Musical Sunday

Sunday morning I woke up to some wonderful news that made me smile and almost shed a tear. Elder Keith Draughon was my "greenie" missionary companion from North Carolina in Monza in 1976 when we first knocked on the Peregos' door. He was the one to baptize Ugo's mom, after I had been transferred away. We have kept in touch over the years and had a delightful visit with them in Alabama last June. Dee & I have visited the Peregos many times since our mission, but Saturday was the first time in over 40 years that Keith was able to see the Peregos, who are in Provo for their son Alessandro's graduation from BYU. Alessandro is Ugo's much younger brother, and he will be starting grad school at BYU in the fall. We attended his wedding a few years ago in Utah. Here is what Keith's wrote to me about the meeting:

Words cannot adequately describe the joy I felt tonight! Thank you for keeping in touch with the Peregos all these years so I could experience this happy reunion!

Draughons and Peregos

 

 

A few days ago we received a Valentine's Day card in the mail from our daughter Wendy, who loves making and sending cards. It took well over two months to arrive here. She kept asking whether we had received it. Usually things get here in under two weeks, but we were delighted to have it at last.

At church, my Sunday School lesson went quite well, with a lot of good participation. Dee's presentation in Primary also went fine, helping the kids to set some rules for behavior and reverence. She is really good at keeping little kids interested and entertained (teenagers, not so much :). It was nice for her to model some of the techniques for the local leaders who are challenged by some very rambunctious kids.

Joshua Perego just turned 16 this week, so after church he was ordained a priest by his dad.  We had attended his blessing as a baby in 2002 in Utah, and it was neat to be able to participate in the ordination. I have a long and interesting history of being present for Perego family events.

We got home in time for a little lunch and quick nap for me. I am feeling much better: I was only slightly sleepy this time, not wiped out like most of the week. Then we headed out for stake choir practice, which is called prove in Italian -- that word always sounds like "tryouts" to us, but that is the word they use for a practice. At 3pm we had practice by sections, so I got to learn my parts in the basement of Rome 2 with the basses. At 4pm-ish we started the big practice, with quite a large choir in attendance, maybe 50 people. It went on for almost two hours, as we are learning four pieces for stake conference in a couple of weeks. It is fun to hang with the Italians and get to know them a bit.

From there we ran across town to a guitar concert by Larry Green, a BYU music prof and long-time friend of the Herways. The Herways explained a bit about what they do with LDS Charities, and then Larry gave an incredible guitar exhibition for over half an hour. The finger work was most impressive. His wife and Anziano Herway joined in to accompany him vocally for the last couple of numbers; apparently he and Anziano Herway were in a band together when they were teenagers. There were probably about 50 people in attendance, including a lot of our GANS.

Sitting near us was a little girl listening to the concert, and for a while she was moving her fingers as if playing the guitar. It was sooo cute!

We got home by about 8:30pm after a long day, but with smiles on our faces. At 10pm we talked with Wes and his girlfriend Alyssa via WhatsApp video. We recently learned that Wes will be speaking at his graduation ceremony at Cal State Fullerton next month! They are coming here in July and we are trying to figure out where her mother's family comes from in Sicily so we can all go there together. It was fun to chat with them.

Saturday at home

Saturday was a much-needed down day, entirely at  home for me. The only times I stepped out of the apartment were to climb the stairs in the morning and to empty the trash in the evening. I am feeling a lot better, so maybe I am finally getting over this stinking cold. In the morning I put together a new stand fan that we bought on Amazon, since our old one broke. It has been getting warm enough that we will be needing it. We have AC only in our two bedrooms, but our desks are in the living room, so this should be a big help as the summer heat comes on. Dee also bought herself a small heating unit that can also serve as a fan under her desk.

 

I spent a bunch of time working on my Sunday School lesson, about Balaam and the talking donkey -- should be interesting! To help prepare I watched movie excerpts on YouTube from the Italian version of Shrek where the donkey talks -- not quite Eddie Murphy, but fairly similar 😉😁. Dee was preparing for a big presentation Sunday in Primary. I also updated the Institute Facebook page and did a lot of messaging on various upcoming topics. 

