Happy Epiphany!

Saturday is a big national holiday here: Epiphany, the end of the Christmas season. Many stores were closed entirely, and most others had limited hours. Italy will get back to business on Monday. The weather has been very pleasant, in the mid-60s during the day and not getting much below 50 at night. My wife continues to feel under the weather, very exhausted with a cold and cough.

For the most part, we stayed at home on our P-day. The Sorelle downstairs reported that they had plenty of hot water for showers, so I closed up their hot water heater, allowing them to put stuff back into the hall cabinet. They were so grateful!

We did take a quick walk to the Chinese store, which was open all day. Our little stapler (cucitrice) broke, so we got an inexpensive replacement. We also bought a short extensible shower rod at the Chinese store for the Ladispoli sisters -- only five euros. The rod in one of their showers doesn't quite fit right. The problem is that the opening is under 70cm, and you can't buy them that short. So we bought the shortest one they had (73cm) and figured out how to take it apart and cut a piece out with a hacksaw to shorten it enough. Putting it back together required some ingenuity, with each of us contributing ideas to the effort. A plastic part that screwed in at one end had to be cut off, but we were able to attach the rubber end by wrapping masking tape around the tube to the required thickness and then jamming the cap on. The things you end up doing as a missionary! I well remember a somewhat similar episode 40+ years ago as a branch president in Pavia, where it was my responsibility to maintain the chapel. Whatever it takes to serve, we do. We will give them the shower rod at zone conference in a couple of weeks.

In the afternoon I finished installing all the apps on my new laptop, which is mostly ready to go now. The only thing remaining is drivers for the printers and scanner at the Institute. The Italian keyboard takes some getting used to, as almost every punctuation mark is in a different place! It was also time for my bi-weekly Acronis image backups, with the new Dell laptop now in that rotation; having lost our home to a fire in 1996 has made me a backup fanatic.

I did a bunch of paperwork and accounting. There is always something to take care of from home, and thank goodness for our tech that makes it so easy to do things remotely. In the evening, we finally watched the missionary driving safety video, which took about an hour. It was fun, but it also made good points about driving safely. While it is aimed mostly at the young missionaries (teenage drivers!), there were plenty of useful reminders for us.

Dee started working on her family history class presentation. The manual is outdated, as evidenced by this picture of a computer:

In the evening we had a conference call with my sister Marilyn and our friend Lu, to talk about their trip here in June. We are all excited about it. We also gave them a couple of "homework" assignments and promised to compose an email to them with all kinds of detailed suggestions and to-dos to prepare for the trip.

Friday mostly at home

Institute was supposed to re-open Friday evening with Ugo's Book of Mormon lesson and a dinner. However, there was a dual-stake event for Young Men and Young Women, and a bunch of our GANS were involved in running it. Thus, Ugo cancelled, so we had one more down day, which was good, particularly since my wife hasn't been feeling well. She seems to be on on the mend after a couple of days of light coughing and low energy.

Today I performed several fun acts of service. Anziano Paulsen's personal laptop had a bunch of problems, including running really slow. Turns out the culprit was Norton Security, which was messed up and incredibly difficult to uninstall. Friday morning we finally succeeded in getting that done, and the laptop seems to be running fine now. He was delighted and called me his hero!

The Sorelle below us had complained that their hot water heater didn't last long enough for two showers. We had similar issues when we arrived, but the problem was resolved by turning up the thermostat. Other missionaries have mentioned the same problem when we inspected their apartments. Unfortunately, the water heaters in their apartments do not have a thermostat at all, even though they are otherwise very similar in appearance to ours. Probably their model was a few euros cheaper😞. The thermometer reading of their water is middle of the range, as opposed to ours which is at the high end. My wife noticed during inspections this week that the spot where we have a dial to adjust our water temp is a blank circle on theirs, but the housing can be taken off by removing two screws. I took it off and, sure enough, underneath was a knob to turn, hidden inside. After turning it up, now their water is much hotter. It will be particularly nice for them at zone/mission conference time, when they often have a number of other Sorelle staying overnight.

