Engaged!

Sunday morning I woke up about 7am. Dee had already been up for a while and had a huge grin on her face, having been waiting patiently for me. She said that our son Wes had messaged asking if he and his girlfriend Alyssa could talk to us briefly. So we did a WhatsApp video call. She held up her left hand and said, "Yes, we have news." We loved seeing the big smiles on their faces. We held off telling others in the family so they could break the news themselves. We're happy too!

Outside it was under 40 degrees, so I wore my overcoat to church for the first time this fall. In the mornings inside our apartment we have to turn on our electrical heaters at least for a while, since the communal radiator system doesn't come on until the afternoon. At church I taught my Gospel Doctrine lesson on Jeremiah, covering only a few chapters and getting a lot of discussion. His life of service and handling constant persecution is a good model for us. I taught Primary. The kids were eager to help set up the classroom. Nicolas, 7, even brought in a big chair for me and set up the front table like a teacher's desk. Then he wrote a welcome on the blackboard. He was the class president for the day. They love that. He is a natural leader and really ran things. He scolded his sister, 5, for not sitting down and then went out to get their mother to get Jasmine to obey. Wow. He also recounted his talk, which he wrote, for the upcoming Sacrament program. My topic was service. They were all eager to draw and came to me individually to tell me about their pictures and get a hug. We have a lot of love in our class now. Levi even came for a hug and smiled all day. 

I did a favorite object lesson from a sharing time I did over twenty years ago in Primary in Encinitas. I wrapped posterboard around Levi's arms, tying it in place, so he couldn't bend either arm. (Magazines work well, but I didn't have any.) Then I tied Nicolas's hands so they were under his chin, like a squirrel. Then Jasmine held a package of cookies above their heads. Levi could reach them, but couldn't eat them because he couldn't bend his arms. Nicolas couldn't reach them, but could feed them both. At the end I gave them gummy candies that look like a hamburger. They loved them!

The singing practice was a different story. There are toys, noise and distraction. Jenna jumped in and tamed some of it. Now I know what I can do. I'm careful since I'm an outsider.

After the three-hour block, we stayed after for about two hours to do indexing. There were not as many as last time, but still we had perhaps half a dozen going at any one time. Dee brought food: bread, peanut butter (which lit up the eyes of the young missionaries and the kids), and some candy, which all got finished off. I was able to help Sergio set up his free LDS accounts on Ancestry, My Heritage, and Geneanet. It took some doing because he already had free accounts but forgot the passwords, so we had to recover those, but he was delighted when he finally got it all working. His ancestry is French via Tunisia, so Geneanet is a big deal for him. 

Sandra is so smart. She does a fabulous job on indexing. I got to show her a few things she didn't know about for general Italian research.  

Meanwhile, in other parts of the building, David Perego was building his new computer with help from Manuel. Turns out he was missing a power cable, so they weren't able to finish the job, but he is really getting into computers these days. Manuel knows a lot about computers and was happy to help. 

Manuel, Junior, and David

Also, our GANS kids did their normal lunch together, cooking pasta and spring rolls.

Once we got home, I worked on a document for the Motts (and other future senior couples) with suggestions of things to do/bring. There is a lot of accumulated knowledge that we don't do a good enough job of transferring to incoming couples. Hopefully this will be of help. I gave the draft to Dee for her additions and corrections.

During the day, for various reasons my wife ended up talking with her sister, her father, her cousin Jim, and all four of our kids, which rarely happens all in one day. Our kids know about Wes and Alyssa, but we didn't tell anyone else yet so that they could be the ones to break the happy news.

At 8pm we went to the stake president's house to do some shirt measurements. Their son Daniele, one of our GANS, just got his mission call to Tempe, Arizona. They had seen my nice LandsEnd dress shirts and really liked them (nicer fabric than they usually find here), so we took one over to try to figure out his size. The dad also wanted to try one. It turns out that my shirt seems to fit the dad, so I gave him one to try, and we now know what size to try for Daniele. Our daughter Chiara will bring samples when she comes next month. If we get it right then we will ask some other friends coming over for the temple Open House to bring extras for them. 

Driving over there and back was quite an experience, especially in the dark. My assertion is that it seems to be illegal to have roads meet here at right angles. Even using Google Maps, it is often very confusing, because you hit forks in the road with only a few degrees of difference between them, and it is almost impossible to tell which one to take. As a result, there are wrong turns, or, even worse, last-second turns. In the dark going somewhere we had never been, it took both of us watching the road and the map to get there at all. It felt very unsafe. In each direction there were a number of times when we ended up doing hairpin turns and reversing directions, with no streetlights to illuminate our path. Here is a screenshot of what we did; note the strange turns. We were both very happy to get home in one piece.

After we got home, Anziano Balzotti called and came over for me to help him with his WiFi hotspot, which they now use to replace their fiber internet. They have had one problem after another as he tried to save money. He hadn't realized that he needed to pay the bill already -- his SIM card was out of credit, so at least he then knew what the problem was, which can be easily fixed on Monday.