I was glad to have the day at home to work on my lesson. I teach the fourth Sunday in Relief Society, and the new topic is Ministering. I will teach on that topic every month through September. In fact, I was supposed to do it in April, but there was a glitch in the LDS.org website and the topic wasn't updated in Italian. It turns out they did put it up, but not in the usual spot. Anyway, lessons aren't spelled out like they used to be, so I did a lot of research. The day flew by.
Sunday we left about half an hour early because the Relief Society in our ward had an inservice meeting for their teachers. When we got there, Sandro already had the lift ready. He was again cleaning weeds out from around it. I learned that he leaves his house at 6:30am every Sunday for an hour's commute and then cleans up around the Church for another hour and a half. Amazing. At the inservice, we brainstormed about ways to involve the sisters better. The hard part is that we don't have a full ward directory. I think it may have to do with European privacy laws, but it's hard to find out how to contact people if they're not in the WhatsApp group. Our meetings were very nice, with Ugo taking his turn teaching the Sunday School lesson. During third hour, Dee taught her lesson in Relief Society on ministering, and I taught Priesthood on the sacrament. I got a fair amount of participation, starting out with a list of cultural rites of passage and the associated cyclic rite (e.g., birth and birthday celebrations, marriage and anniversaries), leading up to baptism and the sacrament. There were a bunch of good comments on how people prepare for the sacrament, to make it meaningful each week.
When I got up in the morning, I decided I needed to print some more items. I used a bunch of stories about misjudging people, mostly from a cool Jewish site I found. I was able to tell the stories without first translating them. I just looked up a few words and I was good to go. I printed parts of the lesson in three languages to hand out. Lauriane only speaks French. She comes every week, but doesn't understand much. I also did it in English since we often have visitors. And I should have included Spanish! We sat in a circle and lots of the women contributed their thoughts. The point was to be more able to minister by not jumping to negative conclusions.
Ugo realized during the morning that the big annual bike race in Italy, called Giro d'Italia (a leadup to the Tour de France) was finishing in Rome that afternoon. Thus all surface traffic -- cars and buses -- would not be allowed downtown, including the Institute area. This was a big problem, because we had our Mosiah Marathon activity planned for the afternoon. Without being able to ride in a car, Dee couldn't go. And the Marathon was my idea in the first place! At first we thought we would try having her go with me on the subway, but our experience with elevators at public transit locations has been abysmal. They all have to have elevators by law, but that doesn't mean that they have to work. It would have been painful and time consuming to get part way there and find out she was blocked. So I realized I could join in by Zoom, and Doug would take the subway and pay attention to the elevators for the future. Bottom line is that it probably would have worked for her to take the subway, but it would have been a very long "walk" on her scooter, so it is probably just as well. Zoom ended up working ok, but we are both hoping for her to be back to real walking soon.
Ugo snuck into the downtown area in his car right before they closed it down, but turns out that he didn't have a key to our parking space. I later gave him one for next time, not that he needs it much. My trip on the subway was pretty uneventful in both directions, though it was really hot and humid on the walk down to the subway stop. It took about 45 minutes each way.
We had about 8-10 of us for the Mosiah Marathon over time, with some in and out, including the stake president (Rondinelli) and his wife. Several of my Seminary students happened to be there, but they didn't join us. We read for just over two hours, plus a couple of stretch breaks, and we got through Mosiah 18. There is something really different about reading out loud, so it was a nice change of pace in terms of scripture study, and I enjoyed it. Each reader read one column before going on the next. Dee was on the big screen and took her turn in the circle of readers. Her mic was cutting in and out a bit, but overall Zoom was fine. After the first break, Stefano (Marlene's brother) joined us. His back was facing Dee on the big screen and he hadn't realized she was there. She started reading right after him, and it really freaked him out when she first started speaking!
After the marathon ended, we had sandwiches (toasted in a panino press), brownies, and cookies. After that, I asked the kids in the classroom if they wanted gelato, and they all literally jumped up and ran into the kitchen!