We have a whole bunch of ways to communicate here, and it often is a bit confusing trying to figure out which method makes the most sense for a particular conversation. Here is a list:

• phone calls within Italy using our Italian SIM cards
• phone calls to/from the US using Google Voice and Skype
• texting within Italy (we also each use a service to allow us to text via our laptop: I use Pulse, Dee uses MightyText)
• texting to/from the US using Google voice, both on our phones and on the web
• WhatsApp messaging and calls (we also use WhatsApp Web on our laptops)
• email
• Skype
• MagicJack
• Zoom
• Facebook

Each one of these methods has things that it is good at and things for which is not well suited. Each involves a phone app, a Windows program, and/or a web page. You can see that there are always a lot of places to be monitoring for incoming messages. It is a good thing that we are not afraid of tech!

In the afternoon Dee walked down to Conad to get a few food items, as well as the Chinese store to look for some supplies for her Primary presentation. In the evening, she made a large batch of luscious cookies for Primary with peanut butter and Hershey's kisses, both rare treats here.

In the evening I spent a bunch of time updating the running history for our Institute center in the months of March and April, putting in the major activities, along with a bunch of photos. It is good to do this as the year goes along rather than waiting for the end. This blog serves as my guide and reminder for what to include. It is fun to review all the things we have done, though often it makes me tired just reading about it all!

Two naps again

Friday morning started very early for Dee, with an 8:30am dentist visit across town. Following the suggestions from Google Maps, she left at 7:30am to take the bus, which got her there by 9am with all the traffic. Usually Google is better than that! The dentist was busy and didn't really have time to fit her in at that point, so they just rescheduled. Dee writes: I was fine with it, but they were apologetic and offered me a coffee (no thanks) and a pastry (yes!) that they had from the dentist's birthday the day before. On her way out the door, Anna the dental tech mentioned the nice open market around the corner, so Dee got to do some fun shopping for a while before heading directly to the Institute. My wife loves a bargain, and she found some very good deals for herself!

Meanwhile, I stayed home for the morning, with a short trip to Conad to buy a few items of produce, including a big bag of oranges for the dinner that evening. I climbed the stairs a couple of times, which I hadn't done in awhile with my cold, but then by mid-morning I was really tired and took a nap. We live in amazing times: I used the Amazon Echo in our bedroom to provide background noise ("Alexa, play brown noise") and to set an alarm to wake me up. When I got to the Institute, I was still zonked, so after a bit of lunch and lesson prep, I took a second nap for over an hour, this one a very deep sleep that really helped. This cold has gone on long enough, and I am tired of being tired.

There was a nice turnout for Seminary class: seven kids, though not quite as large as some weeks. I taught a little lesson on some interesting facts discovered refuting certain criticisms of the Book of Mormon over the years, and then we played doctrinal mastery bingo, which the kids really like. Several of them know their scriptures quite well now. Dee made candy crack for them: saltine crackers, covered with butter and sugar and then baked. It was very well received.

 

As usual on Fridays, Dee spent the entire afternoon and evening preparing for dinner for over twenty people. At Matteo's request (he leaves on his mission Tuesday, so this was his "last supper"), we had sausage, pancakes, and oranges. My wife found an incredible recipe that makes very fluffy pancakes (it includes vinegar!) The kids could put maple syrup, Nutella, and/or whipped cream on their pancakes, and they used every possible combination. She had 70 sausage links pre-cooked and kept warm in the crockpot, and an oven full of fresh pancakes with more coming off the griddle as people ate. we had more than 100 pancakes for the twenty-two people The electric griddle is perfect for the pancakes, making eight at a time. She had many volunteers helping in the kitchen. 

