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.