Our thermostat knob

Theirs has a placeholder instead

Removing the screws that hold the cover in place

The cover is off, exposing the thermostat knob

Behold the little red thermostat knob hidden inside

This afternoon I ran out for a while to wash and vacuum the car, which was pretty dirty after our hike at Bagnoreggio on Monday. Then I went to the mall, where I visited Vodafone to have them explain some stuff. It was very frustrating, though I finally got my answers. They seem to use intentionally confusing terms and language, probably to make it so people don't ask questions and just pay their bill. For example, there is one feature that costs 2 euros per month, and it's something we don't need. The description says that it is "Free Sunday calls". Turns out that the calls are free on Sunday, but the feature isn't.  Here is a part of the Q&A today:
   Me: Is this feature free?
   VF: Yes, but it costs 2 euros/month and is included in your plan
   Me: So it is free, or am I paying for it?
   VF: It's free, but you can't get rid of the 2 euros/month
It went on like this for some time, on several different topics, seeming like part of a Monty Python skit. I think I finally understand what is going on now, but I can't believe how evasive and confusing their terminology is. All the phone companies here seem to do it. In the US, there would be class-action lawsuits! By comparison, the US cell phone carriers seem like paragons of honesty and clarity. Having said that, cell service here is generally much less expensive than in the US, with lots of competition, so perhaps I shouldn't complain too much. It will still take a few weeks before they install the fiber -- can't wait!

At the mall I also looked for a winter suit, to no avail. As I mentioned a while back, my two mission suits are basically for spring and summer, with wonderfully light and breathable fabric. So we'll look a bit downtown next week at some men's clothing stores not too far from the Institute and see what happens. A counselor in our bishopric told me that Italian suits aren't comfortable for him, with very tight legs. I bought a couple like that here in the 1970s. They looked good, but I could barely lean over. The joke was that people could tell whether a coin was heads or tails in the pants pocket of an Italian suit. Hopefully I can request a more generous cut. Stay tuned!

I also made a brief Ikea run, to get some Ziploc bags and a chef's knife for the Anziani in Ladispoli, who don't have a good kitchen knife. We had ordered a universal remote for their HVAC units, which work great for AC but not for heat without the remote -- a prior set of Anziani managed to lose the remotes last summer sometime. Unfortunately, Amazon tried to deliver it Friday while they were out, so they can't get it probably until next week, given that Saturday is Epiphany.

Dee writes: This evening we ran to Conad for some food because many things will be closed on Epiphany. There were two young people inside asking for donations for a charity. The young man, Simone, was familiar with the elders and knew they aren't allowed to donate. He told me he couldn't remember their names, but they were really nice, American, tall and wore ties. This doesn't narrow it down much :) He mentioned that they had invited him to their free English classes. The young woman with him, Valeria, perked up at that and said she would like to go to the classes. So I got to give them our card with the addresses of the local Church and the Institute. It's always great when a nonmember says things that make another nonmember get interested. I hope we see more of them! 

IT help

Thursday I went into the mission office to provide some IT support for the senior couples there, as I had promised to do over our holiday break. Italy is still largely in holiday mode until after Epiphany on Friday. One reader, contemplating a possible future  couples mission, expressed concern about not being able to do all the tech stuff I'm involved in. Not to worry, I just do all this because I can and because it's helpful; it is not at all required. I spent almost four hours in the office, helping Sister Balzotti and Anziano Paulsen with a list of technical issues, both personal and mission related. For the most part, we got things resolved, with some help from Google -- the trick in helping with tech is not knowing everything, but knowing to ask Google! I may need a followup visit for a few more things. 

My sister Marilyn has purchased airline tickets to come visit us in June, together with Lu, our long-time friend from Richmond days who now lives in Utah as well. We are looking forward to seeing them and we're also happy to have her bring us a few things! The mission office staff has said they are happy to help cover for us a bit so we can take time off to spend with family, as long as we avoid transfer weeks and zone conferences. To me that sounds like a good trade for IT services rendered😊.