The classroom was packed, standing room only at the end. We finished the book of Ether, chapters 6-15, with most of the time spent on chapter 12. There was good discussion and reasonable reverence. We had six nonmembers present during the evening, four in my class and two helping in the kitchen. It was an awesome evening, the biggest crowd in a while. The place was full to bursting, and the energy was palpable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a final photo of us with Matteo, who will spend two years in Calgary, Canada. He is a wonderful kid.

My class ended a bit early, so we actually got home by about 10pm, which is earlier than usual for a Friday night. It will be nice to have some down time at home Saturday, with a lot of stuff to prepare for Sunday.

Market Miracle

Thursday morning we had our district meeting, so we left home at 9:15am. There was almost no traffic this time, which is unusual. There are nine of us: four young Anziani, a Sorella threesome, and the two of us. Each week we do a "getting to know you" activity before settling down to business, and this week's was fun. Sorella James had us each answer three questions:

• which companionship in the group would you like to see in an updated version of  the MTC training video "The District", and why?
• who in the group could convert the Pope, and why?
• which missionary in the group do you admire most, and why?

Everyone wrote down their answers on little sheets of paper, and then Sorella James read them, more or less anonymously. With so many people, it took a lot of time, but we enjoyed it and learned a bunch about each other. My answer for the second question was Dee, because "she wouldn't let him say no!" One nice part is that we learned from their answers, which often named us, that they seem to really appreciate having us geezers in the group. Because the activity went so long, the meeting started to run over at the end, and we had to leave before it was over.

On the way from there into town, we stopped at the nearby Lidl for a big shopping trip, with some food for us but mostly for the Institute. While we were walking the aisles, a woman eyed my name tag and came up to ask who we were. I started to tell her that we were missionaries for our church, and she got real excited and started talking really fast in Spanish. Dee's Spanish is light years ahead of mine, though I was able to follow a little bit, The lady is a member of the church from Peru, and has been living here for a year to work. She left her husband and daughter at home to earn money, which is not uncommon; I guess that the economy here, with all of its problems, is still better than that of many South American countries. Anyway, she had not been able to find the church here (apparently she is not tech savvy enough to use the chapel locator on lds.org), and she was so excited that she started to cry. She told us about her family and showed us pictures, then promised to come to church on Sunday after we gave her our chapel address. She said that she never comes to that particular store, but that day she felt like she needed to. It's a good thing that we left on time from our district meeting, or we would have missed her. White shirt, tie, and name tag really stand out in a crowd!

From there we drove to the Institute, without using the GPS at all, which I think is a first for that route. Our normal routes are getting very familiar, which is nice for me. We had a ton of stuff to carry upstairs when we got there, and fortunately there were two young Anziani and their investigator waiting for us to arrive to start a lesson. They helped get it all upstairs in one trip, which we very appreciated.

I was pretty tired, not having slept well again -- not sure why, but it has been an issue recently. So once we got everything unpacked and ate some lunch, I took a nap in the classroom with a couch. It is nice to be able to cover the windows with the shutters, and I put in earplugs and used the blanket and pillow we keep on hand. After sleeping an hour or so, I felt much better, but my cold symptoms are still stubbornly refusing to go away entirely.

The afternoon and evening were pretty slow, as is common on Thursdays. It allowed for us to work on lessons, including Dee who is helping in Primary this coming weekend. Knowing her and seeing the visuals she was working on, she will knock the socks off everyone! I feel fairly prepared for Friday's lessons at this point, though a brief review will be in order beforehand. 

We got home just before 9:30pm, twelve hours after leaving home. Dee was exhausted and had an early morning dental appointment, so she zonked out fairly quickly. I did a bit of work on the stake choir music, preparing to post it on my web site for anyone to download, but I still need to get a few recordings of the parts. The weather has been gorgeous this week, warm but not too hot, and soon I will be switching from long-sleeve to short-sleeve shirts for the summer. Time is flying for us.

