Back home

Wednesday morning we ate breakfast in our room and then packed up. There was a lot less stuff than coming up, because Ugo took all the Institute stuff back for us in the van he rented. Checkout was by 10am, but we were downstairs well before that. We put the suitcases into the car, which was parked right outside the entry of the hotel, and left them there for the morning. In Rome we never would have done that, but, as Ugo says, you can trust the Franciscans. 😉

The final devotional with our group was at 10:15am. We read and discussed most of Luke 24, including the Road to Emmaus, which is one of my favorite stories. The spirit was strong as we discussed the reality of spiritual things, and the eternal nature of physical things, which are both taught in a profound way in that chapter. We had over 15 our of kids present, a pretty good turnout given how tired they probably were. We gave out the remainder of our water bottles and the bag of toffee candies. Here are photos of our group:

 

After the devotionals, we had a final meeting of the entire group, in the auditorium. They thanked the conference organizers, young and old, as well as the tutor couples, with thunderous applause, especially for Ugo and Massimo, the two adults in charge. The kids bought Ugo a T-shirt with the Superman logo, underneath which was written "Ugo". 

 

It was nice to hear how much the kids appreciated the conference, making it all worthwhile. Ugo gave a wonderful closing message, using a video from Elder Holland in 1999 with the message "don't you give up!" After the meeting, we went outside for a group photo, with both of us in there.

You can hear a brief clip of Jomar singing in the talent show from Monday night. We get to enjoy him doing karaoke regularly, and it is a real treat. I also found out the name of the song that everyone sang together that night: Dragonball. Apparently the cartoon is well known and loved by all the kids here when they were young, so everyone knew the lyrics.

We hit the road immediately after the group photo, skipping lunch. Dee wanted to eat, but we needed to be back in Rome to bid farewell to Claudia by late afternoon, so leaving was the right thing to do. Along the way we each snacked, and she napped a bit. We made it home in just under two hours and had time to go in and unpack and start a load of laundry. 

Then we drove down to the Institute to see Claudia, who is leaving Thursday morning to go live in England and teach at the MTC there. She is such an awesome gal, and we hadn't seen her for about a month, so it was nice to give her a farewell hug.

Then we drove right back home, where we spent the evening. I walked to Conad to buy some produce, and Dee walked up to Todis to look for some stuff for our big Saturday activity, as well as food for herself. 

Dee made some good progress on unraveling the mess that is her parents' Verizon account. With some help from cousin Lynn at their house, she was able to reset the PIN for the account. Dee's mom still has a flip phone, which Dee and Lynn used to get the confirmation code sent by Verizon. Her dad's phone is currently lost -- this will be our world going forward. We need to take over more and more of their stuff to keep their life simple, which we are happy to do, but it is definitely somewhat harder setting things up from here.