My wife has been a bit under the weather, so she mostly stayed at home, except for a couple of brief walks to local stores. Christmas items are still on display and not discounted, since Christmas isn't over until Epiphany. We decided that my new all-white shower curtain left my bathroom a bit blah, so we bought a new one that has red and white rectangles and spruces up the room a bit.

The week-old white curtain will be reused by sewing it as a top border extension to another new shower curtain for the apartment of the Ladispoli sisters. Wednesday's blog entry showed a picture of us cobbling together longer links to try to have their shower curtain (barely) reach the bathtub, but Dee decided it would be much better to just make a longer curtain. We will see the sisters in zone conference in a couple of weeks, so my wife hopes to have it ready to give to them then.

Epiphany, January 6, is the day celebrated as the visit of the wise men. When we were here forty years ago, there were few Christmas trees. Children traditionally get their gifts on January 6. In America, we celebrate the twelve days of Christmas ending on December 25, but in Europe, the FIRST day of Christmas is December 25, making Epiphany the twelfth day of Christmas. The befana (a witchlike figure) is the equivalent of Santa Claus. She comes on January 6 to give gifts or coal to the children.

I mentioned the visor extension that Dee made for our car. It's wonderful. Here is a photo of it in place, and here is a video of it in operation. My wife rocks!

I walked to local stores to get some fresh vegetables, plus the shower curtains and some longer screws to hold our new kitchen knobs in place. The drawer faces were too thick, but I found slightly longer ones at the hardware store down the street for less than one euro and installed them.

In the evening I finally had time to turn on my new laptop. First I did a full backup, before even booting Windows. Then I started Windows up and did updates, which took quite a while. Next on the agenda is installing applications -- I have a list I keep of what to install, and it doesn't take too long. The Italian keyboard takes some getting used to: all the punctuation is in a different place, so I'm constantly looking around to find the right character. But it has the accented vowels needed for Italian, so it's actually quite useful.

There is a bunch of financial stuff from home to take care of with the new year, so I spent some time on the phone and online with banks and family to get the ball rolling. Next month I'll have to try to do income taxes, which will be interesting from here. It's good to have financial support people at home (CPA, insurance, banker, etc.) that I trust and can work with very well. I've done almost all of that stuff via phone and email for years anyway, though the time difference here adds a bit of a twist.

On the road

Wednesday was our day to travel to the other side of Rome and to Ladispoli to inspect four apartments of young missionaries: two sets of Sorelle and two sets of Anziani. The drive is about 35 miles each direction. It all went quite well. There were a few semi-serious issues/concerns, which we have to write up and submit to the office, but we were also able to fix a few things and make some helpful recommendations. Dee always brings treats for the missionaries, today including some ziploc-style bags from Ikea, which were big hits with the Sorelle -- they are not to be found anywhere else here! She also tells them that we are there not as spies to find out what's wrong, but more as home teachers to help them out. Anyway, they now really enjoy having us show up!

Here are Sorella Davis and I in Ladispoli, fixing a shower curtain which was too short to reach the tub (the shower rod is actually too high but can't be moved easily), by adding some extensions links to the hooks.

It was a bit precarious balancing on the edge of the tub, but no missionaries were harmed in the process. We also take aerators for their faucets, which often break, and we need to start bringing along extra light bulbs to replace missing/burned out ones. These young missionaries are so busy that they don't tend to get around to minor repairs. It's easier for us to just do it for them when we're there. I bring our tool chest and used it a few times today. We also brought a new cloth shower curtain that hadn't been installed yet in my bathroom, and Sister Wyatt in Ladispoli was delighted to install it instead of her old plastic one.