Festa della Liberazione

Wednesday was an Italian national holiday, Liberation Day, commemorating the liberation of Italy from fascism at the end of WW II. Originally we had planned a GANS outing, but almost nobody wanted to do it on the holiday, which was great for us. Dee needed some prep time after a very full few days, and unfortunately I am still fighting my cold. So we spent almost the entire day at home, for which we were very grateful. I couldn't sleep well during the night, for no particular reason. After I finally go back to sleep around dawn, I slept until 9:30am, which is unheard of for me! My cold symptoms seemed to be getting slightly worse, not better, and I was wiped out much of the day. 

The ward had a very nice picnic and barbecue, which we missed, but the quiet day was well worth it for us.

 

In the afternoon we walked together for a short trip to the Chinese store for a few household items. The Chinese stores seem to be open on almost all the holidays. Dee then walked up to the Todis market around the corner to get a few food items; it seemed to have regular hours as well. In the evening, Dee swept the floors and cleaned the bathrooms. Dee writes: During the day, I worked on various things on my computer. Pretty uneventful day -- just what the doctor ordered!

Back to the land of the living?

Tuesday I went back to the Institute for the whole time. My cold symptoms are almost completely gone, and I made it through the day, though I felt wiped out for much of afternoon. By early evening I seemed to have turned a corner and felt much better -- knock on wood.

Late Monday night I got a message from the Anziani in Ladispoli, whose apartment we inspect, detailing several problems in their apartment, one of them needing rather urgent attention. I was able to contact the Balzottis on their overnight ferry to Sardegna to ask what to do. They gave me some advice and followup questions to ask, then told me to call Fratello Calabrese in the morning; he is a local volunteer in the mission office, head of all apartment issues. He has been doing this for almost twenty years, so he knows everyone and everything about the apartments. Tuesday morning I called him and got the number of a local plumber up there to come out and do some work. Hopefully we can get these issues taken care of quickly. With almost 100 apartments in the mission, there is always something to fix. We were pleased that these Anziani knew to contact us first.

Adrian flew from Rome to Madrid in the morning to report at the MTC there. His mom, grandmother, and two of his GANS friends, Ludo and Matteo, were there to see him off. They all sent out a number of messages and videos from the airport on WhatsApp, with many of us returning well wishes. I have formed a nice bond with him, and it will be great to see his growth while serving in my old mission.

Taco Tuesday was a relatively small group, with Margie arriving late as the only female in the group. There were four extra young Anziani there, in town as part of an exchange necessitated by permesso woes. Anziano Youngblood had to take the train all the way down to Cosenza to re-apply for his permission docs. That was the first city he served in, well over a year ago, but they make you go back to your original office for each followup appointment. It seems silly and inefficient, not to mention expensive, but that is how the system works. We are personally grateful to have our two-year permission in hand so we won't have to go through this again. Anyway, it was the first Taco Tuesday experience for several of the missionaries, and they were delighted to be included. They got to have some carrot cake before the tacos, and raved about that long-lost American flavor. Dee writes: One of the elders was Anziano Belucci, whom we first met in Cosenza when he was zone leader there. I got to help him with his Italian genealogy when he was transferred to Ostia, so it was particularly nice to see him again. Another elder was Anziano Del Grosso, who is new to the mission. As you can tell by his name, he is also of Italian extraction and he eagerly gave me access to his tree to see what we can do. 

 

After lunch, we had a campus council meeting, without Ugo but with almost all of the GANS council members present or on video. It went quite well and we finished in an hour. We had some good discussion on how to fellowship our current nonmembers better, and we also planned out activities through the end of May.

Choir was small but very nice. There were four men plus my wife to sing, so we sang a number of hymns in four part harmony, usually with me singing melody, Dee doing alto, Ludo and Junior (a nonmember from Cameroon who is new to this choir thing and doesn't sing out much yet) singing tenor, and Matteo as bass. Lorenzo is amazing on the piano, and his knowledge of the hymns and their history is fun. We did a number of verses a capella, barbershop-like, which is always enjoyable when it sounds good, which it (usually) did. Afterwards we enjoyed the carrot cake that Dee had made the day before, but it didn't last very long! Lorenzo is to my left in the photo below, wearing a sweater vest.

