Stealing from Ikea

Friday morning we made a trip to Ikea, having accumulated a nice list of things over the past weeks that we wanted. For example, we got a thicker ironing board cover, and a larger pan for the Institute, which would come in handy for enchiladas in the evening. After paying and packing everything into our bags in the cart, we took the elevator down to our parking level. At that point, we noticed a 99 cent pasta serving spoon (for Baobab visits) which we had inadvertently taken without paying. It got stuck on the cart and blended in as we checked out. We decided that we will buy one next time and leave it there, rather than take the time to go all the way back up. Hopefully it will not affect their quarterly financials.

See the spoon? Guilty as charged!

It was a local holiday in the city of Rome for their patron saints, Peter and Paul, so the traffic was light. We went straight from Ikea to the Institute. Some of the kids had a picnic in the park in the afternoon and then came to class in the evening.

It has definitely warmed up, though it is not unbearable (yet). Dee spent the afternoon in the kitchen, as is typical on Friday. She made two carrot cakes for a Sunday event, and then made over 30 enchiladas for the evening meal, including dairy-free enchiladas for Anziano Papritz.

 

 

 

 

 

I spent a good while on final lesson prep, both for our Friday night class (Luke 14-15) and the English version in Naples on Saturday. It is much nicer and easier to have only one lesson to prepare. Dee spent some time talking with her folks on the phone, as there are always challenges with their health these days. Alessio came in early and spent much of the afternoon with us.

We had a moderate turnout for the lesson, with summer in full swing. Luke chapter 15 has three parables of things lost, and we had a good time discussing how the three cases were similar and how they were different. When it came to the parable of the prodigal son, we had a great discussion of how, at different times in our lives, any one of us could play the role of the father, the elder (good) brother, or the younger (prodigal) son -- sometimes all in the same day! I also used a wonderful talk by Elder Holland from April 2002 about the elder brother, and how we need to avoid being jealous and comparing ourselves to others. One fun fact, which we learned from a marvelous book, Misreading Scriptures with Western Eyes (one of my favorite books in recent years), is that most of us miss the fact that there was a famine which played a role in the young brother's coming back to himself. None of the kids had ever  noticed that fact, and they were quite surprised. The authors of the book pointed out that, in countries where there have been famines in recent memory, people were much more likely to remember the famine when telling the story. It makes us realize how many things we can miss due to "cultural blinders". There was a wonderful spirit in the class as we discussed how to apply these parables in our lives.

The dinner was very popular. With the smaller group, there were a couple of enchiladas left over, which went home with the Ganziani, who were very happy.

 

 

We drove two of the Sorelle home afterwards, getting home by about 10pm, which is early for us on Fridays. The kids were still hanging out at the Institute afterwards, having a lot of fun.

Cell phone bill mystery solved

Thursday morning Dee & I walked up to the Todis market together to get some food for upcoming Institute events: tortillas, cream cheese, bacon, etc. Todis has by far the best prices around on the first two items, and we are glad it is so close; we used to drive all the way to Metro to get tortillas that cost more and didn't taste as good. She is quite able to get around now with one crutch. 

Later I walked down to Conad to get some fruit for me, some nitrile gloves for Dee (to keep her hands from getting chapped while working in the kitchen and repeatedly washing them), and another stand fan. It is warming up again, and the extra fan will be helpful. We have one in the living room and in each bedroom, so this one will be our floater for the kitchen and bathrooms as needed. It was on sale, much cheaper than just a few days ago, but still needs to be assembled.

We have several wooden kitchen chairs spread about the house that do not get used much. One of them was rickety and missing one of its wooden rungs. After verifying that the Balzottis didn't want it for one of the other mission apartments, I broke it up and tossed it.

We left for the Institute a few minutes late but got there about on time. With Dee's mobility on the rise, she can now help guide me in backing out from parking spaces again. She is supposed to do it all the time for safety reasons, but it simply hasn't been possible for a while. I had to slowly back out blindly into traffic, watching carefully and listening for people honking, so this is a very welcome step.