In Ladispoli, after inspecting the elders' apartment, we took them out to pizza for lunch. They were really excited about getting a free meal out -- much better than ziplocs for them! They are Anziano Adepojou from Nigeria, and Anziano Dunn from Poway in San Diego County. Anziano Adepojou is the one I wrote about a few months ago, whose father was killed in Nigeria because he was a Christian, and whose brothers drowned when they came together on a raft from Libya. You can see the video about his story here. Here are some lunch photos:

 

During lunch, I got a call from Vodafone, saying that they were going to credit 54 euros to my account to cover the extra charges incurred over the last nine days. They also explained how to fix the issue going forward. Overall, it was a good solution to the problem.

We left our apartment at 9:15am and got home about 4pm, so it was a rather long day. But we weren't done: after unloading and unwinding just a little while at the apartment, we headed out again. First we went to Metro to buy just a few things, mostly for the Institute next week, but also a couple of huge chunks of cheddar cheese, over three pounds each, one for Ugo and one for us. Metro is the only place we know where you can buy cheddar here. Italy has lots of phenomenal cheeses, but cheddar is basically unknown. Metro also has black beans, which I love; they're expensive, but I'm worth it.

From Metro, we drove to our ward (Roma 3) chapel, which is nearby. The ward has a new Dell desktop for use by the ward leaders, but they haven't been able to get the church MLS program installed on it, so I had offered to help. It took well over an hour, but I finally succeeded. I had to call tech support in Salt Lake, download the program, install it, and then configure it. There was also some junkware on the computer (it was added by somebody here, probably in an effort to help) that I removed, which sped the system up quite a bit. Since I'm not a clerk or bishopric member, I wasn't authorized to do everything, so we had to get Stefano Bosco, 2nd counselor in the bishopric, on the phone a few times. I was running Skype on my laptop to Salt Lake, and calling Stefano on my phone, both in speakerphone mode, so the two could talk. It all worked. Downloading was so slow over DSL that I used my phone as a hotspot for a few minutes, which went much faster. Anyway, by the time I was done, everything seemed to be in order, and the bishopric was ecstatic to get this long-standing issue fixed.

While driving to Ladispoli, my wife took some heavy black felt and made a visor extension for our car. The built-in visor is too small to really help, particularly when sun is coming in from the driver's side. I was skeptical, but it works great! She should start a business selling them--they're a great solution. It basically is a sleeve that can be pulled out to extend the visor, then it can be easily slipped back into place. I'll take a video sometime to show how it works, but here are photos, with it just pinned for now; she'll sew it together more permanently. Here are some photos, on our lovely marble floor. 

 

Once home, I went to give the Balzottis a tablet we picked up today from the Sorelle in Roma 1st ward (as well as some amaretti cookies we bought for them to try), and they gave me an amazon.it package, which included accessories for my new laptop, such as a slip cover and some cables/adapters. One of these days I'll have enough time to turn it on finally, perhaps Thursday. I was also able to go online and submit a "self certification" of where we entered the freeway on Monday evening coming back from Bagoregio. The form has to be signed and FAXed  (!)in, but hopefully it should avoid the huge fine.

We got home exhausted after over 100 miles on the road, but happy to have given almost the whole day in service to others. Good stuff.

Hail and the Mall

Tuesday morning about 6am we woke up to the heavy sound of hail pounding on our windows. It actually accumulated a bit, looking like snow (photos courtesy of our apartment manager, Paolo):

 

You can see the pavement covered with it, as well as some in the grass. It had mostly melted by the time we went downstairs, so it's good Paolo thought to take a picture.

I installed a new hand towel ring (from amazon.it, of course) in my bathroom. The old holder used suction and would fall off every so often, plus the hook wasn't very good so my towel would fall off if not placed just right. This new one is very nice, a delightful upgrade as far as I'm concerned.

 

At noon we walked downstairs to inspect the apartment of the Sorelle right below us. It took less than half an hour, and we noted a few things to follow up on -- nothing major. Wednesday is our travel day to inspect four more apartments much more distant, so this was a good warmup.