Our new washer continues to astound. In addition to dispensing fabric softener, it can handle loads that are 2-3 times larger than the old one, and it runs at least twice as fast, so the time spent doing loads of laundry is greatly diminished. Perhaps more importantly, it spins much faster and better than the old one, leaving the clothes barely damp when they come out of the washer instead of quite soggy. Clearly, our old washer had been dying for a while in several ways. In the morning we changed the sheets on our bed, and Dee did a load of all the dirty sheets, which used to take 2 loads, and was able to hang them up before we left for Institute. By the time we got home at night, they were dry with the warm weather. The new washer is definitely noisier when spinning, but we don't care! The fact that it is running far less often more than compensates for any noise.

Manila envelope!

Monday was another day at home for me. My cold symptoms are almost gone, except that I remain a bit weak and tired, which is what often happens to me with a cold. Fairly soon after getting up, it was clear to both of us that I should not go in to the Institute, as I had no energy. Usually I enjoy climbing the stairs for all seven floors of our apartment building, recently 4 or more times each morning, but the last few days I have no desire to do that at all. By mid-morning I was back in bed for a very sound nap.

Our new washer is awesome! Thus we now have another user manual to add to our pile (I also went online and downloaded the digital copy, as is our wont). Dee wisely decided that it was time to thin the herd, as the stack was getting pretty big. Sure enough, over half of the manuals were for things that are no longer here or are out of warranty and require no manual (e.g., our toaster). We tossed a bunch of manuals, kept some, and held a couple to give to the Balzottis if they want them. Dee asked me to go through the stack preliminarily and then she would make the final decision, which is fine with me. Dee writes: I'm much better at asking Doug to do such things than at doing them myself ;-) The real find in the stack was a manila envelope, which we kept. It's a mystery why they don't sell them here, and we are thrilled to have one. Simple pleasures! 

The other day one of the kids on WhatsApp posted a death notice for Angelo Moroni, which means angel Moroni in Italian. We all got a kick out of it, because we thought he had died about 1600 years ago 😉. Actually, Dee had knocked on somebody's door with that name back in the 1970s, though I doubt it was the same guy.

Dee decided to go into town for the day on the metro (rather than taking my life in my hands by driving alone), while I stayed at home to rest and try to do a little lesson prep, though my brain wasn't functioning all that well. I took a second brief nap and finally got showered and dressed by early afternoon. There was a bunch of WhatsApp messaging about upcoming Institute activities all afternoon and evening, which I participated in. Dee cooked some desserts for the next couple of days, and also did grated cheese to prepare for Taco Tuesday in case I don't make it. As is typical with Monday afternoons, no kids showed up until almost evening, when the Ganziani gave the FHE lesson. There was a smallish group by recent standards, but everyone had a good time. 

About driving: I seem to be blind to roundabouts and keep pulling in without looking for oncoming traffic. I have driven so little here (preferring to knit) that I'm a little rusty. I love to go out with public transit, so it's all good.

After cooking, I got to talk with Monica on the phone. She's the Primary President in our ward. I've been asked to help out there, and we're planning a little rules presentation for the children and their parents for next Sunday. I'm glad to have the opportunity to know the children better. There are less than a dozen in the whole ward, but they are lively enough to feel like a much larger number. 

The topic the elders chose for family home evening was knowledge versus wisdom. We talked about making choices and I drew the Steven Covey diagram on the blackboard.

I was feeling well enough to pick her at the Jonio metro stop about 9:30pm. It was good to see her, and we had a fun time filling each other in on the events of the day. Hopefully Tuesday I can get out of this apartment for an entire day again.

Apart again: barbecue edition

Sunday continued our theme of being apart for most of the day. Hopefully that will be over soon. With my cold, Dee has much more of a story to tell for Saturday and Sunday than I do.

