Guest lesson by Noelle

Monday morning early it rained quite hard for a while, including water blowing inside our windows and making the floor wet. It was nonetheless very welcome and cooled things off quite a bit for the day. We headed out earlier than usual to do some errands: stopping at the temple visitor trailer to pick up a suitcase from the Terni Anziani to take to Anziano Haws in Napoli this Saturday, shopping for a bunch of food at Lidl (it had been a while), and then Dee went to Todis to look for tortillas while I filled up the car. Todis was completely out of the inexpensive flour tortillas we really like, but had some that were bigger and more costly. Hopefully they will get some of the old kind in stock again; if not, Taco Tuesday will not be the same.

The afternoon at the Institute was fairly calm, with me doing some initial prep for my lessons this coming weekend, mainly printing out all the materials on our nice laser printer. There had been a party for Veronica, who just finished her mission in England, on Saturday evening at the campus. We missed it because of the baptism, but we look forward to meeting her. There were several shopping bags with various items (food, clothing) left that we had to message around to find out what/who they were for. Ugo had also noted that our nice sign on the door was missing two of its very fancy gold screws that hold it in place. No idea how long that had been, but we will have to figure out how to get some more.

Dee made some of her now famous chocolate-chip cookies (with oil instead of butter), but somehow she managed to mess up the quantities while making a triple batch. They looked different but tasted great. She kept fiddling with the dough, adding this and that, making some tasty cookies for FHE, but finally put most of the dough in the fridge to think about Tuesday.

Several of the missionaries from around Rome, including our Zone Leaders, came by for a good while during their P-day. WiFi and AC are a nice draw! They also practiced a musical number they will perform at our Zone Conference on Wednesday. It is always impressive to see and hear how talented these kids are.

For home evening, we had Noelle, a wonderful gal here from Utah for the summer working as a babysitter/English teacher, give the lesson. She served a mission in New Zealand, and she was excited to be given the chance to teach. We gave her a taste of Italian ginger soda, which is very bitter, at least to us Americans. They love it and hate root beer, while we generally have the opposite reaction (me included). It is interesting how culture and familiarity can shape tastes. Here is Noelle's reaction to the ginger soda:

She also played ukulele for a while before FHE started.

We had several fairly new folks in attendance, including Ashley (also here from Utah as a summer babysitter), Almendra (a newly returned missionary from Ecuador), and Jhamil (from our ward, has started coming out regularly in recent weeks). Noelle taught from Pres. Uchtdorf's talk "Forget Me Not" in Oct 2011, and she did a great job, asking really good questions and getting participation, including some very heartfelt and personal responses. I translated for her into Italian, and Jhamil then translated from Italian into Spanish for Almendra. It was really cool to have the three languages going, with good interactions. The delay and repetition really gives you a chance to think about things.

Dee, Almendra, Jhamil, Jayno, Noelle, Ashley, Anz. Lewis, Jomar, Anz. Papritz, Alessio

Afterwards everyone enjoyed Dee's cookies and some card games.

 

Dee tried a new medication from her doctor to help with swelling from her injury. Unfortunately, it gave her a bit of a headache and nausea, which are possible side effects, so she will cut back on the dosage to see if that helps. Her new foot orthotics are working pretty well, though she still is getting used to them. They tend to be really comfortable for a while, but not all day yet, as the doctor predicted.

It turns out that Saturday night there was another baptismal service, up in Terni. A very sharp husband and wife, both attorneys, who had been investigating the church for quite a while, finally got baptized. They should be a great addition to the church. They requested Anziano Balzotti and President Pickerd to baptize them, so we had three "old" missionaries each performing a baptism that night, which has to be a rather rare occurrence.