Claudia returns to eat tacos

Tuesday morning the weather was a lot more calm, thank goodness, although there was some rain. My finger was feeling much better -- no bleeding and very little pain, but I still kept a band-aid and Neosporin on it all day to help it heal more. Dee and I each counted our remaining prescription pills just to make sure we have enough to make it to the end of our mission.  Sure enough, we are each good through the end of April, so that was good news, though no surprise. With our daughter coming over in December, we thought it wise to see if we had somehow messed up on the count so we could have her bring extra. No need.

It was the day to put the new ZTL pass on our car windshield, with the old one expiring. The new missionary couple who replaces us next year will have to take care of it in October 2019. We are praying these days for a replacement couple to be called  (nothing yet, but it will probably be in December), hopefully somebody who will love the kids (and be loved) even more than we do, if that is possible. We hope to overlap at least a week with them to help teach them the ropes. It is strange to be thinking this way, but the end is coming.

In setting up for Taco Tuesday, I had to separate some stacked chairs which sometimes get stuck together a bit cockeyed. In forcing them apart, one flew up and smacked me pretty hard on the right cheekbone. I joked with Dee that, if I got a black eye, it would be a good Halloween costume (as missionaries, we are not allowed to dress up) but that people might wonder if she was mistreating me. <g> It was pretty sore to the touch. This has been a painful week for me so far!

We had quite a large group for Taco Tuesday, enough so that people had to sit down to eat in other rooms, with over twenty kids signing in during the afternoon. As often happens with big groups, we had to pull out some frozen taco meat leftover from prior, smaller weeks. Our cabinets and fridge are pretty full these days, so it is nice to have extra and nice use it up. Claudia was back, visiting from teaching at the MTC in England, and it was wonderful to see her. Her presence had been advertised on the WhatsApp group and may have had something to do with the size of the group. There were at least seven non-members present, including Margie who is getting ready to leave Rome. We will really miss her, as she has become a beloved fixture here over the past year.

 

After lunch, a bunch of the kids stayed around to play games, and there was lovely noise and energy all afternoon. It is fun to be around the kids! At 4pm a bunch of them went over to sing with the gospel choir at the Friendship Center around the corner, but then most of them came back afterwards, having a lot of fun. The games picked up again! We have a young man named Thomas here for a few days. He lives in Germany as an au pair, and is very good with languages. He was brought here by Ylenia.

At 2:30pm we had our student council meeting. Joyce is doing a great job leading the group, discussing current issues and future activities. Ugo was there, along with three council members in person and one (Maria Jose) via Zoom. 

The church is now actively looking for a new, larger location for our Institute campus. Ugo got an email from the church's agent with a list of properties that are currently available in the area. We may go see some of them soon, although it is hard to find a better location than this, which is so central to the public transit hub. The email said that we needed to move quickly, as good properties tend to get rented right away. Our reaction, after they took so long in trying to get the apartment below us here, was "Really? You are telling us to be quick?" Not that we're bitter. But at least the ball is rolling now! Hopefully we will find something good.

Dee spent the whole day on the job at the Institute, feeling so much better. She had a lot of fun making Halloween cookies, including some with her homemade googly eyes and (very gross looking) witch fingers.

Googly eye cookies from my bewitching wife

Fingers after digging themselves out from the grave?

Ugo had his online Institute class in the evening, and only Tobia showed up for English class. Meanwhile, the games went on. We came home a little early, since Ugo was manning the place. I was zonked and was in bed much earlier than usual.

Margie brought some clothes for us to donate to the refugees, and Alkmini's suitcase that she has been babysitting. We're so sad to lose Margie, but glad to know that Alkmini will be here in November.

We're going to have Anna and Roberto for dinner in November--at the Institute. The kitchen is so much better. It should be a nice evening. 

Weather advisory

Monday Dee woke up after being in bed about 11 hours overnight, but she still felt pretty bad. She tried to rally, but zonked out for a morning nap and decided to stay home, with my encouragement. She cancelled her dentist appointment (which would have been hard enough for her to get to, as you will see). While I was doing the dishes, I managed to find a spikey glass shard (we have no idea where it came from) in the sink which embedded itself deep into the tip of my index finger. I think that it actually hit the bone; it was very painful and there was a bunch of blood spurting out even though the hole was small. It took over an hour to stop bleeding, much of which was spent lying on the couch applying pressure and holding it above my body, as our mission nurse recommended. We would end up finding blood on several walls in the kitchen and bathroom from when I was first trying to clean it and stanch the bleeding. The finger would be quite painful all day, especially when I used my computer , but by the end of the day it was starting to feel somewhat better.

On Sunday evening I had ordered some USB-C cables and flash drives so they would arrive in time to give out to the young missionaries at our ward district meeting on Wednesday morning. Amazon promised Tuesday delivery, but they actually arrived the very next morning! Apparently there is a big warehouse nearby. We love Amazon.

