Thursday was overcast again with some rain during the day. Dee walked over to Todis in the morning to score 15 packages of tortillas, setting us up for several weeks of Taco Tuesday. She also drove the car down closer and carried stuff in from the trunk, so that I didn't have to do that with my aching back (and knee). After I took the car from her, she walked to two Chinese stores to look for packing material for the Ganziani ties. Friday will be a mission leadership council, so three of our former Ganziani will be in town at the mission home and we can get their ties to them there.
I drove about ten minutes to the office of a chiropractor that I found online with good reviews. Chiropractors are not well known here at all. Turns out that Dr. Williams is an American and was delighted to be able to speak with me in English. She was born and raised LDS in Arizona, coming to Italy two years ago where she met her husband, who is from Rome. She instantly recognized me as a missionary, and we had a nice chat. Her family is still quite devout, and she has gone to church here a few times. Anyway, she did some great adjustments on my back, which helped it to feel almost normal for the rest of the day. She gave me stretches to do and told me to ice it a couple of times per day, then come back for another appointment on Monday. It was wonderful to be feeling so much better so quickly, and my knee also was not hurting much.
We got to the Institute at the regular time. I spent most of afternoon on the new Family History computer, which is not complete yet. Somehow they are not recognizing our location and/or our computer as a valid FH center, so we can't yet access the blocked records that are only available at FH centers, which was the whole point of this exercise. Anyway, it will apparently take somebody with more knowledge than the typical FamilySearch helper to figure out what is missing. I spent a bunch of time on the phone again, making a little progress.
In the early evening we had our weekly missionary planning meeting, with Joyce (the new student council president) and Veronica (recently returned from a mission in England), but not the Ganziani. Our new Ganziano Smith was on the train from Sicily all day and didn't arrive until late, so much so that there was not even an English class (nor any students fortunately).
Riccardo was there all day, writing his thesis in the library and coming out for a nice visit or two when he needed a break. On the desk, we found a wonderfully touching hand-written letter to us from Anziano Papritz, saying how much he had enjoyed everything about his 18 weeks serving here with us. We will miss him and Anziano Lewis, but we expect to come to love the new Ganziani as well. During the afternoon, Dee prepared a lot of pancake mix and maple syrup from Mapleine for the Friday night dinner.
Toward the end of our evening at the Institute, we put together the packages for the Ganziano ties, dropping them off at the Balzottis' apartment when we got home, for delivery on Friday. It is always fun to visit with them. Christian Campos also dropped in to look at the campus guitar, whose bridge had broken off. We thought that maybe some kid had done it horsing around. Nobody has confessed, but Christian says that this kind of thing can occur on its own with all the tension on the strings. He thinks it just happened, not caused by anybody, and he will try to find somebody to repair it for us. We fed him and had a nice chat, then headed home. The hot dogs we have on hand have been readily accepted by Christian and Riccardo.
I wanted to comment on District Council from Wednesday. As we said before, I ask the young missionaries what they had learned on their mission that they wanted to continue. Every one of them said how much they love having a study time set apart for the scriptures. Elder Mayer also talked about pondering and asking himself questions. How many teenagers in the normal world do you know who have developed an enjoyment for that kind of high-level activity? Elder Mayer also said he had learned how much he could get done in the morning instead of just sleeping in, and Elder Payne mentioned how glad he is to not be a procrastinator anymore. It's so wonderful they could learn these traits early in their lives.