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.