Car dent photos

Wednesday morning Anziano Balzotti called with more WiFi hotspot woes. It had been working fine with his new Iliad SIM card, but then just stopped. His wife is not happy! By the time he called it was too late to go over there, so I told him I would drop by in the evening after we got home. Fortunately, we got home a little early and it only took a few minutes to fix it. Something had been mis-configured, not sure how; however, he had swapped SIM cards a couple of times in the device, so I told him that if it wasn't broken he shouldn't fix it!

I took photos of all the scrapes and dents on our car to send to the mission office. Apparently they have full insurance coverage which can fix them. A couple of them are our fault, where we scraped a wall in the tight entrance to the Institute courtyard, but the rest were inflicted by others, usually unknown to us. I have driven in the US for about 45 years with almost no scratches, but here in just over a year there are dozens. Italian traffic is not something that I will miss!

Dee's fault

My fault

Others' fault

Sigh

We left at 9:15am to drive down to our District Council meeting at the Rome 3 chapel. The ZLs joined us a bit late from the other side of town, and we had a very enjoyable meeting. Sorella Yanacallo has not been able to get her mission phone working with WhatsApp for well over a month, which is a real problem because that is what everyone here uses: most people do not use texting or phone calls. Turns out that all they had to do was move the SIM card into Sorella Brock's phone, and instantly they were online. It was nice to help them get that done, but sad that they hadn't realized how easy it could be. With Sorella Palmer (on the left in the photo below) going home next week, we did our typical photo with the stacked chairs indicating how many transfers each missionary has been out. With the ZLs there to take the photo, Dee got to be in this one.

On the way into town, we stopped at Metro for ground beef, cheddar cheese, plastic ware, and chocolate chips. When we got to the campus, Mariela showed up to make some wonderful Colombian treats for us: plantains cooked with cheese inside. Yumm! We have gotten to be close with their family.

While she was there, the doorbell rang. A very nice man named Riccardo, from Argentina, came in and asked about family history. He has been doing some research online at FamilySearch and found that some of his records were blocked, only accessible at an official FS library. Our location showed up online, so he came here. Unfortunately, we are only allowed to do Family History here with youth, so we gave him the address and hours of the Rome 2 FS library. Mariela also had the phone number of the director, Sorella Magno, which we gave to Riccardo. Dee later thought that she should have offered to help him right then and there as a one-time deal. We did give him a temple open house card and told him to go see it, and that there would be a big FS library there when it opens next year.

The toilet seat in the one and only bathroom at our Institute has been loose for a while, and the mounting hardware finally broke. I messaged the FM folks, who said I could just go buy one and install it. The hardware store just around the corner had a universal unit that fit well enough. I got to spend some quality time bent over the toilet replacing it, but it is good to have something that isn't loose any more. Missionaries need lots of skills.

I also spent some time on Zoom and TeamViewer with David Perego, backing up his computer in preparation for installing the SSD on Friday. We still need to shrink his C: drive since the SSD is small (you get what you pay for :). Maybe that can happen on Thursday before he shows up on Friday, as each step takes time.

Ugo was still having trouble getting the fridge order completed using his church credit card. Finally we found it on Amazon and he was able to order it. Unfortunately, they will not carry it upstairs and will not set an appointment time. We'll see how that works, but we are excited to have it on the way.

Rodolfo came by for another missionary lesson with the Sorelle, as well as with Noemi, who finished her mission here recently and is fluent in Spanish and English. Sorella Brock, on the way here from the metro stop at Termini, got dumped on by a pigeon! Missionary life is always unpredictable, but she handled it by laughing. Dee got to visit with Noemi's mom and heard some amazing stories about her first year or two coming here from Ecuador.

Noemi, Dee, Noemi's mom

Rodolfo ended up staying for our small indexing event in the evening. Junior was also there, so we helped them. They were both surprisingly good at it and finished a batch: Junior in Italian and Rodolfo in Spanish. The handwriting is never easy, but they caught on right away.

 

Anziano Conatti in Brazil told us via WhatsApp that his Ganziano tie finally arrived in the mail. It took about eight weeks. He was very excited and grateful. So now all of the ties have been delivered. We have four left for future Ganziani.