There was a severe weather alert in effect, with high winds (30+ mph) and rain. The schools and universities here closed based on the forecast. I drove alone down to the Institute, and at one point saw a huge tree fall over about 100 yards in front of me. It blocked the main street that I was on, but fortunately I had Google Maps going just in case, so I took a small detour and arrived safely. I spent much of the afternoon working on my lessons for the coming weekend. To my delight, it turns out Ugo will be in town, so he can take his turn teaching Sunday School after me teaching for a month, making my week easier.

For much of the afternoon it wasn't clear how many kids would arrive. Some of the subways were closed due to flooding, and it was generally ugly outside. Dee urged me to cancel the activities for the evening and come home, which I considered. The wind was blowing hard and the rain was heavy. I was worried about him driving home in the dark, with potential tree failures in his path. But about 5pm kids started to show up, and we actually had a good showing. Maybe it was the school closings that allowed them to come. In addition, there was a zone leadership meeting for the young missionaries, so the place was really full all evening. Even before home evening (it was P-day), they were all playing games together. Sheyla and Jomar also put up some Halloween decorations around the place for our big festa on Wednesday.

 

For my FHE lesson, I did a recap of my talk from Sunday, since there was nobody present from our ward. We had a visitor, Joshua, an artist from the US, who is here as a volunteer doing final touchups on the temple murals this week. Very cool. My lesson went very well, especially telling the stories of some times recently when Dee and I have been moved by the Spirit to do something at just the right time, without knowing why beforehand. The kids were really with me, and Jomar shared a nice testimony, as he often does. We had a lot of fun together in the meeting. At the end I told the kids that I had spent all afternoon baking dessert, which I would serve now. They all looked amazed and excited, but then I said "Naah. I am just opening some boxes of storebought cookies!" They all laughed really hard.

Afterward the big group had a game of Cover Your Assets, with lots of excitement and fun. I excused myself early to go home and see how my wife was doing. They were all very concerned about her and told me to give her their best. Fortunately the winds had subsided by then, though it was raining hard, so the drive home was safe and easy. Dee was feeling a little better, but still not 100%. We hope she can make it to Taco Tuesday after a good night's rest.

My stomach was tender and my head hurt a lot. Even though I had a lot of time, I was only up to easy stuff at home. I really need some desk time when my brain is on full power. One thing I did was write to my friend Helen, whom I haven't communicated with in a long time. It was so fun to hear back from her. I miss her a lot.

Selling ties door-to-door

Sunday was a rainy and windy day. Dee woke up not feeling very well, but rallied enough to go to church. My talk in Sacrament meeting, on personal revelation, seemed to go well, with people listening intently to my stories. After that Dee spent second hour in Primary, doing  marvelous things with the kids. Silvia, the only member of the presidency present, seems to be learning a lot from Dee about how to keep the kids interested and involved, and Silvia wants to learn more, which is even better. 

We found out Saturday night that our Primary President, who was slated to teach, would not be there Sunday after all. Her mother, who lives in another town, has cancer and dementia. She developed a fever, so Monica couldn't leave her. Silvia was panicked about needing to teach. She doesn't even know how to find the lesson on the gospel library app. I talked her off the ledge and told her I would help some, but I wouldn't teach the lesson. I told her I usually spend four or five hours, and since I was teaching Relief Society and it was already 7pm, I couldn't do it. She was really surprised to hear how much time it takes. So, I sent her the lesson that night and printed it for her in the morning. There was a cute little activity included in the lesson, which the kids really got into.

We had nine kids, ages 5-11. One is a severely autistic boy who is very pleasant but unable to participate. At the beginning of Primary, they were doing their usually running and screaming and throwing things. I offered them some play-dough (called Pongo here) and told them to sit down to get it. They really liked it, all ages, and it calmed them down. Then I asked them to pick a number between 1 and 25. The winner would be the day's class president. I got guesses from 3 to 29. One boy asked me how old I was. I told him I was a LOT more than 25, and he was shocked. Lia, age 5, guessed I was sixty twenty. Another guessed eighty. Nicolas, age 9, got it exactly right.

Anyway, I told them I promise to make a lesson that they will want to listen to, and that we lose a lot of time when they don't behave. I showed them a bag of activities I bring every week that we don't get to use. That really surprised them and got their attention. I hope for good things in future weeks.

My Sunday School lesson on Isaiah 40-49 had lots of good discussion; I handed out pieces of paper with different scriptures for each person to read and comment on, about attributes of the Savior mentioned by Isaiah. Everyone had something good to say, with me leading the discussion, and that portion took up almost all the time. Dee then taught her lesson in Relief Society, which she said went really well. The lesson was on personal scripture study. I used a short video on William Tyndale, from a talk by Elder Christofferson. The video was only available in English, so I used Camtasia to add captions in Italian. Afterwards, Elia (the bishop's wife) said "forte!" There's also a thought-provoking page from Alex Boye called "What would happen if we treated the Book of Mormon like we treat our cell phone?" I will share it here with you.

