:
Wow, what a day! It was cold, well below freezing, but the sun was out all day. There was ice on some of the sidewalks and parking spaces, but the roads were quite safe for driving. Here is the view of our piazza in the morning.

The schools and universities were closed for a second day, even though most of the snow is gone. As a result, kids had a free day, and everyone came to Taco Tuesday! It was even bigger than the one a couple of weeks ago. There were nonstop kids and energy all day, which was awesome. Dee and I never really had any down time. We went into the Institute plenty early to prepare for Taco Tuesday. We made two kilograms of meat (about 4.5 pounds), then, as more people showed up, we defrosted about 3 more pounds that we had cooked last week to prepare if there was another crowd. Good thing -- it was all gone fairly quickly! We went through over 50 tortillas (we lost count). When all the meat was gone, we switched to quesadillas, which they don't know by name. Tacos is not a common word either. One young man asked if he could have another "tacos". It was standing room only in the big classroom where they eat.

We kept having to slice more cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and put out more beans and sour cream. I cooked the meat and then did dishes continuously for a while. Several of the kids helped out a bunch in the kitchen as the need arose. 

 

At 3pm, after the food was gone and most of the cleaning was done, we had an Institute council meeting, where we discussed future activities, as well as reviewing policies for some of the new council members. The meeting lasted 90 minutes and was very productive. Ugo is a terrific leader and always talks about the purpose behind what we do, very inspiring and unifying.

While that was going on, Torrey, one of the BYU Study Abroad girls, made cookies for everyone to enjoy. We had one room with the council meeting, one room for kids studying, one room with kids playing games, and the entryway with kids hanging out, playing the Ukele, etc. It was a crowded and delightful bedlam. There were over 30 people there total during the day. I think we broke the bank again, which is great! 

Lorenzo never showed up for choir. Apparently he thought nobody would be there with school cancelled, so with so many ready to sing, Dee took over and had us practice parts. I had ordered some choir notebooks with rings and used our new hole punch to insert all the music, which made things much nicer for all of us. There were eight of us, and we sang a couple of numbers, practicing our parts and then singing a capella. We're starting to sound pretty good! We moved up the start time of choir by half an hour so we could have treats afterwards, before evening classes started. We think the visiting time over refreshments will help people feel like they belong. It seemed to work well. 

In the evening there was a missionary discussion going in one classroom, the missionary English class in another, and Ugo's Institute Zoom class in the library. The rest of us were banished to the kitchen and the entryway, which were crowded and buzzing with activity the whole time. The group included four nonmembers, three less-active members, two young men about to leave on their missions and a girl who just got baptized. 

 

 

We finally left for home after the English class got out at 8pm. We were both yawning and moving slowly. Dee had to lift that cold metal parking spot blocking thing out of the snow, not a pleasant experience. It was really cold outside, but the forecast is for warming in the next couple of days. If snow brings out this many kids, let it snow!

Snow day!!!

Well, the weather report said it would be cold, but snow?? In Rome? We woke up to a bunch of white stuff on the ground. For a while in the morning it was still falling pretty hard. Here are some pictures from our window at home:

 

 

 

I actually heard the Sorelle below yelling when they woke up and looked out the window. Apparently it snowed here in 2012, but before that it had been 36 years. Schools were cancelled, and only some of the buses were running. Lots of parents in our apartment complex took their kids, even toddlers, out to play in the snow, since it might not happen again during their childhood. After a brief consultation with Ugo, we decided to cancel/close the Institute for the day, letting everyone know via WhatsApp.

There were a lot of fun exchanges among the GANS on WhatsApp all day. Here's a nice one my wife started with Matteo, who is leaving for Calgary on his mission in a couple of months:

Let me translate for you:
   Dee: "Rome is giving you a welcome to Canada, Matteo!"
   Matteo: "When the pre-field training is too realistic "
   Dee: "You're awesome!"
   Claudia (who served her mission in Toronto): "Ha ha, Matteo,
      Canadians just wash their armpits with this kind of snow ...
      you have no idea what is waiting for you"
A few kids posted photos of the snow, so I suggested we hold an online snow photo contest, with Matteo and Claudia as judges. A whole flurry of very lovely photos followed, with the winner perhaps being Jomar, as he slept in.

