Dramastic

Thursday was our district meeting, so we left here at 9:15am. As usual, we really enjoy the interactions with the young missionaries. It was the final DDM in our ward for the Spragues, who are leaving in a couple of weeks to spend their final transfer (the unit of time in missions these days) in Malta. Anziano Ferrara always does a wonderful job of leading the discussions, and we all came away very uplifted. We discussed Alma 36, where Alma the younger describes his conversion experience and what a huge change it made in his life. Anziano Ferrara quoted his stake president, who said "For those of you here who say 'That's just the way I am; I can't change', I say that you don't understand the atonement of Jesus Christ." That is, we can always change and improve if we rely on the Lord.

Here are some photos of this group of Rome 3 missionaries:

L-R: Spragues, Nelson, James, Dee, McConkie, Ferrara

In addition to the spiritual highlights, the meeting had a couple of very entertaining moments. At one point, Sorella Sprague, a very mild-mannered woman who plays the piano for our small Primary (i.e., the kids under 12), was bemoaning the chaos that usually happens there, much more so than is typical in the US. She let slip the word "hellhole" in describing the situation (appropriately? ;-), which was very out of character for her and left us all laughing really hard for a while. Her husband chuckled that he had never heard her use that kind of language before in 45 years of marriage; she got up and walked around for a minute to cool off after that! Later, on an unrelated topic, Anziano Ferrara inadvertently coined a wonderful word, "dramastic", when he was trying to decide whether to say dramatic or drastic. We all liked it and believe that it should definitely be added to the dictionary.

On the way into town after DDM, we made our usual stop at the Lidl market nearby. We overfilled one big shopping cart with food for Friday's dinner and Sunday's open house, with only a few things for home. It took both of us two heavy trips up the elevator to get it all into the Institute. Many days we joke that "fortunately tomorrow we won't have much stuff to take to the Institute", and then almost every time we end up with our hands full of heavy bags. 

Anziano Misa, who served with us at the Institute through January, showed up for a bit while waiting for his train back to Naples. He had come up to get his permesso renewed after a year in Italy. It seems silly to us that they won't just issue us a two-year visa, and that the young missionaries always have to travel back to the city where they first served. The mission spends a lot of time and money on this process, but that's how Italy does it. It was good to see him, and Jomar and Jayno dropped by to say hi as well.

I spent the afternoon working on my lesson for Friday evening, including improving the Italian lyrics to "Star Bright" a bit. Dee worked all afternoon on her FH lesson, which she says went pretty well, with everyone present this time after some travels and illness. She's getting the process down and seems less stressed as time goes on. After her class and the English classes, we drove the Sorelle and Anziano Wright home again. Dee writes: The term is almost over, and Ugo wants me to teach the same series again next time. I'll still need to tweak and recreate a lot of materials, so it will still be  a big job, but it's easier now with two screens. We tend to use our pday and Wednesdays for lesson prep, so we don't have a lot of down time. 

Dee brought home a big pot with three whole chickens which she had cooked in the crock pots there all day; they were too hot to put in the fridge, so she will shred them at home and carry it all back Friday morning for the dinner that evening. I'm making Thai Chicken Pasta, which has peanut butter in it. We'll see how the GANS respond to that!

The next week or so is going to be really busy for us, but it's all good stuff. We love serving.