Spring seems to be prevailing slowly over winter. Sunday was a fine day, sunny and with nice temperatures after being in the 30s overnight. Dee writes: It might finally get warm enough for me to send my coat to the cleaners! When I was a missionary here in the 1970s, I was told that until thirty years before, it was never cold enough in Rome to need heaters.
At church, the Spragues each spoke. They are leaving for Malta for their final transfer, so it was their farewell. They have served and loved folks in this ward for over 16 months, and they are well loved here. It was wonderful to hear from them. The ward passed around a card to sign and write notes to them, during sacrament meeting (a little unusual, but it works! :-) For the closing hymn, Sorella Sprague, our pianist, chose "God Be With You 'til We Meet Again". This couple, in their sixties, have been living five stories up, with no elevator, for a year and a half. That means carrying up all their groceries, too. They never complained. In fact, we only found out because the sisters are moving in there when the Spragues leave and asked about it. We also saw April Parker, one of our American GANS, back from her internship in Armenia for a bit.
After church we got to spend a fairly easy afternoon at home, which we hadn't had in a while. Dee spent most of her time in the kitchen, preparing "crack chicken" as our main course offering for the senior couple dinner at the mission home in the evening, so I guess it wasn't much down time for her. I helped with some of the dishes, and I also caught up on some paperwork, accounting, and laptop backups.
On the IT support front, the Spragues called with a small problem on their laptop, which I was able to fix using TeamViewer. I also wrote up a step-by-step procedure for forwarding all emails from the church missionary account (myldsmail.net) to our personal emails, which will be useful for the senior couples. At church, Sister Magnanti gave me her small HP x360 laptop to take home and upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, which is a good move. I'm also going to give it a "wash and wax" while I'm at it, after backing up everything first. They also gave me the go ahead to buy and install a 250GB SSD to speed it up a bunch.
At 5pm all of the senior couples in Rome met for a potluck at the mission home, which is nearby. The Pickerds try to do this every 2-3 months, though they have slipped a bit with her cancer. Fortunately her treatment is mostly over now, but she still doesn't feel very well. It was nice to visit with a bunch of great folks, including those working on temple construction. I particularly enjoyed chatting with Rosa Calabrese, a native Italian whose husband has been volunteering in the mission office--for 17 years!! She is a really wonderful woman and I hope we get to spend some time together. I have the pleasant opportunity to be the only female senior missionary who speaks Italian. I see the Italian women my age light up when we can talk together, and I certainly love being able to do it. Sister Balzotti, who is Canadian, told Rosa she enjoyed her talk at Church. Rosa asked her if she spoke Italian. So, I said that some people have the gift of tongues, while Sister Balzotti has the gift of ears. She liked it :) After dinner, we all gathered in the living room, and the Pickerds gave an update on the state of the mission, with some Q&A, plus the couples leaving soon got to give a short farewell. We have a native Italian senior couple arriving Monday! We were home by 8pm, and it was still light outside, thanks to the DST change.
We heard a wonderful story from Anziano Fenn, who has been here for just over six years with his wife, helping to manage the temple construction. He served in my mission from 1976-78, though I didn't know him at the time. Recently he gave a talk in their ward, Roma 2, where he started by turning to the bishop and saying "Bishop, I'm 60 years old and have now been here for 6 years -- I want you to know that I am a full tithe payer!" Time is more of a precious commodity than money, and we are delighted to be spending our time serving here.
My sister is visiting California, so we set up a video call with my mother. Donna is good with tech, so it was the perfect time. It was so fun to see each other. Jim and Donovan got in on the call too, and we'll do it again with my Dad Monday evening.