Rome temple construction site in the snow

Dee went out to enjoy the snow a bit. Being from Southern California, it's pretty rare for her to see it. Her feet got wet and cold, but she enjoyed it.

So, with an unexpected snow day at home, I decided that it was an excellent opportunity to do my income taxes. During the year I accumulate/scan all the documents as they come in, so then I just have to gather them all together and email everything off to Norm, our CPA in Los Angeles, after filling in his online forms. Norm has been doing our taxes for over 30 years, ever since they became too complex for me to figure out. I've only met him a few times in person, but he's great. My wife's whole family now uses him. I've never been audited, so it's money very well spent. It took me a couple of hours, and it is really nice to get that behind me. 

By early afternoon the snow had stopped and the sun came out, starting to melt the snow, though there was still plenty in the shade.

 

Dee writes:
I wanted to go outdoors and walk a bit, so I went down to Conad to get a few things, and enjoyed seeing the snow up close.  It was definitely button-your-coat-and-wear-gloves weather. The sidewalk was mostly cleared off, and snow was falling out of the trees. It was beautiful! I was very careful on the snowy parts, to be sure I didn't slip and fall. The store was nearly out of  bread, so apparently there was a bit of a run in the morning, or perhaps some of the bakers couldn't get to work. They had some nice rolls left so I brought those home to enjoy. One type was braided from white dough, soft and delicious. I also got a couple of whole wheat ones that were also really tasty.

All day the temperature hovered just around freezing or a bit below. Overnight it's supposed to get down below 20 F, so we'll see how much ice there is in the morning. 

We had several things planned in the morning that got cancelled due to the snow. Anziano Knies had wanted help with his computer in the office; once the sun came out, I asked if I could come over. The car was covered with about 5 inches of snow, which took a while to brush off with the snow scraper we presciently bought a couple of months ago (thinking ice at the time, not snow). The roads were fairly dry and it wasn't scary to drive. I was able to fix a couple of things on his computer and leave in under an hour.

 

Even though we had officially closed the Institute, Sheyla decided to go in and hold the FHE anyway. She is a member of the council and thus has keys. By the time we found out, it was a bit late for us to head in, but it's wonderful they wanted to meet on their own. 

Perhaps we and Ugo acted too quickly in cancelling for the day, but we are happy for the time at home to work on things for the coming week. In the evening I started writing the GANS campus history for 2018, covering the first two months. My plan is to update it each month so that it won't be a huge effort at the end of the year. 

My wife totaled up two months worth of food receipts to turn in. Our budget is quite tiny for the number of kids and meals involved, so we always go over somewhat, despite trying to shop frugally. It's not a huge problem for us to cover the difference, as the numbers aren't big in an absolute sense. However, we want to make sure Ugo and the stakes are aware; otherwise it might be a big problem for whatever couple replaces us in a year. The number of kids coming to the Institute seems to be increasing, which is a wonderful problem to have.

Sunday rest

Sunday at church was great. Each of the meetings ran a bit long, but everything was enjoyable. Kim Huber gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting on the Book of Mormon. She had intended to do it in Italian, with the help of Stefano Da Ponte to translate her written talk, but that didn't work out. Instead, she had Stefano Bosco from the bishopric translate live from English for her. She started out with a great line, saying that she was going to give her talk in Italian, but then she got to thinking that Cristiano (the other bishopric counselor) was always up and about taking care of things during the meeting, while Stefano had nothing to do, so she wanted to keep him busy! 😀 

Anziano McConkie, who is a performing arts major, sang a solo "Credo in te, Gesù" ("I Believe in Christ"). He has an amazing tenor voice with tremendous range; it was absolutely beautiful. The Anziani had three different investigators at church, including a young man from Egypt who is a Christian -- a rather threatened group there from what I understand. We invited him to join us at the Institute, and Anziano McConkie was quite excited at the thought of eating a taco if they came with him there on Tuesday!