In the afternoon I walked over to the train station to check some things on our Vodafone cell and home internet services, as they have a small store there. The bill I just received was over 67€ for home internet and my phone SIM card, but it was supposed to cost just 33€ per month. The lady at the store was very helpful. She looked at the bill and said, "you get billed once every two months". Duh. She kindly didn't laugh at me. It was right on the bill, but I am too accustomed to monthly billing. I also got some kind of unwanted service uninstalled from Dee's phone, where they were trying (unsuccessfully) to bill her 6€ per week; we are not sure how it got installed, but we killed it. I also sprang for a 5€ per month plan for 10GB of data on a data-only SIM card for my new tablet. That SIM card had come with the fiber internet, but I hadn't been using it. It can be used on my tablet, or for our portable MiFi device, which we may loan to visitors so they can have internet without paying their US cell provider for a plan here. 

It was transfer day, so as always we had a few young missionaries passing through. With the train station so near, the Institute is a great place for them to wait for trains or new companions. Dee gave them some of her cookies, which were well received. Our new Ganziano is an Anziano Lewis from Alpine, Utah; seems like a nice kid. Anziano Del Grosso is part Italian, and I offered to look at his tree with him. We found some fuzzy info listed there for his great-grandfather, and we were able to find his actual birth record in Italy. The anziano was pretty jazzed.

I spent much of the rest of my time on lesson prep for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Dee measured the kitchen carefully, so she can try to figure out how to fit a second oven. Ugo said the funds could be available (capital expenditures are a different budget from the weekly food), and she definitely needs it sometimes. The problem is that it would take away storage space, which is in short supply, so she is playing with possible layouts, which we may discuss sometime soon at Ikea. We still hope to get a bigger place, but that is not happening quickly. It would also be nice to have a second fridge here, as it is often packed to the gills, but there is really no room for that.

Re-designing the kitchen...

There were four students at the evening English class, and Dee afterwards provided them with cookies and a fun treat -- a slice of onion covered with bread crumbs and chopped veggies. They were flat onions, and very sweet. The topping was delicious.

We got home a little after 9pm. I was really tired from not sleeping well the night before, so I went to bed a little early. First I tried to put the new fan together, but I dropped a screw that was impossible to find thanks to the pattern on our marble floor. It is great for hiding dust and dirt, but horrible for finding things. We both looked for a while, even using flashlights, but no luck. It will probably show up, but I gave up and went to bed.

I got a voicemail from Pat Sciacca, who is the daughter of my great-aunt Ellen. It turns out some of her kids got the DNA test and were very interested in knowing more about their genealogy. We had a wonderful talk, and I'll send some info to her.

Jx3: Philippine food night

Wednesday morning I left at 9am to pick up Anziano Mayer at the airport. It takes just under an hour to get there, almost all freeway, and this time I knew my way around well enough to not get lost. I arrived at 10am, just as his flight from Palermo landed on time, which was perfect because it takes a while for passengers to be ferried into the terminal and get their luggage. There is a place to meet incoming parties as they exit security, where I waited for about an hour and fifteen minutes. These young missionaries travel without cell phones (the companionship cell phone/SIM card stays in the ward), so it is difficult to contact them while traveling. After about 45 minutes I started messaging with the APs and the Balzottis to see if they knew anything. They agreed that he should use his tablet to log onto the free WiFi to tell somebody what was going on, but we heard nothing. 

Finally he showed up. One of his big suitcases hadn't arrived onto the carousel for a long time, well after he had gone to customer service. Unfortunately, the luggage carousels at the Rome airport are behind security, even for domestic flights. Anyway, all is well that ends well, but it took far longer than anticipated, and I was pretty tired from standing up and paying close attention for over an hour to look for him -- there is no place for anybody to sit down there. Each missionary travels with two large suitcases and one carry-on sized one, which barely fit into our small car. We actually had to stop right before getting onto the freeway to slam the trunk shut harder so that the warning light and sound would go out.