In the morning we went to church together. Ugo was called as the new Sunday School president, so he and I will now probably be team teaching Gospel Doctrine. President Celestini went ten minutes late as the last speaker in Sacrament meeting, cutting into my lesson time. However, that was actually nice, because (a) his talk was awesome, and (b) I wasn't feeling all that great, so less time was just fine with me. He told a story from years ago when he was serving as bishop. On Christmas Eve, as the stores were closing,  he was running through the mall to pick up his wife's Christmas present. He was obviously in trouble! He ran past a kiosk selling cell phone plans and the salesman tried to pitch him, but he kept running. Then the spirit said, "turn around and go talk with that young man!" So he did. He said to the salesman, "I don't have time. Just give me the contract and I will sign it, sight unseen, but you have to promise to come to my church next Sunday." Deal! They exchanged phone numbers, and off he ran, getting the present just in time. For several Sundays, the salesman did not show up, but finally he did attend and ended up getting baptized. President Celestini is an awesome man! Four of his sons attend (or have attended) the Institute.

My Sunday School lesson, on Numbers 11-14 and 21, went well, with lots of really good participation.  I love the story of the brass serpent, plus the time when Moses said "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets" (read the brief episode in Num 11:27-29). During third hour Dee taught her Relief Society lesson, which she said went very well. I have no idea when she found time to prepare, given all of her recent extracurricular activities, but it is nice to see her enjoying teaching so much.

On Saturday, the Hubers again went to the commissary in Naples and brought us a bag of stuff that we requested, for which we are very grateful. The loot includes peanut butter, ranch dressing powder, black beans (for me), etc. -- things that are difficult and/or extremely expensive to get here.

In the morning, I had already decided to skip the big afternoon barbecue at Ugo's house, which was a farewell for Adrian and Matteo leaving on their missions. It would really have been great to be there with all the GANS, but I needed some rest. So Dee packed a change of shoes, some aprons and the two carrot cakes, planning to hitch a ride down to Ugo's home, which is about an hour's drive from our apartment and is much closer to church. She went south in the Perego car, and I came north to our apartment to take a nap and generally take it easy all afternoon and evening.

 Barbecue at the Peregos

By night time, I was feeling quite a bit better, which will hopefully continue as a trend on Monday when I actually try to do something. After my nap, I caught up on a few things, including a bit of lesson prep. I also wrote up a rather long email to the Benincosas, giving more details on the things we discussed via Skype on Thursday night to help them prepare to serve here. Dee took the train and subway back home with a number of the kids after a long and wonderful day, arriving here around 9pm.

Dee out all day, Doug at home

Saturday for me was a day to relax mostly at home. It was a warm and gorgeous day: I wore a polo shirt for the first time in months, as well as sandals while inside. My cold is past the sore throat stage now, but I can't breathe unassisted and am feeling very tired. I took two naps, but I did run out a few times for small errands, such as making an extra key for our mailbox and getting some bread downstairs. In the afternoon I also filled the car up for some driving we anticipate doing on Sunday; while I was out I felt good enough to make a quick Lidl run, with a list from Dee and some things for me as well. Later I walked up to Todis to get some food items, mostly for the Institute. I also worked on my Sunday School lesson quite a bit (Numbers 11-14;21), which should be an enjoyable discussion. In the early evening I spoke with my mom and sister on the phone.

Meanwhile, by contrast, Dee was gone all day. She left just after 8am for the final day of the genealogy conference downtown, which started an hour late. She came back about 7pm, so it was a long day, but overall she really enjoyed it and made some contacts that may be helpful in the future. She hopes to write up some details of her conference experience as a separate blog entry.

Genealogy conference

Friday started off early for Dee, as she had a 9:30am dentist appointment to get a cavity filled, so she left for the bus soon after 8am. After Thursday's late night, we were both pretty tired, though my being tired was more because of my cold.  Some of you might wonder why she or I don't drive her to the dentist. The answer is two-fold: 1) she quite likes the adventure of taking the bus and being out with Italians, and 2) at rush hour in particular it is faster and easier, and probably cheaper, than driving in downtown, especially when you factor in the difficulty of parking.