After church, our plan had been to have two home teaching visits, but Sergio didn't make it, and the Hubers had a conflict with a stake meeting. Thus, we ended up just coming home and staying here the rest of the day. It was quite nice to have some down time, after a busy week.

It was my wife's week to give the lesson in Relief Society, again on the Sabbath. She told the group to just call her "Sorella Domenica" ("Sister Sunday"), because that's her assigned topic for several month in a row. According to her, the lesson went ok, but not her best -- teaching can be like that. She had stayed up late the night before after the baptism to finish preparing her lesson, so she took a well-deserved nap in the afternoon.

Dee writes:
I really loved the preparation for this lesson. I got some new insights into how to understand the Sacrament, which really increased my relationship with Christ. The room was too warm and some people got sleepy--I should have said something about it. I would have liked more participation, so I have to learn to ask better questions that draw people out. Doug is really good at this, and I'm going to pick his brain. One of the things I presented was Covey's Important/Urgent matrix. No one had seen it before, so it made an impact. It's important for so many aspects of our life.

We spoke with our daughter Wendy on the phone, including some computer tech support from me. In the evening we also called our friend Chod in Carlsbad, who has leukemia and is going through some cancer treatments right now. Being a senior missionary is so much different from the restrictions on young missionaries. It's a rare day when we don't have a least one phone call with the US, compared to the young missionaries who get two calls per year. And of course we constantly use the internet, whereas they get limited access once or twice a week. We have so many different ways to communicate that it often gets confusing: calls/texts using our Italian numbers, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Voice for calls/texts using our US numbers, Skype, and MagicJack. Often we have to pause a bit to determine the best way to contact somebody.

Before going to bed, we checked the weather for Monday, by asking Amazon Alexa and Google Home, of course. They each predicted that the low temperature would be minus 7 degrees Celsius or lower, which is about 19F, about ten degrees (F) lower than anything we have seen. Yikes! We have more or less converted to using Celsius (and the metric system) here by now, and it feels fairly natural, but sometimes we have to convert numbers to US equivalents as a reality check.

Baptism, with a new fashion statement

Saturday was quite a day, rainy for the most part. We slept in a bit, after a long week. In the morning I gave our extra outside door key to the new pair of Sorelle living below us, then ran down to the hardware store to make us another copy. I spent time updating Facebook with photos of Friday's activity, balancing my checking accounts, writing the blog, scanning sign-in sheets, arranging a few upcoming things via WhatsApp, backing up my laptops, and generally catching up. 

Dee writes:
I stayed home, working on my lesson and organizing stuff at the house. It's amazing how our small house and minimal supplies can still need attention! I was teaching on the Sabbath for the second month in a row, and felt impressed to use a couple of talks by Marvin J. Ashton. He was a great man, one of my favorite apostles. He had down-to-earth stories with a useful message, sort of like Elder Holland. He died in 1994, so his talks were all given before the Church started posting translations of General Conference, so I had to translate his talks myself. Google Translate gives a pretty good first pass, and then I edit and refine it. 

In the afternoon I went to Lidl to get food for home and the Institute, plus some drinks and paper goods for the pizza after baptism. I also upgraded my new Dell laptop from 120GB to 500GB, with an SSD that I bought on amazon.it when the price fell. That amount of disk space gives me some room to maneuver.

The baptism was very nice. There were a bunch of young missionaries from around Rome, plus about 15 of our GANS kids and 5 GANS-age non-members. The Sorelle asked me to be one of the witnesses for the baptism, which had to be performed twice because Heilin's (awesome) hair didn't quite get submerged the first time. The non-members were understandably a bit perplexed about the do-over, but it was a good chance to answer some questions. They also had me down on the printed program (see it here) to give a testimony after the baptism, which I happily did, but I would have been happier to have a bit more time to think it over. The spirit was very nice during the entire evening.

