Friday was Zone Conference. We left home at 8:15am, somewhat early because we needed to drop off some stuff for the GANS social Saturday night. I was assuming that I would drop off Dee with some bags of stuff and then have to walk a few blocks. Fortunately, there was an open parking space right in front of the chapel, which almost never happens. Nice. I forgot to bring my tablet, so during the meeting I had to use my phone for access to scriptures and hymns.
The conference was quite nice, talking a lot about how to love and appreciate Italians and their culture. Obviously we can be more effective if we care about the people. Dee and I had each been asked to talk for 3 minutes about things we do to love the culture. She spoke about the contrast between the idealized image of Italy and the real-life issues you see once you arrive: graffiti, dirty streets, infrastructure problems, unemployment, etc. Her point was that there are real issues, but the place and the people are still wonderful, so we should focus on the good stuff. I gave mine in Italian, talking about things I did to get to know the culture better: listening to music, reading books (including I Promessi Sposi, the great Italian novel, which took me a full year), recording people reading to try to understand pronunciation better. I told the story from 1977, one week before the end of my mission, where I stopped a 95-year old guy on the street and asked him to give me some life advice. He was quite honored and told me to work hard and have faith. My comment on that was that, although we are here to teach, we need to listen and learn as well. Anziano Oliver, the son of old friends, came up to me afterward and thanked me for giving him something to think about. Another young missionary, Anziano Castro from Milano, came up to me and asked incredulously, "you read I Promessi Sposi??" He told me that it took them a year in high school to read it too, and he was very impressed. It is a great book, btw. A couple of years ago I re-read it in English, and it took me a week.
At one point, they had some young missionary pairs do a role play, trying to talk with somebody on the street about the temple being finished here. The first time, Sorella Pickerd was the subject, and she was very easy. Then President Pickerd got up, and he brought the house down. He pretended he was an 18-year old, playing a game on his tablet, making life hard for the missionaries. His mannerisms and speech were perfect for that age and had us all in stitches. I had no idea he could be such a good actor and comedian. In addition to over 20 young missionaries, there were 3.5 senior couples present: us, the Benincosas, the Balzottis (who brought lunch), and Anziano Simoncini (whose wife is helping a daughter with a new baby). The Pickerds have not yet posted group photos, but I will try to include them when they show up.
Anziano Simoncini has a Sony laptop that is a few years old, and he bought an SSD to install, but doesn't know how to do it -- not a trivial job. I offered to do it for him (after jokingly asking for 100€); he was very pleased and will drop it by on Saturday. His wife's Android tablet, a recent birthday present from her kids, is full, and he wanted to know what to do. I asked some questions, and it turns out that there is only 8GB of internal memory, which is not enough. Selling 8GB (or even 16GB units at this point) should be a crime, imo. So I told him that I would look at it but that she needed more thoughtful children. 😉😀
When the conference was over, Dee went downstairs to check out the kitchen at the chapel. It is not very useful for our activity Saturday, with very little in the way of utensils, a fridge with no shelves, and not much else. So she will have to improvise a bit. We stopped by home quickly to pick up some stuff, then Dee went to Conad to buy a few more ingredients. From there we drove down to the Institute, arriving a little after 5pm, where Dee spent the entire evening cooking. From there I ran out to a Lidl market downtown to buy a bunch of tortilla chips for nachos, since our local store had been out of them. It was only a few miles away, so I got there quickly and found a parking spot. Unfortunately, coming home I hit rush hour traffic and it took almost half an hour, but at least we have the chips we need.
The Google Voice (GV) cell number port for the Benincosas had not happened, and they got an email saying it had failed, with no details and no real help. Bummer. I finally figured out that I had to got to the GV "legacy" page to learn that apparently we had copied the wrong T-Mobile account number. I re-submitted the request for Anziano Benincosa, which went through within 30 minutes, so everything is now working for him! Her port request is still pending, but hopefully it is just a matter of time. Closing her number out at T-Mobile will effectively close the account, so maybe they have some of their folks looking at it.
I also spoke with our CPA in California, Norm, about doing payroll accounting for Dee's cousin Lynn, who is doing an incredible job helping my in-laws. Lynn had spoken with him and filled out her W-4 card, so we have all the info we need to proceed now. Norm will take care of payroll taxes for the payments we already made to her, and then will handle the tax deposits for all future payments. Lynn gave me all her time cards and receipt. I trust and rely on Norm completely, which is good because he has our bank account numbers 😉. He has been our accountant for over thirty years and takes great care of us in lots of ways, even though I have only ever seen him in person a handful of times. It is wonderful to have a reliable professional on our side.
We got home about 10pm -- a long day, but a very enjoyable one. Dee is working so hard on the food for Saturday night, with not much that she trusts me to do.