The hygienist was a delightful lady named Assunta. When she heard I was from California, she first complimented me on my Italian, then she volunteered that she had two cousins living in the US. Both of them had married Americans who served in Italy as Mormon missionaries. Assunta didn't know that I was LDS until I told her, and then she said that her cousins' kids had all served missions, including one currently serving in Rome. Turns out it is Anziano Grover, whom we know a little bit. Small world. I gave her the website address to get tickets to the Temple Open House, and she was delighted. My teeth are also in fine shape, and my next dentist visit will be back in the US.
Dee had gone to the Institute on the subway, while I drove down from the dentist. We both arrived just a few minutes after 1pm. She had hit a couple of Chinese stores on the way, buying a plumbing snake for me to clean out her shower drain (again), as well as two covered glass bowls that I use for my lunch, which keep breaking for us.
I spent most of the afternoon working on my two lessons for Friday as well as the FHE lesson in the evening. Dee got the itch to look at redesigning our kitchen to try to make room for a second fridge and oven. Now that we aren't apparently moving anytime soon, if there is something easy/inexpensive to do to improve the kitchen, it may be worth it. I helped a little bit, but she ended up moving the fridge and microwave cabinet around herself. Turns out that, if we get a smaller table, we can apparently fit two fridges side by side, and there is then also a nice place to put another oven with overhead cabinets on the far wall. The oven would take some approval and possibly an electrical service upgrade, but the table and fridge we could do easily on our own for under 500€. We'll see what happens, with Ugo checking his budget. Some of the kids were shocked and disoriented when they saw it, but they all said it felt bigger and more open.
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| New layout, with the current (too big) table |
“O God! If I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting beauty!”
-- Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya of Basra (died 801 AD)
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.
-- C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
-- Romans 6:16
Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis,that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.-- Alma 34:34
