Two baptisms, one twin

Saturday morning Dee spent several hours cleaning our apartment. Dust seems to materialize continually out of nowhere here. She swept, mopped, and cleaned bathrooms. I worked on my Sunday School lesson and made a trip to Conad to buy a little food for us. I had also woken up too early, unable to get back to sleep, so I took an hour nap about noon. Dee writes: Doug washes the car, keeps track of Institute attendance, does all kinds of online work for us and for my parents, does the dishes, empties the trash, writes the Institute history and many other things. Don't think that I'm slaving in the house while he's in partay mode. Also, I had fun listening to some podcasts while I cleaned house.

At 4:45pm we left for the evening. First we stopped at Metro to pick up some cheddar cheese and sour cream. We were running low on the former, plus Adrian wanted to buy a block of it before leaving on his mission. Then we went on from there to our ward building for a baptism, where two adult men, Fabrizio and Russell, were baptized. It was a very nice service. Each of them seems quite sharp and excited about the gospel. Russell is from the Philippines, working here in a small hotel, and some LDS guests introduced him to the church a while back. As he served them, they told him it would be better for him if he didn't drink coffee or alcohol, and he decided to learn more the Church. Amazing how a single conversation can change your life. His wife is also interested, so we might be able to baptize the whole family. Fabrizio is an Italian, very delighted with this new change. His last name is Mori, and my wife's maiden name was Mouri. Fabrizio's parents attended the service, and his mom's name is Dorothy, so she is Dorothy Mori and my wife was Dorothy Mouri. I dubbed them twins.

My wife ended up formatting and printing the program for the baptismal service, since the missionaries tried to do it at church, only to find that the printer there was out of both ink and paper! It was fun to get my hands on it. I caught a few typos and layout issues. On the way home from the baptism, we stopped at the mall to get a few things at Ikea and at Auchan. We came home with the trunk very heavy laden, but it was good to get those errands completed all in one extended trip.

Our son Rich took the ripped pair of suit pants (at home thanks to Gregg and Sherry) to Mens Wearhouse, where they hemmed the new replacement pair to match and gave them to him. Soon he will be putting together a package of stuff to send to my sister Marilyn to bring to us in June.  Rich also notified us that our clothes dryer at home just stopped working, so now he knows what it is like to live in Italy! We gave him the name of the appliance repair company we like to use. It would be good if the dryer were repairable, instead of us having to try to select and buy a new one from here.

I spoke with my mom, brother, and sister in Tucson. They were there for a memorial service for Aunt Elma, my mom's sister, who passed away in October just two months short of turning 100. It was a big family gathering; Elma never married and became the favorite aunt to a bunch of nieces and nephews, yours truly included. If we were not here on a mission, we would definitely be there in Tucson this weekend. Family is good stuff.