Upon returning home, I had a message from Anziano Benincosa that they were back in town and that the Wind fiber internet technician had come out and hooked things up at their apartment, saying they were good. However, they still couldn't get onto the internet. So I went up there. Apparently there is a final registration step which they don't bother to do for the customer, resulting in tech support phone calls. The rep on the phone was pleasant enough, but seemed annoyed at the thought that the technician should complete the job! Anyway, it was easy enough, only about 10 minutes on the phone, and then it was working fine. We also reconfigured the WiFi name and password to be more friendly. He had purchased a hotspot device for their 100GB/month data SIM, and I got that working and configured. I was there for an hour, and they were delighted to have everything up and running.
Meanwhile, Dee went out shopping at Conad and the Chinese store. We left for the Institute at the regular time, carrying in a few extra copies of some church books that Ugo and I have had translated into Italian. Our library at the Institute has hundreds of church books, mostly in English except for these few in Italian, but they unfortunately get used very little.
Dee spent the afternoon working on her FHE lesson and a quadruple-batch lava cake. I worked on my lessons for this coming weekend, with a slight glitch that all the S&I online manuals had broken links. That will get fixed, but fortunately in the meantime I had already downloaded the English versions, though what I really wanted was Italian.
In the evening we had a brief meeting with the new Ganziani before FHE, just making sure that they knew how it is supposed to work for them. That is, they aren't just to hang out with the GANS, but should generally be here only when they have an investigator or there is a specific event to which we invite them (e.g., Taco Tuesday). The mission president will have the same talk with them soon. Dee likes to say that the young missionaries know how to be kids better than they know how to be missionaries, so it is easy for them to end up just hanging with the kids.
Dee gave a very good FHE lesson on one of the scriptures (Helaman 5:6-12) and the related talk by Elder Bednar (October 2012) from the ongoing Book of Mormon challenge. She got a lot of good participation, including Aysha who only speaks English but is learning Italian. Anziano Smith did the translation for her, but she read her scripture verse in Italian with great pronunciation. We also had her pick the quote from the Italian quote book, and she did fine. Almendra gave the closing prayer in Spanish. Having all these languages around us is a very enriching feeling. After the lesson we had Dee's lava cake which was a bit liquid, not having had time to fully cool down, but very delicious. We also brought out the ice cream, finishing it off to free up some much-needed freezer space (yes!!)
After the events, Christian waited to meet Riccardo and Almendra to go out to a Mexican restaurant in Trastevere (Pico's Taqueria and America Grill). It is really cool to see all these nice friendships developing: in this case, a Mexican non-member from California, an inactive Mormon Italian from Rome, and a returned missionary from Peru, all of whom speak Spanish.
When we got home, I made some phone calls to the US to see about donating old cars to charity. It sounds like it might be easy to do for my in-laws, if we can figure out how to get the pink slips signed if my father-in-law won't go along. There is definitely an interesting soap opera in the making, though I will kindly spare you most of the details.
The new Ganziani had other ideas for the calling cards that Wendy worked on. They need something that shows all of our activities. They spent some time on the computer at the end of the night, with our admonition not to be there too long.
It was lovely to sleep in for the first time in a long time. I slept for 9 hours, which I really needed after Saturday night's five and a half hours.
I usually don't make a dessert if I'm teaching FHE, but we hadn't had lava cake for months, and I wanted to do it again. I think that making a quadruple batch requires less water to help it set up, but it was happily received. The leftovers will come in handy on Taco Tuesday.
The Church here has changed their supplier for paper and soap supplies. At the Institute we still have some of the old ones, but at Church we're nearly out. It's a problem because the new ones require different dispensers. I hope they can figure it out soon.
Sergio Giudice, a member in our ward, is a single man in his sixties. He lived with his mother until she died, and his father is long gone. He is more French than Italian and recently went to the Paris Temple to be sealed to his parents. He told me twice that he can feel the difference, that he feels more complete. It's a tangible blessing to go to the Temple, that's for sure.