Apartment ministering

Thursday morning we headed out soon after 9am to inspect four apartments, two each in Ladispoli and Roma1. Traffic was good; we arrived a bit late but made up time as we went along. The Ladispoli Sorelle are both new to the apartment with the gorgeous ocean views. They like it a lot, but there are a couple of rather serious plumbing issues that we hope to get taken care of soon. They also had two missing light bulbs in their small back laundry/storage room; fortunately, I had brought my box of extra light bulbs and was able to give them replacements. For the Ladispoli Anziani, we brought them a replacement toaster and two plastic trash cans. They had been using just a trash bag, so they were quite pleased. The old toaster had been taped together by Anziano Dunn and looked very unsafe.

Unsafe toaster in Ladispoli

They also have had a bed frame for some time which was cracked, but it was hard to figure how out to get them a replacement with our small car. Fortunately, this time we realized that the Sorelle had two extra beds from back when there were four of them in the apartment. So we asked the Anziani to swap bed frames, as it is less than a ten-minute walk away. They liked the idea, and we joked that they could do "bed-frame contacting" as a way of starting up a conversation with people on the street. 

We then drove the half hour back to the Rome 1 area, visiting the Sorelle and then the Anziani.  The Sorelle have a washing machine that isn't washing or spinning very well, much like our old one, so we hope to get them something better. The Anziani didn't really have any significant issues. They ask us to stay for lunch each time, which is very kind, but we need to open the Institute. We left cookies at each apartment, so everyone likes us 😀🍪. In the past we told everyone that we are like their home teachers, there to help, not criticize, but now we have decided that we are apartment ministers!

In general, these young missionaries live in places that are not all that well maintained. It is understandable, because they stay there a short time, usually six months at the very most and often much less, so they have little incentive to spend time or money fixing things up, even if they had spare time or money. Also, the mission has almost 100 apartments to maintain, spread out over an extremely large area (all of southern Italy), so by definition they have to focus only on severe problems.

We got back to the Institute  about 1:30pm, only a little later than our normal opening time. Dee was tired and not feeling all that well, so she had slept a bit in the car on each leg of the trip. The Roma 2 Anziani came by to teach a missionary lesson. Afterwards we spoke with them about their apartment. It turns out that they haven't had an inspection in months, so we offered to the Balzottis to take over that one as well. Soon we may be in charge of inspecting all the apartments in Rome! Hopefully the power won't go to our heads. The Anziani were very pleased with the used blender we gave them earlier in the week (from the Herways), but they now are short on kitchen chairs and glasses since there are four of them instead of two. We told them that we would try to find them some.

We learned through the grapevine that the Thackers were able to get their MTC start date moved up three weeks, into mid-September, which will be a nice relief for the entire office staff. They are short-handed since the Paulsens went home last month for medical reasons, and everyone (including us) is working hard to pick up the slack. The Thackers will be awesome, and we look forward to seeing them again.

During the afternoon I worked on my weekend lessons a fair amount, and Dee made a trial batch of curry chicken with rice, which is Anziano Papritz's favorite meal. She used a recipe from his mom, having bought some ingredients at Auchan the other night. It turned out really well -- a unanimous consensus from the several of us who tried it. She may make it for the entire group for dinner Friday next week.

Turns out there was a transit strike scheduled from 8pm until midnight, which we hadn't known about. Nobody came to English class, because they wouldn't have been able to get home! Even the Ganziani left early so they could take the subway home in time. So the place was empty, and we got to leave a bit early, arriving home by 9pm. Along the way it rained really hard for about half an hour. It washed our car nicely, but then the umbrella we keep in the trunk broke when I opened it, so we got rather wet on the way in. Fortunately, it felt good, cooling things down. I love summer rain.

Before driving away from the Institute, we dropped by Signora Chirra at her cafe downstairs. She owns the big apartment on the first floor that we were hoping to get as a larger Institute facility, but it has been taking too long to get approval from Ugo's management and from the church facilities people to start working out a deal. She now has another solid offer, though she would rather have us take the place. Unfortunately, we had to tell her to go ahead with that other offer, since we can't give her a firm date when the church would be ready to proceed. Bummer. Maybe it will still work out, but I am not optimistic.