We left home early to go to Ikea to buy a whole bunch of linens for various apartments around here that will host missionaries for the upcoming zone conferences. On the way, we scouted out the walking path from the underground mall parking to get to the temple, as that may be useful if the Open House parking gets overloaded. Dee had gathered orders from several other couples and apartments. We completely filled two huge carts, spending almost 1000€ of mission funds. It almost didn't fit into our small car -- for a minute we thought about leaving Dee at the mall while I drove it home (I would have made the sacrifice, haha), but we barely were able to get it in, although I couldn't see the side mirror due to Dee holding a big bag.
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| Two full carts on the way to checkout at Ikea |
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| The stuff filling our living room |
When we got to the Institute, Sammy came in to say goodbye, that he wouldn't be around for a while. We were so sorry to hear that we won't be seeing him. Dee taught Italian again at the Friendship Center, given a small class of beginners instead of the larger intermediate class. So her games didn't go quite as well with the smaller group. This is probably her last time teaching, with a new intern coming on board there, which is good because she has so much else going on. Meanwhile I did some initial lesson prep, printing out the materials.
In the late afternoon, I walked over to the nearby hotel where Holly and RD were going to stay. He hadn't been able to navigate cancelling their reservation via the hotel site in Italian, so I was able to get it all cancelled for them. Arsene, the young Catholic priest from Burundi, stopped by to say hi. He is sad that we will be leaving soon and said he would come visit us in California sometime, which would be cool. We agreed to go see the temple Open House together next week, and I went online to get the tickets for us.
Our FHE group filled the library, and we had a lot of fun. Dee selected the question of the week, asking where they like to go eat, and where they would like to go that they haven't tried yet. Everyone really got into it, and we ended up with a nice list of restaurants to try. We should have done this a year ago! My lesson was on Martin Luther King Jr, with it being the US holiday, explaining a bit of historical context for the Jim Crow laws which were prevalent in the south when I was a kid. Fortunately, thanks in large part to his efforts, those practices disappeared by the time I was a teenager. I talked about how his non-violent methods really changed minds throughout the country, and that one good person can make a big difference by standing firm to his convictions. We watched the last five minutes of his "I Have A Dream" speech from 1964 on YouTube, with Italian subtitles. Several of the kids had good questions and shared some experiences about racism in their lives. Everyone was very attentive and seemed to enjoy it.
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| Rice pudding |
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| Game continued until after we left |