We are really nicely involved in the ward these days and loving these people. It will be sad when we leave them to go home.

After church, Dee spent almost an hour with Melchiorre, a single older brother in the ward, working on his family history. It was just a start, but she loves doing this. Meanwhile, I helped the young missionaries make sure they have a photo backup strategy. Wherever possible I want to make sure that they have multiple copies of their photos. We are particularly sensitive to this because we lost our own mission slides in a 1996 wildfire. The newer missionaries have phones with a USB-C port, so my cables that allows them to backup to an USB flash drive don't work. In the evening I looked for some cables with USB-C on Amazon and ordered some to try.

From church, we drove about 45 minutes to have a wonderful lunch at Fabrizio's house. He lives way out in the boonies. The drive was beautiful, with green trees overhanging the road. Often we were the only car in sight driving on narrow country roads. His daughter Giorgia (who wasn't present) had made lasagna which we thoroughly enjoyed, though he gave us far too much! Then we had a very tasty chicken alla pizzaiola dish, and finally some pastry. 

During and after the lunch, we had a really fun visit. Fabrizio is full of entertaining and faith-filled stories. He is very sharp, very devout, and talks really fast! We all laughed a lot, and it was great to get to know him. One fun story, typical of what we heard, is that about twenty years ago he bought over 1,000 silk ties for about $1 each here in Italy, flew to the US, and went door-to-door selling ties for $10 in Utah. This was all his idea, and he ended up selling them all and making money on the deal. He even knocked on the door of President Hinckley (president of our church at the time) in Salt Lake City, gifting four ties to him via his bodyguard. At a church general conference some time later, President Hinckley was wearing one of Fabrizio's ties!

It was raining a little on the way out, but on the way back it was really windy and pouring in the dusk on those narrow roads. There were times when the drive was scary, but we made it home in one piece, having loved the entire visit. Once we were literally out of the woods, I got to chat with Jim for awhile, and then with Wendy when I got home. But soon my stomach and head were hurting me a lot, and I was itching, even my hands and feet. I was in bed before 8pm.

Sick chick

Saturday morning I went to Conad and the Chinese store, then spent much of the rest of the day on my talk and lesson for Sunday.  Dee was not feeling very well almost all day, with head and stomach problems. She has had a rough few days. She worked on her Relief Society lesson in the afternoon, as well as making a side dish and some cookies for our ward Halloween party in the evening. I put homemade candy eyes on some store-bought cookies. They came out really cute!

We left at 5pm to go to Metro to buy meat, cheese, sour cream and chocolate chips. The car was pretty full already with things for the party and for the two new Sorelle in our ward, who don't have blankets. Our blankets from the guest room won't be used for a while, so we packed them up to give to them. I stayed in the car at Metro, since it was full of stuff, and Dee did the shopping while I worked on timing my talk. It was raining on and off, and the new windshield wiper seemed to work well. We picked up two Sorelle while they were out contacting and took them to their apartment to drop off the blankets and our extra hair dryer that we were giving to them. They only have one bathroom for the four of them, so two have to shower at night and were going to bed with wet hair. Then we took them to the Halloween party, while the rain was absolutely pouring.

The Halloween party was fairly well attended, with lots of good costumes and food. Bishop Magnanti and his wife dressed as Pharoah and the queen, with their daughter being a mummy:

Magnantis from Egypt

Jenna doing activities with the kids

Itala Bosco and Sandra Ledebur

 

Food!

 

The Hubers with Sorella Magnanti

 

 

We enjoyed ourselves but didn't stay too long, particularly since Dee wasn't feeling very well, after having rallied a bit. On the way home we filled up the car, which had gotten down to a quarter tank, with a lot of driving coming up on Sunday. With Daylight Savings Time ending here, we had a welcome extra hour of sleep, and Dee was out pretty early.

Friday I knitted a bunch on Samuel's Kraken mitt. I want to get them done, and it was an ideal opportunity, during Doug's zoom class. But I was surprised by how much my hands and thumb joints hurt that night!

As we were shopping at Auchan and Ikea, we realized it was the last time we would buy certain things. It's not my normal behavior to actually count how much of something I will need. It's a good thing to learn.

A few days ago, someone was parked in the way, making it hard to get into the driveway at the Institute. Doug scratched up the car, which I say he did to make me feel better. The poor little car is really dinged up.

Strike (again)

Friday was a nationwide strike day, including Rome buses and subways (and planes!), so we cancelled Seminary and moved the evening Institute class online, unsure how well that would work. In the morning Dee and I went to the mall on the way into the Institute, as it had been long enough that our lists of things from Auchan and Ikea had grown. We weren't sure what to expect traffic-wise due to the strike, but it was basically non-existent, both on surface streets and freeways. We got our shopping done and arrived early at the Institute. 

