Friendship center

Monday we went into the Institute early for a 10am meeting. Even though it wasn't very cold, it rained and hailed quite hard in the morning, including during our drive in. The traffic was heavy, and Google Maps sent us a different way which probably didn't save any time. There are so many places here where there are two roads running right next to each other for a while, and it's hard to tell which one to get on -- the GPS tends to get confused too. It was routing us in circles for a while, but finally we made it, after almost an hour on the road.

The meeting was about a new project for refugees that LDS Charities will start in May. It's called a Friendship Center, where volunteers will help teach classes and do activities with immigrants who have places to live and are hoping to stay in Italy. The missionary couple who will be coming to Rome from Frankfort to lead the project are named the Canfields, from San Clemente. They came up with the concept and helped launch the first one in Athens a few months ago. We met with them in January when they came to town to look for a location. This meeting didn't really have to do with our GANS, although the Canfields would love to have some of them volunteer, but the Institute is such a convenient place for everyone that Ugo gave the OK.

About ten women showed up, half Italians and half Americans, after the meeting was announced on WhatsApp groups and in Relief Society on Sunday. There were lots of talents offered for the new center; it was an impressive group. The Canfields found a great location, in the basement of the Episcopal church just a couple of blocks away from the Institute, where they already have a successful refugee program that is closed during the afternoon. The LDS Charities group will staff the Friendship Center there during the afternoons, and the Episcopal church is delighted to have us there.

During the meeting, an electrician came to fix the button that opens the door downstairs when somebody rings on the intercom. That's how we let people in all day long, and recently it has been working only intermittently -- we have to push the button a bunch of times and often the person downstairs will ring us back to say it didn't open. Anyway, the electrician had the bright idea to ask our neighbor, and sure enough they were having the same problem. So it wasn't a problem on our end, but down at the lock mechanism. The guy cleaned the contacts there, and it seems to be working much better now, which simplifies life for us.

During the afternoon I spent a bunch of time preparing my Institute lesson for Tuesday night on plural marriage. It's a lesson similar to one I have given many times in Seminary, both when I taught and later as a guest teacher. In addition to doctrinal and historical background, I bring in stories from our own family history (4 of 4 great-grandfathers and 7 of 8 great-great-grandfathers were polygamists). I also talk about the fact that everyone understood it was a difficult thing but did it to follow what they believed the Lord had commanded. The challenging part for this lesson was translating everything into Italian and putting it all into a Powerpoint presentation; because it is an online class, just talking without slides doesn't work very well.

In the evening we had a good group for FHE. Dee gave the lesson, using a couple of stories from a talk by Bishop Causse. She also had a bowl of random items collected from around the Institute, and she asked each person to pick one and come up with an analogy of how that could represent a blessing of the gospel in our lives. There were some entertaining and meaningful responses, and everyone enjoyed it.

Then we had the cookies she had made Friday, covered in powdered sugar, which didn't last long.  

After that we played the Five Crowns card game, this time with seven of us. It takes a lot longer with a bigger group, so we didn't have time to do all the rounds. I did not win this time, but it's still fun.

It was a long but very enjoyable day.