From the airport, I drove him to the Rome 3 chapel, where Anziani Jensen and Stucki were waiting for him. There is a beltway all around Rome, called the GRA, which I ended up completely circumnavigating. On the way home from there, I stopped at Metro to buy meat and sour cream, plus a few other small items, for upcoming Institute meals, arriving home about 1:30pm with a ton of stuff to carry upstairs. Fortunately I got a decent parking spot on the corner, so I could carry it all in one trip; it was too heavy to go very far. Dee had stayed home because (a) there wouldn't have been room for her in the car with all the luggage, and (b) she had to wait for the med tech to come retrieve the magnetic machine that she has been using to treat her foot while sleeping. After grabbing a quick bite of lunch, we headed downtown, arriving at the Institute about 2:30pm. We had alerted the kids that we would be late (1pm is the usual opening time), so it was not a problem.

During the afternoon I finally wrote up the results from our five apartment inspections last week and emailed them off to the mission office folks. I also wrote a brief note to the Balzottis and the APs, with suggestions for young missionaries to use during future travel when problems arise. The challenge is that there is little good "corporate memory", as assignments change regularly, and people come and go, but hopefully they can spread the word to let people know what is going on if you're detained. Not having cell phones when you travel is a big throwback -- not sure how we survived back in the day, but it sure seems difficult to contemplate now.

For our Wednesday night activity, we had Jayno, Jomar, and Joyce prepare cibo filippino (Philippine food). Jayno made bilo bilo, which is a rice flour ball cooked with bananas in tapioca, coconut milk and sugar. It is a snack, slightly sweet. Jomar made lumpia, which is a fried spring roll. He prepared all the filling, and we all stuffed and rolled the little pastries, which then got fried. It was fun and tasty. They have what they called "banana ketchup" to dip them in. Joyce had to work until late, so her dad made some pancit, which is a noodle dish with liver, chicken and shrimp. Her mom made maja, which is a sweet with coconut milk and corn. We all ate until we were stuffed!

Jayno preparing bilo bilo

Dee helping

 

 

Banana ketchip

Jomar at work making lumpia filling

Jomar and Jayno at work

 

Preparing the lumpia filling

Bilo bilo cooking

Making spring rolls together

Joyce with her noodle dish

 

 

Lumpias after frying

 

Singing together after great food

Anziano Ruiz, whom we met in December in Cosenza, was in town with his family, on his way home after finishing his mission this week. He knows a lot of the GANS kids, so he dropped by with his brother, and they enjoyed the evening as well. He was a ganziano before they had the name, in the days when they all met at the Roma 2 chapel.

There were a lot of dishes to wash, so we got home late, about 10pm. Sorella Johnson wanted to borrow some super glue to try to nurse her shoes along for a few more months, so they came by for a few minutes. We will really miss her. Apparently there is now a second companionship of Sorelle living below us for a while, until their new apartment slightly north of Rome becomes available in Roma 5. It was a long and wonderful day.

When the guy came to pick up the magnetic therapy machine, I noticed that they had drastically undercharged me, so he hastily phoned the office and sent me an updated receipt. 

I wore the lighter brace for several hours, but it's never as comfortable as the boot, and I think I overdid it the day before. My foot was really hurting by the time we got home. Tomorrow I'll watch it.

I made a bunch of chocolate chip cookies so I could take some to the refugee class in Naples and still have some for our local youth, and I cooked loads of chicken for future meals. I had it nearly all done and cleaned up before the filippino event began, except for the chicken. We ended up taking it home since it was too hot to put in the frig. 

Guest speaker Terryl Givens

Tuesday's weather was again lovely. It was so nice to have a full morning at home, which has been rare of late. Dee wore her new brace, without compression hose; progress is slow and steady.

 

My HVAC universal remote arrived, and I was able to figure out how to program it for the four units at the Institute (two different codes) and for our two bedroom units. I still need to figure it out for our ward building and for our classroom in Napoli. Then I will print up a little cheat sheet of all the codes and carry the device with me sometimes.

After some fiddling, I was able to upgrade the version of Window on the old ward desktop from 32-bit Windows 7 to 64-bit Windows 10! That is awesome because now I can use the memory from the old Institute desktop to make it into an 8GB machine, which should run much better. I always learn interesting things by working on different kinds of computers, and this will be a boon to the ward.

Taco Tuesday was fairly well attended. It is always good when all of the chairs in the room are taken by young people, so we old folks can just hang in the kitchen while they have fun being together. We're seeing a lot more of Claudia now that she has officially finished her college classes.