I spent most of the afternoon working on my lesson for the evening. Since it was to be online via Zoom, I needed to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, which is not my usual style. I also worked on my talk and lesson for Sunday. 

We expected almost nobody at the Institute  all day, due to the strike, and we weren't too far off. It turned out that the subway was running during the day despite the strike, so Almendra, Samuel, Ivan, Junior, Andrea, and the two new Roma 3 Sorelle each showed up for a while. Among the latter was Sorella Yanacallo, who used to live here in the apartment underneath us. We kicked everyone out as the 7pm lesson neared. They had a hard time believing that the subway and buses were really going to stop at 8pm, since they had been running all day. However, we didn't want to take the chance that they would be stranded downtown with no way to get home, particularly since we are not allowed to give them rides in our car.

Dee spent some time with Samuel as his "speaking partner". Pathway wants their foreign students to spend an hour a week talking with a native English speaker, and Dee was happy to oblige. He is really trying hard and making good progress. We don't know if he will pass this first semester, but it is wonderful seeing someone with such drive, setting goals and working hard on them. His computer skills are still weak, but far better than just a few weeks ago. He has almost nothing, but that isn't stopping him. The speaking partner topics were about goals, and it was touching and humbling to hear him talk about what he is trying to do and has already accomplished. He is working hard and not complaining, which is a good lesson for all of us.

Also, Ivan from Milan came back for the day. He was really tired and had been through an emotional goodbye to a missionary he is close to. He is now talking about going on a mission himself.

My online lesson, covering D&C 26-29 (some great topics in there!), probably wasn't very good. Because she didn't have to cook, Dee was sitting there listening to it and participated a bit. Only five kids joined via Zoom, and they were all on mute most of the time. It was really hard for me to get participation in such a small group, particularly without being able to see them and have them interact freely. Hopefully there will be no more strikes anytime soon, as this has really messed with the momentum we had going at the Institute. It also shows that the wonderful food Dee cooks is an integral part of what we offer!

ZTL renewed

Thursday morning we slept very well without an alarm, which was heavenly. I went out and put the new windshield wiper from Amazon on our car. It seems to fit, and this coming weekend the forecast says that we will need to use it.  It took me a while, because I forgot where we had parked the night before; that is a challenge each morning, and I went up to the far corner of the block before remembering. I also read the gas meters for our apartment and that of the Sorelle beneath us, sending the results to the office. Dee went to the open market and the Chinese store. Sorella Thacker got locked into their apartment when her husband went early to the airport for transfers, and she couldn't find her key. The Balzottis had to run to the office to get the extra copy of their key. Life is always interesting around here! We agreed that we should have an extra copy of each other's keys.

After driving to the Institute and carrying a bunch of stuff up, I headed out on the subway to renew the ZTL (Limited Traffic Zone) pass for our car. That is the expensive pass (800€ per year) which allows us to drive downtown; without it we couldn't get to the Institute on weekdays. The mission pays for it, using my mission credit card. Having done it a couple of times before, I had all my paperwork in order. I waited about half an hour in line, then within 15 minutes it was all done. I can't put the new pass on until the old on expires on October 30, but it is nice to have it all ready.

The Repubblica metro stop, where the escalator collapsed the other day, is still closed, and I have seen no news when it will be reopened. Returning to the Institute, I spent the afternoon working on preparing my lessons and my talk for Sunday. Nobody showed up until evening, as is typical for Thursdays. Then there was a big group of GANS who showed up for the evening English class, taught by the Ganziani. Grace came first, followed by Dario, who was famished and finished off the chicken enchiladas -- I didn't know that Dee had kept some at the Institute.  His fiancee Grace was there, but he said he was hungry and didn't want to share (not good news for a relationship, haha. ) He also dove in and made himself a dish of red bellpepper, green beans and tomatoes that he zapped in the microwave and seasoned with olive oil, salt, and garlic powder. I'm always happy to see a young person go for veggies, and he is good in the kitchen anyway. He even cleaned up. English class, they had a debate (in English) about why women were better than men, with a small prize offered to the winning team. Everyone was participating and laughing hard. The Ganziani said that having a debate is a good way to get all the kids involved, and it seemed to work well. These elders are very good at involving everybody. Amazing.

There were two of our GANS there with keys, so we got to go home early, before 8:30pm. With some help from the Anziani, we put two tall cardboard boxes into the car to take home. Dee has kept them since April (each box held four of our new chairs) to use for an activity in Primary. It took some finagling to get them to fit into our Yaris, but we made it. The Primary children will have fun with them. Doug has been reluctant to bring them home, but I'm sure it will be a memorable activity, and he came through.

We are still recovering from a couple of extremely busy weeks, and it has been nice to have a less full schedule this week. It probably won't last, but we need it right now!

Karen and Dave brought me a  beautiful necklace and earrings from Venice, made of Murano glass. The necklace fell off its cord right away, but luckily didn't break when it hit the floor. So I went to the open market and found some nice red beads to replace the black cord. It looks great, and I'm glad to have it secure now.

