Peter, Paul, and President Pickerd too

Wednesday was Zone Conference, held right nearby us at the Roma 2 chapel since there was a funeral at the usual Roma 1 location. Thus, we were able to leave home later than usual, and we even found a nice parking space less than a block away on the first pass. Samy, who recently finished his mission in England, was asked by the assistants to attend and translate into Italian for Sorella Yanacallo and the Simoncinis. He seemed to fit right in and enjoy himself, though translating live is always exhausting. 

It was a good conference. Perhaps the most fun part was a male quartet, with lyrics written by Anziano Jensen (our DL) and sung to the tune of "In Our Lovely Deseret". He said he originally wrote it kind of as a joke, but it ended up having a good message and brought smiles to everyone's faces. The chorus starts with some fun alliteration:
   We will follow those before us: 
   Peter, Paul, and President Pickerd too!
Here is a link to the the full PDF of the sheet music (note: it seems to take a few seconds to fully load and display correctly).

Most of what they talk about  in ZC has to do with finding investigators and teaching missionary lessons, so it isn't directly related to our assignment. However, we love being there with the young missionaries and hearing the messages.

Midway through the morning, a new senior couple arrived from the US and the airport: Anziano and Sorella Ratto. They are originally from Argentina, each with Italian ancestry, but have lived in Utah for 30 years. Their Italian is still weak, but we have seen that the gap between Italian and Spanish is small enough that they should do fine. Apparently they grew up hearing their grandparents talk Italian. They each bore a brief testimony, and their English is heavily accented, but the spirit was very strong in what they said. Their plane coming over from the US had mechanical issues and had to return to Detroit, so they took 48 hours to get here and were absolutely exhausted. Soon after lunch they headed back to the mission home to get some sleep. The plan is for them to take over the Napoli Institute class from me in the fall.

They're staying at the mission home, and the President said he wanted to take them to dinner after a four-hour nap. The Rattos said, "you can try to wake us up, but we don't think it will work!"

One of the ZC traditions here is to have each of the missionaries about to return home give a "death testimony". You probably know that the missionary lingo is that you are born when you arrive and die when you go home, so you will often hear missionaries say something like "I was born in Palermo" or "I die next month" or "I killed Anziano Jones" (i.e., "I was his last companion"). It definitely sounds macabre at first, but actually makes some sense. Anyway, we heard from Anziani Jensen, Moscon, Rodriguez, and Youngblood, all of whom we have known and really admired. Anziano Rodriguez's testimony was particularly touching to me, as he spoke of all the family struggles he had before coming on a mission. These are wonderful young people.

At the end of the 6+ hour meeting, the Pickerds took group photos, first of everyone, then of the Anziani, then of the Sorelle. They also took photos of each companionship earlier, and everything is posted on their blog. We often have had to leave early to open the Institute, but this time we told the GANS that we would be late and stayed to the end. Thus, we were in the photos this time:

 

 

 

We got to the Institute around 4pm, and kids started showing up right away for our hastily-announced game night. It was supposed to start at 7pm, but there were five kids there by 5pm, and thirteen showed up in all. I played a fun card game (Tens and Twos) with them for a while, but once critical mass arrived I happily let the kids hang together. Dee put out some chips and cookies. There was a wonderful buzz, with lots of laughter. The group is really welcoming of new people, including Emmanuel from our ward who just turned 18 and showed up for the first time. Ashley apparently likes it here enough that she is looking for another nanny job to stay here and skip a semester of school. I think that speaks highly of the kids and the Institute.

 

 

 

Fortunately, Sheyla showed up. She is on the student council and has a key, so we let the kids stay on after we left about 9pm.

Since I'm planning to make Elder Papritz' requested chicken curry, I need fish sauce. We couldn't find it at Auchan, so I asked Google where to find an asian market. There was a Korean market only .3 miles from the institute, so I walked down there and got anchovy sauce. 

I was pleased to be asked by our former familysearch manager if I could look at some Italian genealogy. It was tricky and not solved yet. A common error is assuming that any document with a particular name is about the same person. Just because a name sounds rare to an American doesn't mean it is rare in the country of origin. 

I spent a lot of time talking with Donna and also got to talk with Lynn. We're all putting our heads together to make things better for my parents. 

At zone conference, I took the time to write down my own goals, along with the notes I took. I'm looking forward to reviewing it all.

We have one ward meeting at 3:30pm now, which is a new experience in Italy. They didn't want to meet at 12:30 because it would interfere with lunch and naps!