Iron deficiency

Friday morning had some interesting activities. First of all, our doorman Paolo had told me that the bathroom of the Sorelle beneath was apparently leaking some water onto the ceiling of the apartment beneath them. So he and his plumber came over to check out what was going on. Because we inspect that apartment, I was there. Apparently Paolo has had this job for twenty years. He supervises three buildings (about 100 apartments), plus all repairs for the entire complex (about 400 apartments). We really like him: he jokes with us all the time and has been very helpful with everything, especially with my wife's broken foot. Anyway, they walked into the bathroom, looked at the shower and said "there is the problem". The screw holding down the slotted shower drain cover was slightly loose. Here is a photo of ours, just so you get an idea: It's hard to clean the shower drain when you're on crutches!

Apparently here you are never supposed to unscrew it, because it helps hold a rubber gasket in place, and taking it out can break the seal. In the US, you can take the screw out with no problem, in case you want to clean out accumulated hair or put a snake down it. Not sure when it got loose, but the plumber replaced it with a new gasket, and we will see what happens. If that doesn't fix the leak, they will have to break out a tile and do some more repairs.

I went to iron my shirt, and our iron was leaking water and was not getting hot. A few days ago I had moved the ironing board, and the iron slipped and hit the very hard marble floor, so I guess I broke it. I called the Sorelle to see if we could borrow theirs, and they were happy to loan it, since they almost never use it. Dee rarely irons too, so I am not sure why I am so lucky that my shirts always need pressing. I got their iron while the plumber worked on their shower. When I plugged it in later and turned it on, our circuit breaker tripped. The bottom of it had deposits all over, so Dee offered to do the ironing with a handkerchief in between so as not to leave any marks on the shirt. She noticed that the cord was really tangled and had several severe kinks in it, with exposed copper wire! We turned down the temperature a bit, and she was able to get it to work long enough to do one shirt, although she did get singed once from the exposed wiring. Suffice it to say that we will not be giving that iron back to the Sorelle!

With a shirt I could wear, I walked down to Conad to look for a new iron. They had exactly one in stock, for just under 20€, so I bought it. The brand is Philips, and it seems to work ok (I ironed several more shirts as a test). We will buy a replacement to give to the Sorelle as soon as they are back in stock. I tried to buy it on Amazon using my mission credit card, but the transaction kept getting rejected. Not sure why (and I want to get that resolved for the future), but for now I will just look for another one at Conad.

I called the Balzottis to report on the plumbing and the iron adventures, first asking them if they had a replacement iron in their inventory of stuff from other apartments. No luck. As always, we laughed a lot. Anziano Balzotti wondered if we could just use our toaster instead, and then when I told him how much water was leaking from the old iron he asked if we might try ironing in the shower; particularly with the exposed wires that seemed like a fine idea.

At the Institute, I worked on my Luke lesson (chapters 3-5) for the evening, while Dee stayed in the kitchen working on enchiladas all afternoon. I'm a lot slower these days, so I never went outside for a turn around the block. I'm so happy to know how to make enchilada sauce now. Of course, I can't buy it in a can here, so I had to learn how. But making it while standing on one foot was exhausting. I have to figure out a better way. We have two people who can't eat dairy, so I made a special batch for them, too. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure how one person can produce that much food in a few hours, but she did it. She also made a couple of batches of Spanish rice to add to the mix.

I offered to Sorella Maxfield, whose photos I had backed up the day before, to buy her a 64GB flash drive and a special cable (USB OTG, OTG=On The Go) to allow her to connect to her tablet and do more backups on her own in the future. The whole thing would cost 29€, and she was all for it, so I ordered them from Amazon to be delivered Saturday. At Dee's suggestion, because this will surely happen again, I also bought extra cables (2€ each) and a couple of extra flash drives, delivered to my sister Marilyn for her to bring here next month, because they are so much cheaper in the US.

Our numbers for Institute class were down a bit, probably due to summer coming on, but we had a very nice discussion on the chapters in Luke. People each week have come up to me after the lesson recently to say that I had raised some interesting points that they had never thought of before. For example, in Luke 4, when Jesus reads from Isaiah, I wondered how it was that Christ was literate, which would probably have been quite unusual for a carpenter's family back in those days. We live in a literate society, so the question usually doesn't even occur to us. It feels good to be making people think about the life of Christ.

After class, the meal from Dee was very well received, although she had made too much food for the smaller group (e.g., 37 large enchiladas). The problem is that we never know how many kids will be there ahead of time, so she plans for a large gathering. Joyce helped to serve. She is very willing to pitch in anytime. In this case, it actually worked out well because we can use the leftovers for a some gatherings this weekend. Everyone ate until they were full. I washed several more rounds of dishes after the meal, and I was sure glad to be able to sit down after three hours on my feet from teaching and kitchen duties.

The sisters met with Flavia for a missionary lesson. Her boyfriend is a member and she has been meeting with the sisters for several months. But today, she told them she wants to really devote herself to studying and living the gospel. This was wonderful news.

 

 

 

 

Afterward the kids were all playing a Wii dance game in the classroom, which looked fun. We left about 9:45pm. We do not know how long the party went on after we headed home, but it is nice that they like to be together.