I began to use the app that allows for two languages side by side for studying the scriptures. I have had it for a long time, but hadn't used it recently. It's great.

Snagit 2019 was just released, so I bought the upgrade. It makes putting together presentations so much easier, and I'm a longtime fan of the software, since 2008. I have used five versions.

Arrivederci, Karen and Dave

Wednesday morning I left at 8:30am to take Karen and Dave to airport, on their way back to London and then home on Thursday. Dee didn't come along, since our small car was full of suitcases. It also gave her some welcome time at home. I used the time to start some laundry. Traffic was fairly light, especially for that time of day, and I made it back home by just after 10am. They arrived without incident in London.

The rest of the morning was spent at home. Dee was feeling tired with a headache, which would last until the afternoon. Having been there many times myself, I felt for her. We left for the Institute at the regular time. Arriving there, the street was almost blocked by huge RAI (Italian state TV) trucks, I assume for an opera performance (the opera house is literally across the street from us). All parking was removed from the other side of the street, but I had to cut very sharply to get into our tiny driveway entrance and ended up scraping the left front bumper on the wall. Bummer. It is  however not the only scrape on our poor car here. In the US I don't think I have ever scraped anything, always driving a larger car, but here we regularly get dings and scrapes. It is not clear whether we will have pay to get them fixed when we go home, but I kinda expect so. Then, once we got inside the courtyard to park, there were some workman, with a car pulled out to give them room. That car blocked our entrance, so we had to wait just a few minutes for them to finish and then Dee walked over to the cafe to ask them to move their car back into place.

The rest of the day was calm. Pam, our friend from American (we now call her PanAm), came by for me to help her with a laptop problem. The battery, or perhaps the connection to the battery, is not working, so when you pull the AC charging cord out it shuts down. The good news is that it is still under HP warranty, and the problem is easily repeatable so it should be simple to diagnose and fix.  I am interested to see how HP handles the service here in a different country from where the computer was purchased.  While she was here, I did a backup of her computer. She inadvertently left her coat and USB thumb drive, so she will be back!

Dee had a fun time making little "googly eyes" from meringue and chocolate chips, which will be used for our Halloween event next week. She is amazing at finding recipes on the internet which can be made with ingredients here. 

 

 

Dee and I talked through details of our daughter Chiara's visit over the Christmas holidays. After doing some checking, it looked like the hotels were going fast, and the trains were also filling up, meaning that the cheap tickets were almost gone. So I reserved us rooms in a hotel in Florence -- the same one that Karen and Marilyn enjoyed -- and bought some train tickets. The mission president obtained permission from the Area Presidency for us to go outside our mission boundaries during her visit, and we are very grateful. Due to the holidays, some places will be closed on different days, but we have a nice trip planned out with her while the Institute is closed.

It was our normal light Wednesday, with no kids showing up until the evening activity, doing PR at the local university (Sapienza, the largest in Italy) for our free English classes. Only a couple of kids showed up for that, so it was basically an easy day for us. Things are definitely calming down, at least for a while, after an extended period of being really busy.

Ivan, a 20-ish GANS from Milan who is friends with a few of our kids here and who has been traveling all over (Latvia, Russia, Turkey, Jerusalem, Athens, and Malta) for the last month, showed up and spent the evening with us. He has had some real tough trials in his life in recent years, and we visited with him and tried to give him some counsel. He asked me for a blessing right before we closed up for the night, and I was happy to oblige. We hope that he can figure out a good path to follow.

I worked on my Relief Society lesson on personal scripture study, and also started to add to the six days of blog that I missed. I was just too tired to do it. 

Elevator déjà vu

Tuesday morning we left early to pick up Sorella Evertsen at the mission home and take her and her luggage to the Termini train station. She finished her mission and had an 11:50am train home to Florence, where her (American) family has been living for ten years. I gave her the SD card with her memo files and wished her luck with that. Her three pieces of luggage were stuffed and extremely heavy -- the missionaries flying home have a 50lb (23kg) weight limit for their big suitcases, but the train has no such limit. Taking them down the stairs and getting them into the car was very difficult, but I think I managed to do so without throwing out my back. They barely fit! We made it to the station without incident. Dee walked into the station with her because she needed help managing the three suitcases, one of which had a broken-off handle. I just drove over to the Institute and Dee walked back after getting her up to security.

Our trash bins at home have not been emptied for several days and are overflowing. There is a strike coming up on Friday, but nothing yet. Our doorman Paolo just shrugs and says "This is Rome. What do you expect?" Hopefully they will come soon, as we kept a full bag of trash waiting inside.

Getting early to the Institute was nice. I was able to print out my lessons for the weekend, as well as all the docs required to renew my ZTL (Limited Traffic Zone) pass which allows us to drive downtown. I will go on Thursday to get that done. Last year was my first time and was a rather daunting task. Hopefully this time will be much easier.