 

Anziano Wiggins joined us, in a threesome with the Ganziani; he was just released to work back in the field for his final transfer, after serving as an assistant to the president since early this year. He is a fun kid and a huge NASCAR fan: his zone conference presentations always included a photo of Jeff Gordon, and he wrote that name on his plastic cup. We use disposable cups, and the kids write their names on them and place them on or around the microwave. They are very light and often fall down from the breeze when somebody walks by fast. Every so often we have to thin the herd. The photo below shows a fairly small population of cups.

After lunch Dee set out some cookies for the group, which are always enjoyed here but rarely finished: Italians aren't into dessert as much as Americans are.

At 4pm I walked over to the LDS Charities Friendship Center for refugees to sing in the gospel choir. We actually aren't doing just gospel, and it is fun. Alessandro, the choir director, is very talented and loves to kid us all, particularly the missionaries, but he is very grateful for our support. We worked on a version of Greensleeves, but with older (non-Christmas) lyrics. After he came back, I went out for a walk around a few blocks. It was a joy to move around, and I am trying to rebuild  both stamina and lower body strength after the long period of forced sedentary life. Also, with Wes and Alyssa coming for a visit, I am worried about keeping up. I also did some ab work and stretching in the morning.

For Ugo's Institute class on church history, we had Terryl Givens as the online guest speaker. Dee & I know him from a Fair Mormon conference that we helped organize here in Italy back in 2015, where he and his wife spoke together. Ugo's train from Padova was running late, so I set up my computer to run the Zoom trial with Terryl and then start and record the class. Ugo arrived about 20 minutes late. Terryl is undoubtedly one of the most gifted thinkers and writers in the Mormon church today. I have read a number of his books (he has written 17 to date) and always enjoyed them. His lesson was outstanding, on the Pearl of Great Price, including its amazing strengths and addressing some of the criticisms often made. He is coming out with a new book on it, which I will definitely read.

Meanwhile, the English class was going on down the hall, with very good turnout. Dee made snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies, all of which were yummy. She tried to make enough to take some to Napoli Saturday, but we ate too many, so she will have to do another batch sometime.

I stayed out in the kitchen, making cookies and waiting for Linda Di Martino. She had said she would come by for tacos, but she never showed. Some of the GANS were more than happy to eat them, though. Also, David Perego was there and we had a fun time talking about his upcoming third-year middle school exam. They have a forty-minute oral test in front of all their teachers at once, who can ask anything they have covered in three years. He is very nervous about it. 

On the way home, we dropped off Riccardo's desktop computer with the new SSD installed. Hopefully he will be pleased with it. As always, I learned some good new techniques and was able to help somebody, so it is a win-win. As we pulled up to his place, my wife got a call from the APs (assistants to the president, two young Anziani) asking us if we could pick up a missionary flying in from Sicily at the airport at 10am Wednesday morning. The mission office is short-handed these days, which is probably why we got the call. We discussed it for a few minutes and called them back to say yes, for which they were very grateful. We had things planned for the morning, including a shopping trip to Metro, but I will go alone (to make room for his suitcases) and hit Metro on the way back, and we are happy to help.

Woot, woot, out of the boot!!

Monday morning I walked down to Conad to buy a bunch of produce for myself and for upcoming meals. The weather continues gorgeous, with very little humidity; it actually rained in the afternoon and was somewhat chilly in the evening. We would sleep with blankets for the first time in a while.

In the afternoon at the Institute, I finished installing the SSD into Riccardo's desktop. It took several steps: compacting the existing drive, backing it up, restoring to the SSD, merging the old two volumes on the hard drive into one for simplicity. Dee had to help me insert the very tiny screw for the M.2 form factor SSD, in the very tight space. Anyway, it was good to get that done, and booting now takes much less time. Riccardo wasn't home in the evening for us to deliver it, so that will happen Tuesday evening.

I also did a bunch of stuff on the old ward computer, installing 32-bit Windows 10 as an upgrade from 32-bit Windows 7, then realizing that I wanted to get the 64-bit version because more memory is available. So that will require some research to see if it is even possible. I may also quietly spring for a small $40 SSD to make the computer pretty fast.

