Trip to the mall

Monday we left just before 11am to go to the mall. There was a list of things that had accumulated for us to do, and this seemed an opportune time. On the way, we filled up the car and then rinsed it off at the self-wash place. I bought two SIM cards for Wes and Alyssa to use while they are here. First I went to two companies (Wind and Iliad) which couldn't seem to accommodate me as a foreigner, but then TIM was easy: two cards, each 20GB/month and unlimited calls (texts are 0.20€ each, but we don't use them much because WhatsApp is better), for only 10€ for the SIM and then 10€ per month. It cost 46€ out the door for the first month. Dee bought herself trekking poles at Decathlon, the big sporting goods store, to see if they can help her in this transition period. She looked for larger tennis shoes to wear with her brace, but they don't seem to have wide sizes there, so that didn't work. Then we went to Auchan to buy some toiletries and a bit of food, almost all for us. From the mall we drove directly to the Institute, arriving only about 15 minutes later than our usual opening time.

In the afternoon I spent a bunch of time working on my lessons and talk for this coming weekend, printing out lesson material and the chapters to highlight. I have three lessons and one talk to give, so there is a lot to do. Dee made dessert -- Reese's peanut butter bars -- and worked on her FHE lesson for that evening.

On Sunday I had mentioned to Jonathan, who works for the church Italian translation department here, that a number of the general conferences from 15-20 years ago are just missing in Italian. He was quite surprised and promised to follow up to see if it is just a matter of a broken link or something. It affected me in one talk I used last week; I can always do the translation myself if I want it written, but sometimes the video is nice. We will see what happens.

Dee gave her FHE lesson on the youth fireside from President Nelson last month, challenging the kids to take some time off from social media to actually interact with and serve others. There was a good-sized group. I asked Noelle to pick a quote to share from the Italian quote book; she doesn't know Italian but went with it, picking a very nice quote, based just on who said it (Audrey Hepburn in this case 😀). Dee got a lot of good participation, but I missed much of the lesson because Ashley, the girl from Utah, arrived at the nearby Metro stop but didn't know how to find the Institute. I walked down the two blocks, talking on the phone via WhatsApp, and she spotted me -- having the white shirt, tie, and name tag is a good way to find each other in a crowd! This was her first time ever on a bus or a subway, so she was pretty brave to give it a try alone. I think she really enjoyed hanging with the group, including a good game of Five Crowns. We had her and Anziano Lewis introduce themselves to the group. The dessert was very popular. I created a version with corn oil instead of butter, and it was the favorite over the butter version.

Anziano Lewis, our newest Ganziano

After getting home, we went down to the piazza and gave Sorella Balzotti her blender back. As always, she is really fun to visit with. With the rather sudden medical release of the Paulsens, we are all very busy until a replacement can arrive, but we have no idea when that will be. Nobody is getting much of a P-day right now, so hopefully things will calm down in not too long. August should be a much slower month, as much of the country goes on vacation the whole time. Maybe it will be easier to park, too. It's been three weeks since the trees near our apartment were trimmed and the branches are still waiting for pickup, blocked off with orange tape. This has robbed us of about thirty parking spots, grr.