We also had plenty of time to prepare for Taco Tuesday without rushing. A fair number of kids showed up, though we started with all guys. The ladies showed up later. Daniele from Ostia, fresh off his mission in Greece, was here for the first time. He has been online via Zoom for a few of my Institute lessons, and it was good to meet him in person. 

The full group, later on

The initial group

Fabrizio working on his family history on our new computer

They clean up afterwards--their own idea

Playing a game after lunch

The Institute was pretty full and busy all afternoon. Dee embroidered the 'G' on the remaining Ganziano ties. We are sending three home with Karen to be mailed to Provo, and one is going to Anziano Conatti in Brazil. After that, we have only four left of the original 20, so we have been busy giving them out. We think these four will last for the remainder of our time here. If not, we'll see if the shop downstairs could possibly match it.

Karen and Dave arrived on the train just before 8pm from a tour of Ravenna which they really enjoyed. That town is a real jewel, not well known and rarely crowded, but with awesome ancient mosaics and history. We were going to take them out to dinner, but they weren't terribly hungry, so we agreed to just drive home, where we finished off the chicken enchiladas left over from Sunday evening. They ran one final load of laundry while they started to organize for packing, and we left it to dry overnight on a rack in the living room with a fan on it.

As we were going home, there was a police blockade a block away which we were able to get around. Some Russian soccer fans in town for a big game were drunk and started jumping up and down on the very long escalator in the Repubblica stop around the corner. The mechanism broke and the stairs starting sliding down at a very fast clip, which left about 20 people seriously injured, one with a partially severed foot. The subway will just not stop there for a while until they can get it repaired. It was apparently a pretty terrifying moment in there.

Arriving at home, we had Karen and Dave go up the elevator alone with their luggage, since it would have been a very tight fit for all of us. Our elevators here are not very sophisticated: you can't push the button and have it remember to come to you. Instead you have to wait for the light to go out, indicating that it is no longer in use, and then you race to push the button so that you get the next turn. The light went out quickly, so I pushed the button down on the ground floor. Unbeknownst to us, Karen and Dave had delayed opening the door, so the elevator thought it was free. It came all the way back down with them still in it. So we sent them up again, all of us laughing hard.

At home we visited a bunch, hearing about their escapades in Florence, Venice, and Ravenna. They have been wonderful guests, and we will miss them. They gave me an envelope from my mom, with a copy of a letter my dad had written years ago. She is amazing, always providing copies of family history to all of her kids going back decades. My other siblings already got their copy, I assume, but when I opened the envelope it was completely empty. At first I was wondering if there was a message there, but then I realized she just messed up. We all got a good chuckle out of it, which is exactly what my dad would have enjoyed!

One fun thing I wanted to add is that when we were in Naples, I pointed out the red cornetti (horns) that are popular there to ward off the evil eye. Dave kept saying, "are you sure they aren't chili peppers?"

Fiber internet at church!

Monday was an IT support kind of day for me. In the morning, I walked down to Conad and the Chinese store. We needed some produce, and I have also been asked to install another one of my nifty shower curtain contraptions. Unfortunately, they only had one of the three shower rods I need, so I will try later in the week to get the other two. Dee walked to Todis because we were low on tortillas, and she bought a bunch of them. Someone has cleaned all the  tall weeds off the sidewalk! We think it was Anziano Thacker. He's great and loves to do such things. 👍 She also got everything we need for Taco Tuesday, because our car will be full of suitcases that day so we need to have everything already at the Institute.

Sorella Knies wanted some help with transitioning her WhatsApp account as she gives her mission-nurse SIM card to Sorella Millet, her replacement. The mission SIM cards tend to get passed from generation to generation, which has its positive and negative aspects. Anyway, it turns out that Sorella Knies didn't really need to do anything, as she has all her contacts already and doesn't need to keep her WhatsApp history. The conversation started this way: Sorella Knies to my husband--Do you know about phones? My husband--more than you do!

We left for the Institute at the regular time, carrying a bunch of stuff. I helped get everything upstairs and carried out a load of (smelly) trash from our Saturday night dinner. Then I hopped back in the car and headed out in the light rain to our Rome 3 chapel. The weather was actually chilly most of the day, with a bit of rain. The drive to our ward from downtown is shorter than I thought, only 12km, all on surface streets. The Vodafone technician was supposed to come out at 2pm to finish installing fiber internet. To be precise, it is fiber to the "cabinet" nearby out on the street, then twisted pair to the inside of our chapel. The guy was only about 15 minutes late, after having been a no-show a number of times. He made quick work of the job, and we now have over 60 Mbps down and about 20Mpbs up, a 20x improvement from the old DSL line! The phone line still needs to switch over to Vodafone, which will happen in a few days, and then we can ditch the old modem entirely. This will be a major step forward for our ward, though now we need more WiFi access points to cover the classrooms better. I was ecstatic at getting this done, as were the others from the ward leadership with whom I shared the news.