After lunch we went to the mall for a while. My wife made an Ikea trip for a few small things for the apartment, including new handles for our kitchen cabinets. The old ones required you to pinch them with the thumb and forefinger, which was especially difficult for heavy drawers. The new ones allow you to just wrap any two fingers around and pull, and they are much easier to use! Our apartment definitely got some upgrades yesterday -- a few euros goes a long way.

Old , old, new

 

 

We also bought a few things at Auchan. While we were there, we looked at new fridges -- the store has everything! We are hoping that the mission will pay for a replacement, but if not we'll do it ourselves. 

I went to the Vodafone and Wind stores (cellular/internet providers) in the mall to ask about getting faster internet (fiber). Wind, our current very slow DSL provider, was not being very helpful. They wanted me to get ID documents from the Thackers back in the USA in order to change the account name, and then they said it would be expensive to get fiber. For new customers it is priced comparably to DSL, but no such deal for long-time customers. Finally in frustration I asked "so you basically are telling me to go to your competitors and get fiber?", to which the response was yes. So I went to Vodafone, with which we already have two cellular SIM cards, and for 34 euro/month they will install fiber for us. Done! They also gave us a new SIM card that I can use in the MiFi device. It should take a couple of weeks to get an appointment for installation, but soon we will be really connected. 

On the way home, we stopped at Lidl for a few minutes to get some food, including amaretti cookies (my favorite) and buckwheat/walnut bread. Mmm. It took two big loads from the car to get everything inside the apartment, but it was worth it.

In the evening, I had some questions about my Vodafone SIM card, so I chatted with their support people online. Turns out that my phone was never properly configured to use their network; thus it was using a competitor's network with their SIM card, and I was being charged 6 euros per day for the privilege (all this on a 10 euro/month plan)! The guy at the store seemed to be quite sharp, but he must have just forgotten. Anyway, they promised to have somebody call me on Wednesday to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, I turned off that SIM card and reverted to my mission SIM card for the time being.

In the evening, Ugo contacted us to say that a couple of people had requested to take an Institute class on family history (the class is Religion 261). At first glance, the manual is quite dated and rather lame, but we spoke on the phone with our former Area Family History manager in Salt Lake from our prior calling. He concurred that the official manual is not greaat, but found some wonderful online materials that are actually being used these days. Given that, Dee is all excited about teaching a new Institute class here on the topic, probably online via video (Zoom), starting next week. She will be great at it, and I can help. Surpisingly, she enjoys all the cooking she does, but this will be a nice change of pace and opportunity for her.

Overall we felt like we got a lot done, and it sure has been nice to have a bit of down time this week. Nevertheless, I haven't even had time to turn on my new laptop yet, which tells you how busy it has been for us. Serving here is running us ragged, but in a good way, and we love it.

Happy New Year

Happy 2018! The new year came in with a bang, literally: the fireworks in the piazza outside our apartment building at midnight were incredibly loud. I went to sleep with earplugs, but they were not any help with all the explosions. My wife somehow stayed in bed through it all, but I got up to watch a bit from our living room window. There were a handful of balconies where they were shooting off large quantities of fireworks, and lots of others looking on from their window or balcony. It took me awhile to get back to sleep after all the excitement.

It was good to have a morning at home, including exercise for the first time in almost a week. Every so often the mission has a "deep cleaning" P-day, and this was a particularly good time for it. My wife did the floors in our bathrooms and the kitchen, as well as running loads of laundry nonstop to catch up from our trip. Because it takes days to dry things, catching up on laundry is much harder than at home! 

Meanwhile, I tried to figure out why our back fridge wasn't working. I took out all the different pieces inside. There is apparently a very small conduit from the freezer below (which works great) to the fridge above (which doesn't). My assumption is that cold air is supposed to be sucked up by the little fan; if not, I have no idea how or where the cold is supposed to arrive in the fridge. A bit of crud had accumulated in the hole, so I cleared that out with a toothpick  and a screw, as much as I could. My wife cleaned all the inside surfaces as well as the floor beneath, and we then reassembled everything, hoping that it would work. By evening it was clear that it wasn't going to make any difference. Bummer. We'll be shopping for a new fridge sometime soon.

