Thanksgiving dinner #2

As is my wont, I woke up about 6:30am on Saturday -- not enough sleep after that late night! By noon I was down for a 90 minute nap and felt pretty good thereafter. In the morning I took some leftover fixings for dressing to Sorella Thacker for our senior couple Thanksgiving dinner at the mission home that evening. Two such dinners in two nights -- pretty cool, but  we are glad we don't eat that much every day! This one would be much less work on our end, since everyone brought something: just a salad from Dee.

I started to work on my Sunday School lesson, but then Ugo asked whose turn it was. Turns out that we had agreed he would teach this weekend because he is out of town next week, so my day got easier. He tried to order the new fridge online from MediaWorld (think Best Buy) but had problems with the website, so he will try again on Monday.

We drove over to the mission home with the Balzottis for the 4pm dinner. She had preserved one of the pumpkin pies from the night before, making life easier for her too. Visiting with them is always a lot of fun. I joke that once we get home we will move to live next door to them; not really, but it shows how much we like them.

Thanksgiving: senior couples edition

There were eight couples at the dinner, with the Thackers arriving late after she played the piano for a wedding at the Rome 2 chapel. She was asked with almost no notice, but they just roll with it -- awesome folks. The new temple president and matron, the Pacinis, were there at the dinner. It was nice to get to know them. He served in the Milan mission a few years before me, and they served here in Rome as the mission president from 1999-2002 with six of their seven kids, living in the same mission home which has been in use since before Dee got here. 

After dinner the Pacinis gave us some background on themselves, then talked about their calling, taking questions from the crowd. He had some really good insights, such as the fact that we have to be careful to call it the Rome temple, not the Italian temple, since there will be more in the future! He is a very humble and spiritual man, with a huge job ahead of them to open up a big temple in a country where members and workers are few. Upon receiving their call, the wife of one of his counselors said "I don't know how to do this." His response was that there was a scripture for that: "the blind leading the blind." It was a delightful and touching evening.