Cake for women
(Blog update for yesterday) Dee writes: I took the opportunity to encourage them to start planning now to be senior missionaries. On average, one or two couples from each USA stake are on missions, a woefully low number. I told them that they need to be prepared physically and financially to do it. Simply wanting to is not enough, and it's more expensive and complicated than going when you're young. I also wanted to honor the Spragues, who are near the end of their mission and have done so much loving work here with the members as MLS (member leader support). There is no one coming to replace them 😟. The young missionaries were very interested and surprised by the lack of seniors. In fact, the list of current opportunities for seniors is 38 pages long! Young missionaries talk about their mission as being born (when they arrive) and dying (when they leave). Elder McConkie mentioned that some elders says they're dying, meaning they're already checking out and thinking of what they're missing at home. He said he wants to be "murdered" on his last day, still going strong.
In the morning we both stayed at home, with me working on my Institute lesson a bit more. We got to the Institute at the regular time, and soon Donatella showed up from school. My wife started cooking some desserts with her, both for Seminary and Institute class. They seem to have a lot of fun together, and Donatella is learning a few things. For example, at one point she was using the electric hand mixer and lifted it up and out of the bowl while still rotating, sending batter flying all over! They made lemon bars and Snowball cookies, both of which were wonderful.
Valentina showed up early with her aunt, Barbara, who has become good friends with Dee. Barbara brought her some homemade mandarin orange-flavored tiramisu, which was also awesome. Dee ended up sharing a bunch of it later in the evening with our GANS.
There were six students in the Seminary class, the largest group yet, particularly considering that the bigger gatherings in the past included a few kids past Seminary age, while this was all kids currently in Seminary. We finished going over all the Doctrinal Mastery scriptures, and then we played the game Taboo (downloaded from etsy.com and translated into Italian by yours truly) and a couple of rounds of Bingo. They have a lot of fun together. Marilene (at the end of the table in the photo below) is quite a charismatic gal, full of energy and laughter. She really livens things up -- she stayed around for Institute and, at one point, had five young men hanging around her, and she kept them all in stitches.
Dee worked in the kitchen all afternoon and evening, with almost no time to sit down. She made her wonderful pasta casserole with ham, cheddar, and ranch dressing, which was crispy and delicious. I didn't have time to help with dishes like I usually do, and she did a ton of them.
The start of the evening Institute class was a bit unnerving. As of ten minutes after the start time, no one had yet arrived, except the two Seminary students who had hung around. Finally kids started trickling in. We started with four and ended up with about ten. The class went pretty well, covering Helaman 10-16 (including Samuel the Lamanite) with some good discussion among the group. After class, the food and desserts got gobbled up, though given the smaller size of this group there were leftovers, a rare occurrence.
Thursday had been international Womens Day (festa della donna). Several of the guys on the WhatsApp group sent out messages of best wishes to the girls. I added my history that, as president of a tiny branch in Pavia at the end of my mission in 1977, I actually served for a few months as the president of the Relief Society (the church's organization for women), so I thanked everyone for their nice thoughts on "my" special day 😀😉. Then, on Friday night, Sheyla brought a cake that she had made for just the women in the group. I mentioned my special status as a former Relief Society president, and Claudio (in the middle of the second photo below) brought up the fact that he served as district leader during his mission in England for a district with four sisters and just him and his companion. After a bit of coaxing, Sheyla relented and let the two of us try a piece of her cake. Dee writes: I asked Sheyla why she called it a mimosa cake. Her reason was that she made it look like the mimosa flower. I told them there's an alcoholic drink called a Mimosa, with orange juice and Prosecco. We had some laughs, teasing her about trying to get us all drunk (not).
We got home just after 10pm after a very long day. It took awhile to find a parking spot, and then we staggered to our apartment. It was a lot of fun, but pretty tiring, and we were glad to get home and get some sleep.