Dee received a new ankle brace from Amazon. She is ready to graduate from the boot, but the brace the doctor gave her is extremely uncomfortable and doesn't work with her shoes. The new one feels much better and allows her to walk in her tennis shoes without crutches, while limiting her ankle movement appropriately. This is a very nice bit of progress.

 

My wife's dad is having some health issues, including bad back pain, exacerbated by not being able to remember what has happened or why, so the story changes regularly. There were a bunch of phone calls trying to figure out how to help out her folks, but he really doesn't know what he wants nor how to ask for help, which makes it all very frustrating.

A couple of Americans dropped by the Institute, and one of them knew Anziano Wijesundera. They had been friends at church in California. When she walked in, they looked at each other, amazed, and he gave her a quick hug, then backed off, realizing that he isn't supposed to do that as a missionary. It was a very understandable reaction but gave us all a big laugh. I kidded him that the President would have to transfer him after that transgression, but of course that was probably already set to happen anyway.

I gave my FHE lesson on miracles, using a talk by Elder Hallstrom from last October. We had a good discussion with the group, sharing ideas and experiences, including why sometimes miracles happen and why sometimes they don't. Noelle, our wonderful American girl, was there. After the lesson, we devoured Dee's snickerdoodle cookies (a  batch made with oil and one with butter, couldn't tell them apart) and played a great game of Cover Your Assets. Dee doesn't play much, but her observation from the other room was how loud we were all laughing together.

 

About 8:30pm, the transfer call came through. As expected, Anziano W is getting transferred, to Siracusa in Sicily, to be the district leader there. Amazingly, Rome is the furthest south he has served on his mission thus far, so he is excited to get to see Sicily. Sorella Johnson below us is going to Siracusa also, and our Rome 3 district has each companionship affected as well. Change is a constant here. We will miss these wonderful young missionaries, but we always enjoy the new ones too. Something about them being willing to serve, wherever and however they are asked, makes them very impressive kids. The Anziani in Rome 3 jokingly asked if we were getting transferred, and Dee in kind quipped that she was going to Malta (not me, just her). Our DL's response caused us to laugh hard: "we will warn the DL in Malta to arrive on time to district meeting" -- my wife has kidded him constantly about being late. There was a bunch of WhatsApp messaging going all around about the transfers and changes. We got to bed kinda late.

A cappella

At church on Sunday, six of us missionaries in our ward sang a hymn, "Sweet Hour of Prayer", in Sacrament meeting. We have two sopranos, one alto (Dee), one awesome tenor, and two basses (including me). We ended up doing it a cappella, because all the accompanists in the ward (other than two of the missionaries in our group) were not available for practice. Doing it that way was not our first preference, but we nailed it four times in a row during practice, so we felt confident. Unfortunately, during the actual performance, we got off key in the first verse and sounded pretty bad for a while, before getting it together on the second verse. Oh well. As I often say, in the church you get what you pay for. We wanted to sing this Sunday because odds are somebody will get transferred out this coming week, and there is a lot of musical talent in our district right now. Here is a photo of our awesome (?) group.

Anziani Stucki, Jensen, Whiting ; Sorelle Nelson, Maxfield Whiting

I taught Sunday School on Saul and David; not quite sure that the lesson went as I had hoped, but there was some good participation. Dee taught Primary, because the Primary president is out of town, and then she taught a Relief Society lesson on ministering. For Primary, she had some fun games and moved the (very rambunctious) kids into a different room where she could control them better. Apparently she was able to manage them much better than usual, and they had fun. In her RS lesson, she wanted to show a brief video, so we borrowed the very old projector from the Institute, which we hadn't used to date. It has both an HDMI and a VGA input, but only the VGA port works; fortunately we have an adapter for our laptops, which do not have native VGA ports. The problem was that she forgot her USB speakers, so we borrowed some external speakers from the old desktop in the clerk's office. I was able to get them to output sound from her laptop before class, but unfortunately the video player (VLC) seemed to be trying to output sound to the wrong device. The RS Presidency decided to call me in right in the middle of the lesson, and after the first two attempts failed, I gave up. It is always hard to solve tech problems on the fly in front of an audience. Fortunately they came up with an ingenious solution: one of the sisters streamed the same video on her phone, and hooked it up to the speakers, thus providing the audio for what was being projected on the wall. I called her Sister Angel for saving the presentation!