After the dentist, she went straight to the Institute on the bus/subway to finish cooking the food she had prepared the day before. In the evening, the a local university started hosting a genealogy conference, and of course she had to go there. Thus, she prepared the Sloppy Joes ahead of time and left it in the crock pot for me to heat up at the right time.  She also cooked two carrot cakes for a GANS event Sunday afternoon at Ugo's house. 

I drove downtown alone at the regular time, having taken a brief nap right beforehand. My cold is progressing: it's not terrible, but my nose is running, my throat is sore, and my energy is low. I had planned to go with Dee on Saturday to the second/last day of the conference, but with my cold it was easy to decide to nix that. Having some time to rest at home will be nice.

Dee left for the conference about 3pm, while I stayed and held my Seminary class. We had good turnout again. I did my short presentation on chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, followed by some doctrinal mastery bingo, which was won by Joshua Perego in record time. Teaching always gives me adrenaline, so I felt ok during the class, but afterwards I crashed on the couch for a while.

 

Playing Wii after Seminary

Margie, our non-member girl from Honduras, helped my wife out by doing final prep for the dinner after Institute class. She is wonderful and always willing to pitch in. As usual, my class started small and ended up almost full, on our nice new padded chairs. We covered Mormon 7-9 and Ether 1-5, with some good discussion on different points. Again, adrenaline kicked in to help me make it through the evening, but after class and cleaning up I was ready to go home and rest. 

 

It was Adrian's final Institute class before leaving on his mission, so we took a photo together:

Dee's conference session ended after 9pm, so she took the subway all the way from near the Vatican to the Jonio stop not far from our apartment. I had just arrived home and unloaded the car, then drove down to pick her up. It was a very nice day, but tiring for us.

Washed clean (and fast)

Thursday morning I woke up after a good sleep, but with a runny  nose and a sore throat. I hadn't had a cold for over five months, so maybe I was due. After one day I don't feel too bad, but it is nice to have a big stash of lotion Kleenex. We'll see how it develops.

Our morning got an unexpected delight, starting with a phone call from Anziano Balzotti. They had been down to Naples with the mission van to pick up stuff from a missionary apartment that just got closed. Included in the loot was a much more modern washing machine, and he was driving towards us to drop it off! All of our plans to do a bunch of food shopping were happily thrown out the window. We finished showering, and I dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. The two of them showed up in a bit, with the washer on a small dolly. I helped him carry it up the ten stairs to the elevator, and it fit in there just fine. We unhooked the old one and put in the new one.

 

The "new" washer handles bigger loads and also has faster and nicer cycles. The fabric softener dispenser seems to work. It also spins the clothes much dryer. We even have a user manual, in both Italian and English. This will change our (and particularly Dee's) life here, since we can now do fewer and quicker loads, which should dry much faster. Life is good!

Instead of going to Lidl, which can take a while, Dee cut down her grocery list to just what was needed for the next couple of days. I walked down to Conad to buy the groceries, including some fabric softener, which she wanted to try out right away.

We then left to the Institute at the regular time. The weather is absolutely beautiful, and for the first time in months we left home for the day without wearing a sweater or jacket. At the Institute after eating lunch, we arranged all the new chairs, with more stacks than before in both classrooms, because we really have too many of them. Hopefully we will have more space for them in a larger facility at some point. We set up my class for Friday night to make sure that there was room for everything.

 

 

I spent the afternoon working on my lessons for Friday and sending out various notifications. I also finished up all four pieces of sheet music for the stake choir, so that I can now read them, and I sent copies to the director and my two fellow members of the bass section. My wife spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen, preparing Friday's dinner (Sloppy Joes) and some carrot cakes for a Sunday GANS activity. Friday and Saturday she will be at a Genealogy conference put on by the city of Rome, so she won't be around to help with Friday dinner. Thursdays are always slow at the Institute, which was probably a good thing this time.

Adrian called to let me know that he had passed the exam for his pilot's license; he was absolutely giddy at the news. He is leaving on his mission to Milano next Tuesday, but he is now certified as a pilot, which will still be valid when he gets back. One of the kids on the GANS WhatsApp group said that he will be the next Uchtdorf 😀

My energy was waning a bit, but at one point I took a walk around the block, which was good for me. Walking around cleared up my sinuses for a while, and I also bought ten subway tickets, as our supply was running low.