Dee writes:
Jhamil, a young man who is a member of our ward but hadn't been coming for a long time also came to the baptism. I got to visit with him, and he sounds excited about coming to the Institute activities. It's so great we have this location here for the young people. More and more have been coming.

 

 

Afterwards Dee and I drove over the to the pizzeria to get our ten pizzas and bring them back. We thought that we had it all set up to just pay and pick them up, but instead we had to start the order from scratch and wait for 15+ minutes while they made the pizzas. These were individual pizzas, and unfortunately we didn't think to ask them to slice them for us. When we got back to church, a bit later than we had hoped, we realized that there was only one knife in the whole place, and not a sharp one at that. Somehow we managed to cut and eat all the pizzas anyway, which were very tasty. Alessio (at work below with the black scarf on his head) helped select some unusual flavors. including one with honey and another with lots of parmigiano (Parmesan) cheese.

The pizza made a mess in the trunk of our car, with some white sauce of some kind leaking from one of them, but we were able to clean it up. Some of the missionaries and the GANS had brought desserts, as well as some pasta (which must apparently by law be served at any event :-), and with our sodas and water we had quite a nice spread.

 

 

We had about twenty kids of GANS age there for quite a while eating and visiting. One of the non-members, Christian (a friend of Margie, of course), is from San Francisco, living here while teaching English and trying to learn Italian. Dee told him all about the Institute and invited him to our activities, which seemed to interest him.

I inadvertently tried to start a new fashion trend. For the baptism I wore a suit, but on the way out the door I grabbed the wrong suit coat for my pants. The top was blue and the bottom was dark gray. Nobody seemed to notice (or everyone was too kind to say anything) until I happened to see it midway through the meeting. I am slightly color challenged, but it was more the darkness in the hall closet that bit me. Anyway, I took off the coat and just wore my gray sweater the rest of the evening.

We got home late, with Dee still needing some time to polish up her lesson for Relief Society on Sunday. I have learned not to ask how long she stayed up. As is typical, it was a busy week, but always lots of fun and lots of spiritual times.

More rain

It was chilly and raining all day Friday. In the morning my wife walked up to the Todis market and got a bunch of bread: a loaf for us at home, tortillas for Tuesday, flat bread (pane arabo) for the dinner, and some sandwich bread for the Institute. We always think that we'll have not much to carry to work, and then we end up with four or more full bags to carry in. Who needs weight training?

At 1pm, we had our once-per-transfer conference call with a bunch of the other senior missionaries and President Pickerd. This time, at our request, he took almost the whole time to give us a "state of the mission" report, with us asking some questions from time to time. It was well worthwhile. Several senior couples are finishing and going home in the next few months, and we don't really have anyone to replace them yet. Given the timetable of how long it takes to get a call, there will probably be some months with fewer couples. Fridays are very busy for us, so we were delighted that next time the call is scheduled for 9am, so that we can do it from home before the activities of the day start rolling

For my seminary doctrinal mastery class, only Valentina and Donatella showed up. We learned about five more of the Doctrinal Mastery scriptures, and then we played some games, including bingo again -- I often give somewhat obscure clues, so they have to work hard to find the scripture to mark on their bingo cards. That is, it's not all fun and games; there is a method to my madness! We also did a fun one where I show them a picture and assign them each a random scripture, and they have to figure out how it could apply to the picture. I tell them that it's ok to bend, fold, and mutilate the scripture as needed to fit the picture, which makes some of the answers fun. For example, here's one I used yesterday. 

It's a photo of a catfish who tried to swallow a ball which got lodged in its throat, so it had to be rescued by some fishermen. If you think this is a typical application of scriptures, you're wrong!