As far as Primary, I taught the 4-7 year olds. There were six of them this week, including a new girl. They are used to coming into class and playing with no regard for the efforts of the teacher. They were surprised and happy to see I had something for them to do right away. I made it very concrete, with things to touch and do, and I think it made a big difference. The downer was that someone gave a puzzle to Jasmine, age 5, just before class, which distracted her and others. But mostly they were intrigued by all the interaction I had planned. I was up until 12:30 am finishing the two lessons, but it was worth it.

The bishopric had a couple of requests for us. The first was for us to teach the temple prep class for three ward members who hope to go to the temple in Switzerland in August on the bus with the ward to take out their endowments. We are happy to help out, and that will also allow President Pickerd  to get permission for us to go, since we are helping somebody. The class will hopefully start next Sunday (because I don't have enough lessons to prepare already 😂). If you know me, you know how much I enjoy gospel teaching, so this is actually a blessing for me. 

The second request was for me to take the old (7+ years) desktop computer from the clerk's office, wipe it out, and reinstall Windows. That way they hope to use it for indexing on FamilySearch. It will always be a bit slow, but clearing out years of gunk is always a good thing. It is the same Dell model as the old desktop we had at the Institute (apparently that was the church standard model at the time), so I know how it works, and it is definitely usable. The real problem is the very slow internet connection there, but I am happy to use some of my know-how to help out. We brought it home from church, along with the monitor, and on the way we also stopped at Riccardo's home to pick up his desktop so I can finish installing my old 128GB SSD. He was able to get his C drive down to about 100GB, so it should fit.

In the afternoon, I finished making online reservations for Wes and Alyssa's visit. This is much later than I usually do trip planning, so options are fewer and a bit more expensive, but I think the itinerary we have in place should work well. We are looking forward to seeing him and meeting her. I had to call once to ask a few questions about timing for trains, etc., and it was good to get all that resolved.

Dee and I sat down and went over the calendar for the coming week. It seems like there will be a little more free time in the mornings, which will be nice. We went for a walk around the block in the late afternoon, without Dee needing a crutch, just her boot. The weather has been perfect, not too hot or humid, with a nice breeze. It is light until very late these days, and we are trying to enjoy the nice weather as long as it lasts.

Ombrello

Saturday was a long day for me. I left at 10:15am to walk to the subway at Jonio, heading to my train for Napoli. On the way out, a threesome of Sorelle came walking toward the apartment. We stopped to chat for a minute, and they said they were going back to get an ombrello (umbrella). Looking up at the completely blue sky, I asked "ombrello?", with a puzzled look on my face, as if to ask why they would need one. One of the sisters, trying to be helpful, said, "that means umbrella." 😀 That made me laugh -- as if I didn't know the word! -- but it turns out that it did rain later on in the day.

I got to Napoli a bit early, taking an ItaloTreno train. That is a private company which competes with the government-run Trenitalia on some of the major city runs. It was cheaper than Trenitalia this time, so I wanted to try it. Unlike Trenitalia last week, this train was completely full, and the seats were slightly closer together, which is a minor issue for me with my long legs, but overall it was a nice experience. In the future I will pick between the two options based on price and schedule.

The weather was gorgeous: sunny and warm, but not too hot or humid. I had time to review my lesson preparation and eat an apple. Fortunately, the room we meet in has a wall-mounted AC unit, but I will order my own universal remote, as they tend to move around the building and can be hard to locate when I get there. Peter showed up a bit early, which is unusual, and it was fun to chat with him. He finished his mission in Nigeria in 2015, and he speaks English with an accent/cadence that is difficult for me to understand; he would probably say the same of me. He called the other guys to remind them to come, so we ended up with four students this time, all very sharp and engaged. We discussed Luke 10-13, including the parable of the Good Samaritan. I really enjoyed their comments, insights, and questions, and we also laughed a lot together. Next week Dee will be there, with cookies.