English class was small but lively. Afterwards we were able to come home a bit early, to find the happy results of running the new washer. At 10pm we had a Skype video call with the Benincosas, a senior couple coming to our mission this summer as self-reliance missionaries for two years. He served in Milan from 1976-8, overlapping one year with my time there; I knew of him, but never met him. She doesn't speak Italian and had some understandable apprehensions. We were able to give them a bunch of tips and advice, answering a bunch of questions. It took over an hour, so we were up fairly late, but it was worthwhile. We were so grateful for the Thackers, who took time a year ago to answer all kinds of questions we had for several months before leaving, so we wanted to pay it forward.

Oranges for refugees

Wednesday morning we had our district meeting. Normally it would be Thursday, but the Sorelle have a repairman scheduled to come to their apartment at that time. We headed out about 9:15am, and the traffic was pretty bad on the freeway. Dee drove, trying to get more familiar with the route to church, but Google Maps routed us a completely separate way, so that didn't help her much. We got there a few minutes late, but we were not the last ones to arrive. Our new DL, Anziano Moscon, is a very good guy, with a nice style but quite different style from that of Anziano Ferrara. It is frankly somewhat of a pain for us to go there, given the hour and the distance, particularly since their work doesn't really apply much to what we do, but we thoroughly enjoy interacting with and getting to know them.

On the way home, we stopped at Metro, which is right on the way, just off the freeway. We got a bunch of beef and chicken for the next few weeks of meals at the Institute, plus a few other things. However, we forgot the main reason we wanted to go there, which was to see if they sold oranges in bulk at a good price, so we could take a bunch to the Baobab refugee camp later in the evening. After we got home, I walked down to Conad and the Chinese store, getting some produce for us and a few things for Dee's cooking, as well as four big bags of oranges -- about 20 per bag -- for only 2.95 euros per bag. So it all worked out well.

We also found out that FM was able to pick up and cart off all the old chairs and the piles of cardboard box remnants, which was very good news. On the bad news front, our very old washer has started leaving spots on some clothes, and it seems to be some kind of goo or oil residue. So far Dee has been able to clean it all off, but that is not how laundry is supposed to work! I suspect that we will need to get a new washer soon. It would be nice to be able to use fabric softener, as that dispenser doesn't work in our current machine.

The light switch in the wall for our overhead light in the back bedroom has started functioning only intermittently. There is always something to take care of. A few days ago I sprayed WD-40 equivalent on the hinges of the elevator door on our floor, and it finally stopped squeaking.

I worked on editing the stake choir music, finding sheet music online for the fourth song, which had eluded me. It was the second week for the Knieses at the Institute on Wednesday afternoon. She baked brownies to serve with the ice cream, and they had six people show up, which is awesome, considering that until recently it was not unusual to have nobody show up all afternoon that day.

In the evening we went to the Baobab refugee camp to serve food again. Claudia made some pasta, the Knieses brought salad, and we brought our bags of oranges. Two of our nonmember kids, Margie and Andrea, also came along to help serve. With the warmer weather, the camp seems definitely larger than during the winter, and they actually ran out of food with another 10-20 people still in line. Right at that point, Sheyla showed up on her scooter with a big bowl of warm pasta, saving the day.

 

 

 

 

We visited with a number of the refugees while dinner was going on. One guy came up to me and tried to ask in broken Italian how to be accepted into the camp, having just arrived in Italy. Apparently, because I had on a white shirt and tie, he thought I was in charge. I had to tell him to talk to one of the actual leaders. There was also one guy from Kurdistan with bright red hair, which stood out quite a bit. He was very friendly and took our group photo at the end, then got into a photo himself:

We were home by 8:30pm, which was a very welcome early night for us. Everyone seemed to enjoy going there. It always reminds us how blessed we are.