While there, I got a call from Sorella Evertsen, whom we will be taking to the train station Wednesday morning to return home to Florence, having completed her mission. She has a mission loaner tablet and wanted to get her notes and voice recordings (part of her diary, I assume) off the tablet to take home. She had been using a Samsung Memo app, which doesn't allow easy exporting of data. I tried to help her over the phone, but then decided it would be better to go see her at the office. I ended up taking the tablet home for the evening, finally locating the files, which are in a proprietary format, and making a copy onto her SD card for her to take home. She will need to buy another Samsung phone or tablet at home to use them. On a separate topic, when I got back to the Institute, I did an image backup of both desktop computers there to bring to our apartment.

Meanwhile, Dee was alone at the Institute all afternoon, baking some wonderful butterless chocolate chip cookie bars, in case Anziano Papritz could drop by. He was in town for his permesso renewal, but didn't make it here after all. The bars are decadently gooey and chocolaty. I'm glad I found this new recipe. Dario arrived early for FHE, straight from his new job. He wanted to do some indexing, which we did on the brand new FamilySearch computer. He is really sharp, catching on very quickly to the tricks we use for indexing, such as looking up names in the white pages to check spelling and searching for town names online as well. The handwriting can be difficult to read, particularly for this younger generation, but he is very adept at it. It is really fun to work with such a good pupil. When he was stumped, I was able to read the names, and showed him some more tricks. Fun!

Dee also offered to teach my FHE lesson, since I was out all afternoon, which I really appreciated. She gave a lesson using a 2003 talk by Neal A. Maxwell entitled "Care for the Life of the Soul". She got a bunch of good participation from the kids, asking them some things that they had accomplished and felt good about. Afterward they really enjoyed the cookies. 

 

We were both tired, Dee in particular after a long weekend. Fortunately we were able to go home an hour early, leaving Jomar in charge; Ugo loaned Jomar his keys last week. It was really lovely to get home and to bed early.

Transfers were announced in the morning instead of at night, so we found out we're losing Anziano Payne, Anziano Sanchez, Sorella Sullivan and Sorella Liddiard. Besides their replacements, we're getting two more pairs of sisters. In fact, there are 14 new sisters coming, due to the Temple Visitors Center that is opening next year. 

Jomar arranged a bowling activity for a bunch of GANS. He beat them all at 120 points. The place charges only two euro per person on Mondays. We're sad to learn that Margie is moving home to Honduras in November. She has been a big part of the Institute for a year. 

The weather is getting chilly enough that I wore slippers and a sweatshirt around the house.

Talk and three lessons

Sunday morning, Dee was very tired after having been up late finishing her talk on forgiveness, as well as reviewing her Primary lesson. When she went up to give her talk, she started with a story, but couldn't find the printout. First she walked back down into the congregation to try to find it in her stuff, which brought a chuckle, then went back up to the pulpit and found it there, but then she told the story without reading it anyway. I thought that she did a really nice job, with very heartfelt stories and eye contact. 

My Sunday School lesson in Isaiah 22-30 went really well. A whole bunch of people shared good comments and insights, which meant that we didn't even begin to cover all the material I had prepared -- a very good sign! There was a wonderful spirit there, which several others commented on. My third hour Priesthood lesson, on the talk "Lift up your head and rejoice" by Elder Brough at this month's conference, also went quite well. I read the story by Corrie Ten Boom (who wrote The Hiding Place) on forgiveness when meeting her former guard from the concentration camp, which is always very touching. At first I downloaded it in English and started to translate it using Google Translate, then searched instead for it in Italian and saved myself a bunch of effort! Again, a lot of the men shared good comments, so I felt very happy about my efforts. Dee's Primary lesson apparently was not quite as successful in keeping the attention of the kids as she had hoped, but she is always really good with kids that age. The other teacher didn't show up, so I taught the combined group, which was too big for my room. When we moved, it caused more chaos. IMO, the kids don't expect the lesson to be interesting, so they don't even try. I had a hard time getting their attention and even had a personal talk after class with one young boy about his behavior. The upside is that the lesson was on talents. They all loved hearing what their mothers had told me ahead of time about them. One boy was excited to be the class president of the day and it kept him engaged. The best part was that I brought a big roll of aluminum foil and gave them each pieces to create something, as a way to develop a new talent. They had never played with foil before and they really loved it. I try to bring in something unique each week. I was sad that Levi mysteriously never came to class.

After church, I gave USB-to-go cables and drives to the four young missionaries in our ward so that they can back up their photos and videos from their tablets or phones. I wanted to help walk them through the process, but transfers are coming up this week so I felt it better to get them what they need now. The bishop said that Vodafone was coming Monday afternoon to finish installing fiber internet at the chapel, and he asked if I had time to come back and wait for the technician. I said yes, and he gave me the modem for them to install, which had arrived in the mail.