Maxwell, Steven, Sunday, and Peter

After class, there was a baptism scheduled at 6pm. Unfortunately, the latest train back to Rome leaves at 6:40pm, so I couldn't stay. On the walk back to the station, I dropped by the hotel I had reserved for next month with our son Wes, just around the corner from the station, and it looked very nice. There was time for a quick sandwich and Fanta orange soda (my favorite here, very  different from the US!) at the station before getting on the train, which was on time. I arrived back home about 6:30pm, tired but very happy with the day.

Dee had done a bunch of things around the house, including some ironing for me. She also walked to the grocery store on her own, using our little cart to bring stuff back, with her other hand holding an umbrella when it rained. She can now get around pretty well, using the crutch mostly on stairs only. We spent the evening doing prep for our Sunday lessons, two for her (Primary and Relief Society) and one for me (Sunday School). I also had my weekly phone call with my mom, who seems to be doing well. Overall it was a very rewarding day for me, but I went to bed early after all that traveling.

Salad for dinner

Friday morning I walked up to Todis to re-stock up on tortillas. Then we walked together (Dee without crutches, just her boot!) down to Conad to get a bunch of produce for the salad that would be dinner that evening. It was a request of Anziano Wijesundera, whose birthday is coming up right after transfers next week; he will likely be transferred. He is a college tennis player (his sister is a professional) and a very healthy eater. We also got some cheese and some wonderful sourdough-like bread, which Dee would turn into delicious garlic bread.

I did a fair amount of work on travel plans for Wes and Alyssa next month. She had sent us phone numbers for some of her grandfather's friends and relatives whom we hope to see. We set up a call for that night, after getting back from Institute. The trip is coming together, but we still need to contact the relatives to nail down details according to when they are available, assuming that works.
 
The morning was hot and very humid, so I turned on the AC in the back office and enjoyed being cool before we left. We ended up with four large bags of stuff to carry down to the car, which was fortunately close because I carried all of the bags, plus my computer shoulder bag. I am getting a good weight workout with Dee unable to carry things!

During the afternoon I finished my prep for the two lessons on Luke Friday and Saturday. After this week, I will be caught up in Naples. From then on my two Institute lessons each week will cover the same material, in two different languages, which will be easier. Claudia is now done with exams and so was around much of the afternoon. She is all set to graduate, with only her undergraduate thesis defense remaining. I also did some work on my Sunday School lesson.

We got a package from the office, via the Balzottis, for Sorella Nelson in our ward (Rome 3). Then we learned that they were doing exchanges with the Sorelle beneath us, so it turns out that Sorella Nelson would actually be staying here overnight. She was delighted to get her package right away, instead of waiting for church on Sunday. We have also offered to offload the Balzottis, who are overloaded with work in the office since the Paulsens went home early, by taking on inspections for the two missionary apartments in Rome 3. Because we know the missionaries and are already down that way a couple of times each week, we can do it without too much extra work.

My wife spent all afternoon preparing the salads, with multiple kinds of greens, veggies, strawberries, cheese, crackers, garlic bread, ham, chicken, hard-boiled egg, tuna and several different dressings. I sent out a photo, and a couple of the kids were stunned, asking "salad, for dinner??" That isn't really much of a thing here, but I reassured them they would like it.

 

Preparing the garlic bread

My lesson on Luke 12-13 went quite well. We had Noelle again, with Anziano Wijesundera translating for her, and Stefano was there from up north. There were a lot of meaningful comments, and I felt good about the lesson. In particular, I invited the kids to share spiritual experiences at a few key points, and they came through beautifully. Afterwards the group loved the salad, even the doubters (Gabriele most of all). Nathan, normally a somewhat picky eater, came back for thirds. My wife gave him the leftover butter garlic spread she had made, and he was really excited to be able to make some at home. At the end of the dinner, basically everything was gone.

Nathan digging in

 

 

 

 

We gave the Sorelle a ride home, so they were able to help us carry up the several bags of stuff. Cleanup was quicker than usual; we were home just before 10pm, early for a Friday. After that we had a WhatsApp video call with Wes and Alyssa to figure out a few more travel details. After that we were zonked; it has already been a very full week.