In the afternoon, we left for a big outing with five other senior missionary couples, organized by the Herways. There were 12 of us, so we drove in three cars. We had the Balzottis in our car, so hilarity ensued. The trip was to Bagnoregio, about 80 miles outside of Rome, where they have a live nativity scene that covers the entire town. It was chilly but not too cold when we left, and it rained pretty hard during the drive up on the freeway. There was also an accident which stopped traffic dead for about ten minutes. By that point I was thinking this wasn't going to work out -- no way they would do the nativity scene in that much rain. But then the traffic cleared, and a while later we drove out of the rain into blue skies as we approached Bagnoregio!

The town is amazing: it's built on a mesa, with vertical sides. Apparently it was never able to be conquered in ancient days because of its natural fortifications. Here are some views, from the adjoining town and on the walk up:

It was quite a hike to get there, over 20 minutes just to get from our parking spot to the base of the bridge, and then another 20 or so minutes up the very steep hill. We were all very winded by the time we got there, but it was good to stop occasionally and enjoy the breathtaking scenery all around.

With my fear of heights, I was a bit uncomfortable on the walk up over the rather narrow bridge. My wife did pretty well -- she always complains (justifiably) that, with her comparatively short legs and stride, it's hard for her to keep up with American-sized people, but we all arrived in good shape. It was a good thing that we bundled up a bit, since it was getting colder as it got dark, and being up high like that meant that there were some strong wind gusts.

The tickets to get in were only 5 euro each. The town has only seven full-time residents, but it has become a tourist attraction, with several B&Bs, and a place for second homes for some Romans. The live nativity scene is put on as a fundraiser by the Red Cross. It was rather magical. There were scenes all over town, not just the manger scene, with people dressed in ancient costumes plying their trades. I'll give a few photos below just to give you an idea, and you can click here to see the entire unedited set of photos I took.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The entire thing was rather magical. I felt sorry for the re-enactors, who had to be freezing. We spent about an hour and a half walking through the town, enjoying all the different ancient scenes. 

Then we all went for a brief dinner at a little place that was carved into a cave.

 

The staff were very nice, but they only had three menus to give us for the dozen of us, and a couple of them were handwritten and hard to  decipher. The waiter couldn't seem to understand that most of us actually spoke Italian, so he kept trying to speak to us in English that didn't quite make sense. Finally we just decided to order one of every kind of bruschetta they had (their specialty), cut them up, and share them. The alternative of ordering individually and waiting for it all to be cooked and delivered to our tables would have taken hours. So we had a nice selection of all different kinds of tastes to share and enjoy, and it was only about 8 euros apiece. The staff thought we were weird: bruschetta is NOT a dinner here, but it worked well for us.

We then did the reverse walk, almost an hour, with the wind blowing pretty hard on the exposed bridge down. There was a large amount of climbing in both directions, so it was a great workout! Here is a view of the streets in the adjoining town that we walked through, very festively lit and decorated for the holidays.

By the time we got back to our car (no parking ticket, thankfully, even though our parking pass had expired about half an hour earlier), we were cold and exhausted. The drive back was harder in the dark, with windy country roads for quite a while before getting back to the freeways. 

When we got to the main freeway tollroad south to Rome, I inadvertently pulled into the Telepass lane -- those Balzottis are just too fun to visit with, so I blame it all on them! I tried to back up and change lanes, but the cars behind us were having none of it, honking furiously for us to get out of the way. So we pushed the emergency help button and it let us on, without an entry ticket. We figured we'd explain when we got off the freeway and paid the toll. Well, not much luck there. The deal is that, if you don't have a ticket, you pay the maximum toll, 78.50 euro in this case instead of 4.50 euro. Yikes!! The toll booth guy let us pay the 4.50 amount but ticketed us and gave us a paper to go pay the rest online. There is apparently a way to appeal and try to prove that we actually only drove a little ways on the freeway. We'll see how that goes! Anyway, we were laughing and talking with the Balzottis, so worst case it was worth the cost for a great evening out.

