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.