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.