Graduation

Sunday morning we had a stake conference broadcast, from Salt Lake to most of Europe. Each ward building received the broadcast, and we attended in our own Rome 3 chapel. President Uchtdorf was the concluding speaker and did his typical wonderful job. As usual, the broadcast was in video with live audio translation dubbed in.

Two men from our ward are also using crutches right now, one from a recent knee operation, so on the way out after church we got a photo of the three one-legged ward members:

Melchiorre, Dee, Sergio

Our joke in Italian is that this photo is the Non In Gamba club. In Italian, the phrase in gamba means literally "on your leg", but it is almost always used figuratively to mean that somebody is sharp and competent.

From our ward we drove straight to the Rome 2 chapel, where there was to be a 2pm graduation ceremony for Seminary and Institute students from the wards in the Rome area of both stakes. It was Ugo's show, so of course they had food both before (porchetta sandwiches) and after (cookies). The lunch was in the basement, so Dee had to ask Jomar to go get her a sandwich while I was parking the car. Ugo spoke, as did a member of each stake presidency, and then they awarded a whole bunch of certificates (one year) and diplomas (four years). The meeting took over an hour and a half, after the two hour lunch. Anziano Kimball was there and got to see many friends from their mission days. Ugo talked about my Seminary Doctrinal Mastery class to try to drum up business for next fall, and I also got to stand up as one of the Institute teachers to hand out the awards and shake hands. The chapel was full -- you only see half of it in the photo below. By now we know a lot of the people, so it is always fun to visit. 

Some of our kids help Ugo prepare the sandwiches

Ugo speaking at the graduation

Half the chapel

Some of my students

We got home about 4pm and spent the rest of the evening at home, including some planning for all the things going on this week. In the morning, the last of my bi-weekly Acronis image backups of four computers completed: my Thinkpad, Dee's Dell laptop, the "extra" Dell laptop that we bought here, and the new "home brew" desktop. On Monday I will take that USB backup drive to the Institute and bring back the other drive in my rotation, so we always have an offsite copy. In addition to the image backups, we each use an online backup service: Backblaze for Dee, iDrive for me.

I spoke with my sister Marilyn on the phone about their trip; they leave Monday and arrive here Tuesday. I also emailed back and forth with them about our sightseeing plans. Anziano Balzotti brought back my steering wheel lock, which broke last week, so he repaired it. All the mission cars are required to use one as a deterrent to auto theft; the Balzottis had their car stolen right after they got here, so he instituted this new policy.

Monday morning Dee has a followup x-ray and an appointment with her doctor. It is a big deal: we are hoping for good news in terms of her mobility, but there is a fair chance she will still be pretty restricted for another month or more. Prayers on her (and our) behalf are welcome. Stay tuned.