Waddell returns

Thursday I was stiff and in a lot of pain when I woke up, but at least I slept well. My 9:30am appointment with Dr. De Santis, the chiropractor, was pretty helpful, lowering but not eliminating the back pain. He was very kind to allow me to set up a return appointment on Saturday, when he usually doesn't take patients. Parking near his apartment was challenging, nearly 10 minutes away to find anything, but the walk actually seemed to help loosen up my back.

Sorella Knies brought some stuff by our apartment. They are leaving in four weeks and so are finding good homes for some of their items. She warned us that we will have a very hard time fitting our stuff in the suitcases we came with! There was a nice Bosch mixer and a crepe maker for us, as well as some clothes and food for the Sorelle living below us.

We went an hour early to the Institute to meet with the FM folks, one of whom was here from Torino. These are the guys who, from our point of view, lost the deal on the possible new location. From their perspective, they just didn't have time to get it done. The truth is probably somewhere in between, and maybe we should have yelled louder and earlier, but the fact is that many months passed without them ever making an actual offer to the owner. They were nice enough and apologized. They also said that they hoped to open a new "work order" soon to look for another location, which would be nice, but we believe it will be hard to find anything as good as what we had already found. May we be proved wrong!

At 2pm, we had a one-hour Zoom conference call with a bunch of other YSA senior missionaries across Europe, mostly in the UK. Everyone shared ideas on things that have worked well for them, and we got a few good ideas. After that I spoke with Virginio again about the new FamilySearch computer. He suggested reverting to the original version which was almost working. Unfortunately, I had brought that backup image home as part of my backup rotation schedule, so I couldn't do it right then. I will bring the USB drive back on Friday and give it a try. I spent a bunch of time working on my lessons for Friday, while Dee prepared her two casseroles for the dinner afterwards. They are in the fridge, waiting to be cooked. It's been several months since I made this recipe due to the fact that Elder Papritz avoided dairy. I had a little trouble getting things done in the right order, and lots of interruptions. I sure was glad to get them done a day ahead of time, though.

Anziano Waddell, a former Ganziano, is back in Rome as Zone Leader now. He dropped by on exchange with the current Ganziani, and we each gave him a big hug (probably a mission rules violation on my wife's part but I just automatically hugged him out of joy at seeing him again.). The kids and English class students who knew him were very delighted to see him again. 

Anziano Smith, Jomar, Anziano Waddell, Junior

Brother and Sister Calabrese surprised us with a visit, too. He was picking her up after she taught Italian cooking to the refugees at the Friendship Center. They had never been to the Institute, so they dropped by to see it. The kitchen always wows everyone. The room is large, even though there isn't much cabinetry or storage.

Samuel's new laptop showed up from an eBay seller in the UK. It is a Lenovo Thinkpad T430s, a great model that is several years old, but the unit they sent looks like it is brand new! It has a 128GB SSD and 4GB of memory, so it is fast and in terrific condition. The unit was so good that, for only 230€, I immediately asked the seller if he had any more! I showed it to Samuel briefly but will need to spend some time to teach him a few things (e.g., how to turn it on and off and put it to sleep), as he has never used a laptop before.


At the end of the evening, Samuel asked if we had anything he could eat. We have a huge store of leftover hotdogs, so I heated one up for him and brought out the condiments. I didn't notice he was slathering on the Dijon mustard, until I saw him crying with his head tilted back. I told him he could throw away the hot dog and he did. Poor guy. I made him another, and he stayed far away from the Dijon.