Saturday night is a baptism for a GANS-age girl,  Heilin from the Dominican Republic, who has been attending here for a while. She's a wonderful young woman and fit right in. Her friend Dario will be performing the baptismal ordinance. Alessio will be working (making pizzas) that evening at a pizzeria near the chapel, so we invited all the GANS to go out for pizza after the baptism and got about 15 takers. When I called the pizzeria to make a reservation, they said they can't handle groups that big. So instead we'll do it at the chapel afterwards, with Dee and me running over to get the pizzas.

My Book of Mormon class in the evening finished the book of Alma, talking about Captain Moroni and the sons of Helaman. We did some nice applying of all the war stories to our life today, which is what Mormon wanted us to do. I included a translation of a fun T-shirt:

In English it says "Stripling Warriors , Momma's Boys", and it translates pretty well into Italian culture. After the lesson we had food from my wife: "Crack Chicken" (Sister. Thacker's recipe, so-called because it's addictive) served in warm flatbread, plus some wonderful cracker sweets that she now loves. A record number of kids asked for the recipes! Afterwards the kids hung around late and did karaoke.

 

 

 

 

 

Rainy Transfer Thursday

It was chilly and very rainy most of Thursday (of course -- I just washed the car!). In the morning I purchased train tickets online for us to go to Naples/Pompeii in June with Marilyn and Lu. The Trenitalia website hadn't been allowing purchases that far in advance until just today, so I was able to get pretty cheap tickets. Now I have to find a tour guide for Pompeii, but there's no huge rush on that. We are really looking forward to the trip.

We went to the Institute at the usual time, and Dee spent most of the afternoon and evening on her lesson, first preparing it and then giving it. I went to the Post Office around the corner to do a couple of Amazon returns, which went very quickly. The wait was very short. Here you don't print the return shipping label like in the US; instead you print a form that you take to the Post Office and they print/apply the label, after you have waited for your number to show up on the screen. Seems less efficient, but it works. The impressive part is that Amazon issues the return credit within an hour of dropping it off.

It was a big transfer day, with Anziani and Sorelle coming and going all day. With our location so near the Termini train station, the Institute is a convenient place to stop and hang out while waiting for your new companion's train to arrive. Several of the missionaries spent over 12 hours on the train from Sicily. Only a handful of GANS showed up all day, which is typical for Thursdays. No students came at all for the English class, which I would have ended up teaching. I did a fair amount of prep for my Friday lessons, but still need some more time, what with all the fun visiting with missionaries all day. Several of them were hungry, so we ended up feeding them sandwiches with cheese/sliced meat from our fridge.

Dee writes: 
I missed out on most of the visiting  because I was working on my lesson. Making all those slides and translating everything takes time. Then, it turned out that about half my students couldn't make it. So, we decided to wait until next week to do part of the lesson. I talked about what to do when the repository says the document isn't there. They really enjoyed those suggestions, which included praying for a different clerk.

I told them one of my favorite stories: A policeman is walking down the street and sees a man on his hands and knees under a lamppost. "What are you doing," he asks. The man replies that he's looking for his keys. So, the policeman gets down on his hands and knees, too, and joins the search. After awhile, the policeman says, "Are you sure you lost your keys here?" The man replies, "No, I lost them down that alley, but the light is better here." 

The moral of the story is that sometimes we do what we're comfortable with, but to find what we're looking for, we need to go to the right place.

Ricardo, a former GANS (now married), asked on the WhatsApp group if there was anybody who could help him with a PC question. I volunteered my services and was able to give him some advice and suggestions about a new Acer desktop PC he's looking at buying. He seemed very pleased at my input, and I'll probably end up helping him configure it a bit.

Coming home, there were three Sorelle and six suitcases. We took the suitcases in the car while they took the subway. Surprisingly, we were able to fit five of the six suitcases into our tiny Toyota, which made it much easier for them on public transit.