We got home fairly quickly after church, and Dee went right to bed, napping for an hour and a half, without even pausing for lunch. I stayed awake even though I was tired, catching up on a bunch of paperwork. Anziano Balzotti was having problems with his hotspot device and new SIM card, so I went over there to try to help. Apparently the SIM card still needs to be activated, so he will have to go to the store.

After she got up, Dee made 16 chicken enchiladas for the senior missionary dinner. They were a big  hit, with everyone asking for the recipe. I'm the go-to cooking specialist here, to my neverending surprise. It is getting chilly, and there was a big thunderstorm with hail during our dinner. The Pickerds got locked in at the Temple and arrived late. President Pickerd was soaked to the bone and had to change. The Thackers and Millets introduced themselves, even though they have both served before in this mission, and Knieses gave a nice farewell. We really enjoyed visiting with everyone, such a nice group. We only had Americans this time because the Calabreses, Simoncinis and Vardeus couldn't make it for various reasons. In fact we all fit at one table. Sister Knies had a great story about some of their American visitors who tried to say where they were. They said there was a pharmacy on the corner, and it was called Aperto. In truth, just about every corner has a pharmacy, and aperto means Open. 

 

Just My Imagination? (plus African food)

Saturday morning I "slept in" until 7am, which felt pretty good but really wasn't enough. For the first time in days, I got to exercise, which felt really good. I climbed up our apartment stairs six times, nearly forty floors. 

Antonio the plumber came by just before 10am to look at the toilet handle that wasn't working. He took it apart, looked inside, and said "there is a piece missing -- this never worked!" I replied that it had  worked fine for the last year and only stopped this week. He said, half kidding, that I must be imagining it! We both laughed pretty hard. He will try to find the replacement part(s) and get back to us. When he returns, we will try to have him fix the toilet that runs continually in the apartment for the Sorelle right beneath us.

After that it was still early enough to go get a haircut, which I have been needing for a while but never had time. Fortunately I only had to wait for one customer before getting mine done, which was even more surprising since it was a Saturday, but after me there was a big line. We went before noon to the Institute so that Dee could make enchilada sauce for the senior missionary couple dinner Sunday night at the mission home. Rhenald was out shopping for ingredients for our African food evening activity and was supposed to be there at 1pm. Dee and I had a pool to guess when he would show up. I said 1:55pm, and she said 2:25pm -- she nailed it! He then proceeded to work on his feet in the kitchen for about 7 hours, directing traffic and always being pleasant. Dee was there assisting the whole time, and Grace came by mid-afternoon to help out as well. 

 

 

 

I spent the afternoon mostly working on my two Sunday lessons, which for some reason weren't finished yet -- not surprising given how full the week was. I also spoke with my mom and my sister Marilyn on the phone. Karen and Dave messaged us to say that their day trip to Venice from Florence went really well -- I am interested to hear what they did.

About a dozen kids would show up, less than we had planned on, but we have never tried this on a weekend before. Given the smaller number and the fact that Rhenald insisted on making too many kinds of food, we had a bunch of leftovers. Here is the menu:

There was also a yellow custard that we dipped the accara (fried beans) into. Some of the stuff came out of the oven late -- it is hard to coordinate the timing with so many different things. By that point, most of the kids were stuffed. I really liked the accara, and the stew was apparently excellent, though too spicy for my taste; African food is well known for being extremely spicy. I also loved the turkey stew and the Accara. It was a pleasant surprise to eat the fried Accara with the slightly sweet custard. 

Emmanuel helping out

Frying the accara

 

Kids playing while waiting for dinner

Starting the custard

Mixing the custard

Dinner is served

Stew

Boiling moi moi in plastic bags!

After dinner

Baked moi moi

Ylenia brought some delicious homemade cookies with honey, which were devoured:

Rhenald basically ruined one of our (inexpensive) kitchen knives trying to cut turkey bones. Anziano Adepoju had done something similar months ago. Maybe this is just how they use knives in  Nigeria? He tried to smooth it out afterward, but I assured him it was irreparable and that we didn't mind. It was worth it.

During the afternoon, Anziano Balzotti called, asking me to order him some replacement toner cartridges for their home printer. Nobody in the office seems to have an Amazon Prime account, so they ask us to get them stuff, which is fine, since they do a lot for us. He also gave me an update on the mission cell phone plan. Nothing has happened yet, but Frankfurt is furious at how much we are paying, given the contract they had negotiated. Meanwhile, the mission continues to pay a lot. Hopefully some progress will be made soon, even perhaps a refund would be in order. I invited them to come down and enjoy some African food with us, which they did. We got to visit, and then they started working hard on cleaning up. They helped us carry a whole bunch of the leftovers home in the car to bring to our ward for the regular GANS after-church meal. It was just over 10pm when we got home, and Dee still had a bunch of work to do on her talk. What a week!