We got home about 9pm, tired and cold, but having had a wonderful day. Not long thereafter we hit the sack. It is incredible to live and serve in such a beautiful and historical place.

Sunday Skype with our kids

Sunday morning before going to church, it occurred to me that we should ask the Knieses if we could use their fiber-based internet for our Skype call with our kids in the evening. Doing it from our apartment instead would give a very unsatisfying video experience. So I called to ask, and her first response was classic: "We have a really good IT guy who helps us; you should talk with him!" But of course they were very willing to help out.

At church, I gave the bishopric some foam microphone shields that I bought for a few euros on Amazon, without being asked. The mic in the chapel tends to have issues, including lots of pops when speakers use certain hard consonants, so the shield should help. They had just recently cobbled together a shield with a flat sheet of green foam and electrical tape (shown below), so they were delighted and surprised to see me show up with a nice looking black one that fit perfectly!

 Cristiano d'Elia and Stefano Bosco and frankenmic

In Sacrament meeting, they had Anziano Bentley bear his final testimony before returning home this week. They also had testimonies from two former missionaries, who had served in the ward a few years ago and later ended up marrying each other. It was all very touching. The former elder was Alessando DiCaro, son of Marco DiCaro, whom I knew in Monza in 1976. Marco and his wife were also there. We have met them a number of times over the decades, including many years when they lived in Pavia, one of our favorite haunts. I have mentioned Marco's dad, Enzo, in a previous blog entry; he was a wonderful man. Alessandro's wife is American but speaks Italian very well. Her accent is almost perfect, it was amazing to hear her. Alessandro is good friends with Ugo's younger brother Alessandro, and both of them are now at school at BYU in Provo. Marco had us take a photo that he could send to his mom, who hopefully remembers me and my wife.

My lesson in Sunday School seemed to go quite well. There was a fair amount of participation, and when I read a significant portion of the Orson Scott card parable, the room was silent and attentive. It really makes you think. I believe that my on-the-fly translation was adequate, with an occasional lifeline to the English speakers in the audience (e.g., how do you say "title to a car"?). Everyone seemed to love it, and a few folks asked me for a copy. I gave the printout to Marco, who said he wanted to translate it into Italian, so hopefully I can get that from him once he's done with it. I also got Marco's updated contact info, so we can stay in touch.

After church, I helped Sorella Manning install the new 64GB SD card in her tablet so she can have a removable copy of her photos at full resolution (Google Photos downgrades the quality a bit). Next Sunday I'll make another backup copy onto a flash drive for her, as she is likely to be transferred the following week. I also figured out what Sorella N'zoungani needs to do similarly for her tablet and will get the parts this week.

The ward clerk's new computer cannot seem to get the church MLS program running, which is a problem. I got the login info from the bishopric and will go over there some weeknight (when the church tech support phone line in Utah is open) and try to have them walk me through an install. It's rewarding and enjoyable for me to use my tech skills to help out.

In the afternoon I took readings of the gas meters for the two missionary apartments in our building, plus our car odometer, for our monthly reports. I also caught up on a number of things, including reconciling my bank accounts. My wife made some lovely soup that we enjoyed for dinner.

At 8pm we went over to the Knieses, who graciously gave us their living room for our Skype call. It was wonderful to see our four kids, plus Wes's girlfriend Alyssa, all at our home in Carlsbad. They are so fun and clever, and we're delighted that they really like to be together. We didn't talk all that long, less than 30 minutes. Afterwards we helped the Knieses with a few tech support issues, so it was a fair exchange!

Fireworks started going off in earnest here about 5pm, and there were some very loud explosions nearby. We'll see how well we can sleep! This coming week off is probably busier than we had thought, but it's all good stuff. 2018 will be a year entirely spent in Italy, and we are delighted to be serving here.