Baobab refugee camp, second edition

Wednesday was fairly slow during the day, mostly at home, but with a busy and wonderful evening -- more on that below. In the early afternoon I went out to do some errands while Dee stayed home and worked on her family history lesson. I washed and vacuumed the car, which was badly needed, even though rain was threatening. Next I went to the mall to talk with Infostrada about getting a WiFi hotspot for an upcoming event. I don't know any details about it, but was asked to find out how much it would cost to buy and use a hotspot. I got the details and forwarded the information to the office. On the way home, I filled a huge cart at Lidl with food for the Institute and for home, including their wonderful buckwheat bread with walnuts. Before leaving the parking lot at the market, I packed the trunk of the car with bags of things to take into the Institute; once I arrived home, I carried four very heavy bags from the back seat into the apartment. We do our best not to open the trunk after parking, so that nobody can tell whether we have anything in there. It takes some extra time to organize, but that's life in a big city.

One funny thing happened when I finished my last Diet Dr. Pepper can. On a whim I searched for it on amazon.it and found a match which is listed as a 12-pack, but is actually a bottle brush. Very strange!

In the mail we received a copy of a Bank of America credit card for Dee. It's a joint account, with a chip-and-signature card that has zero foreign transaction fee, so it will be her backup card, after the Andrews chip-and-pin card. We had copies of the card at home but forgot to bring hers. It was easier to get BofA to mail us a new one than ship our copy from home.

In the evening we went down to the Institute, where some of the kids had gotten together to prepare pasta to take to the Baobab refugee camp, where we went in December. It was wonderful to see them there, working together crowded around the stove. We didn't plan the event -- it was them all along, which was wonderful. They cooked 6 kg (about 13 pounds) of pasta of different sorts, which they purchased themselves, packaged it up into plastic bowls, and then carried it to Sheyla's car. Five of the kids drove it all to the camp, and we accompanied three others on the subway. The camp is fed each day with donations from the community. We got there just before 7pm, which was when the website said that we needed to arrive, but they actually didn't start serving food until closer to 8pm. That gave us all a chance to visit with some of the refugees, who were mostly from Africa and the Middle East. It's heartbreaking to hear their stories of how bad it was back home, though living in a camp isn't a vacation, either. During our visit in December, there was a ton of food and many people to serve. This time, our food was about one third of everything available, and our kids were all very much needed to serve the food to the refugees, which was much more rewarding. They all had a great time, and it was fun to see them working so well together. One of the girls said that she kept almost breaking into tears seeing how these people, almost all men, are living.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ibrahim, from Egypt, teaching the Arabic alphabet to Dee

Ibrahim smiling at our GANS. What a wonderful young man

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was fairly cold outside, though a bit warmer inside the dinner tent. It's tough to think of these men sleeping in their small tents in this weather. We were talking with one young man from Iraq, who said that it was great to get three meals per day here, since in Libya (before coming to Italy) they only got one meal per day. He did say however that they were tired of "pasta, pasta, pasta", which is what Baobab asks the volunteers to bring because it's economical, easy to transport and everyone here knows how to make it. I can see how it would get boring to have the same thing all the time, especially when it's so different from their usual fare.

We met one young man from Syria, which is the birthplace of my wife's paternal grandfather. His English was not very good, but one of the other refugees translated for him. He said how dangerous things are in Syria, though he hopes to go back some day. All of these guys had been separated from their family for years, and that seemed to matter more to them than the fact that they don't really have a home. He is 22 and has been away from home for six years. His seven brothers, six sisters and parents are scattered all over, from Turkey to Libya to Italy.

Ibrahim, below, shared the Arabic alphabet with Dee and with a bunch of our kids. He is from Egypt.

 

My wife was amazing. There was a ton of walking involved: several blocks to the Metro stop, then a bunch of walking to/from the subways inside, and then about 15 minutes to the camp. We walked about half an hour in each direction. Claudia and Joyce set a really fast pace -- I could barely keep up. My wife is admittedly vertically challenged, with the shortest legs in the group, but she kept up by running quite a bit. I was surprised to see her do that. It was a good workout for both of us!

Dee writes: I was grateful for all the times I have walked up many flights of stairs, because I needed the stamina to keep up with those girls!