New chairs

Taco Tuesday ended up being very busy, somewhat unexpectedly. We had a decent crowd for the food, more back to the usual size, with over half of the kids being non-members.

Fortunately, there were a bunch of guys, because we would need their muscle. The church finally came through with an order that Ugo had placed well over a year ago for nice new padded chairs. The chairs we had were wooden, and many were rather worn and even dangerous, with backs about to break off. We had arranged for the new ones to be delivered Tuesday afternoon with the taco crowd available to help. Sure enough, they arrived around 3pm on three wooden pallets. Right before that, we had everyone help stack the old chairs in classroom #1. Unfortunately, the big cardboard boxes, with four new chairs per box, were too big to fit in our tiny elevator, so the guys had to carry 15 boxes of them up two floors (63 steps). There were six men, so they each made five trips up the stairs, with two men per box.

 

Nobody complained, and they just put themselves to doing it, but by the end they were understandably exhausted. Afterwards we immediately broke out the ice cream from the Knieses, since it was quite warm and they were really sweating. 

 

Then Alessio, Adrian, and I tackled taking the chairs out. I had the box cutter and opened each box, and they pulled out the stack of four chairs, and we removed all the packing material and stuffed it into one of the boxes. Dee writes: Alessio usually leaves about 3pm on Tuesdays to go to work, but he was determined to get all the chairs set up. He started double-timing as he yanked out each set of chairs and set up everything. He is a marvelous worker, and never makes a big deal about it. You can tell I'm his fan. We ended up with a bunch of tall stacks of new chairs, plus a ton of boxes and cardboard and packing material. The big classroom was completely full, with barely enough room to get in and out.

 

Some of the other kids helped with the last few boxes. Alkmini used a few pieces of the plastic protective netting as bling:

 After all that, we ended up with a bunch of wonderful new chairs

There are probably too many chairs now, with no place we know of to keep the extras, but we will figure that out as we go along. After all that, I started cutting down boxes into manageable pieces. It took a long time and was very filthy, with dust all over my clothes, but it had to be done. At first it seemed there might not even be time to get it all done before the end of the day, but it worked out. I sent Dee out to get some string to tie up all the cardboard pieces, and she literally had to run to find a hardware store right before it closed at 7:30pm. As you may remember, the only other time I have broken into a run in the last twenty years was on a trip to the refugee center, when I needed to speed up to stay with the young people. This time, the sidewalk was crowded and uneven and it had started to rain. But I was winging along, and nothing hurt then or when we got home. Wonderful. The store employee was standing outside waiting for me, because I got there exactly at their closing time, huffing and puffing a bit but victorious! 

With help from a few people, we got it all packaged up and stacked next to the old chairs in the small classroom, so that the church FM (Facilities Management) folks could pick it up early Wednesday morning -- hence the rush to get it done. The big classroom was stacked with all the new chairs, but at least it was possible to enter the room and walk around again. Dee wanted to keep some of the boxes for some kind of game (TBD), and I finally agreed to let her keep two of them. IMHO, there wasn't really room for anything else 😃. Here is a photo of all the stuff to be taken away, with over 200 pieces of cardboard:

In the middle of all this, we took an hour for choir practice, with only Dee, Jayno, and me. We practiced one hymn a little bit, and then we got the chance to chat with Lorenzo about the Italian hymns, which he translated for the "new" green hymnal in the mid 1990s. Turns out that the Italian hymnal does not include the national anthem (long story), but it does include something akin to it: "Va, pensiero", which is from the Verdi opera Nabucco in 1842. It is also known as the "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves", based roughly on Psalm 137, which talks about the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. The wording is extremely flowery, with lots of archaic words, so the first time we sang it, nothing made sense. Then he explained the lyrics word by word; when we tried it again, and it meant a lot more to us. Apparently it was adopted to have a hidden meaning about Italian freedom. Very cool. Dee made some chocolate pudding from scratch for our dessert after choir, served with cookies and whipped cream.

A lovely nonmember young woman named Linda came again to visit with me and have a leftover taco. It's a pleasure to be connecting with these young people. She is studying medalion art (like coins) and on weekends works in a shop doing freehand embroidery on a machine. She writes names and sayings without even penciling it in first! 

After English class, we came home, with one big trash bag filled with packing material from the chairs stuffed in our trunk. We don't have a big trash bin available downtown, so we tossed it in the trash bin outside our apartment when we got home. Three Sorelle drove home with us after a lesson and the English class. The third was a young sister from Pisa, leaving in the morning for the Provo MTC to serve in Toronto, Canada. She had a very early flight, so our mission office (i.e., the Balzottis) housed her for the one night and would make the airport run before dawn.  

I was tired and sore after an unusually strenuous day.

Parallel double parking

Monday was warm and sunny, even though rain had been predicted all week. I drove to the self-service car wash to get rid of the layer of mud deposited on Sunday. Perhaps no surprise given the prior weather, but there was a line of cars -- I had to wait about 15 minutes to get in! Usually there is no wait, or at most a minute or two.

Just before arriving at the Institute, there was a small traffic jam on the adjoining street. A woman was trying to parallel park and had blocked traffic. The problem is that she was slowly trying to back into a tight double parking spot. That is, she was parking illegally and blocking effectively three lanes by so doing. Dee writes: I guess we can enjoy the entertainment value.

During the afternoon, I spent time preparing my FHE lesson, and a bit on my Friday lesson. Using my Foxit PDF editor, I also modified the sheet music for one of the stake choir songs, taking out the English lyrics and putting in the Italian words. That makes it much more legible. My plan is to do this for all four songs, and to offer copies to the director. Inside the Institute, with its thick outer walls, it stays nice and cool, so I even wore a light jacket to stay warm in there, which hopefully augurs well for the heat this coming summer. My wife had a very heartfelt and private talk with one of our of GANS girls who is going through a tough time, and it seems like Dee's advice was helpful. She said she felt prompted to come to the Institute, not knowing why, and that talking with me really helped. I'm touched and humbled. 

For FHE, I based a lot of my lesson the talk by Bishop Caussé at the last conference, entitled "It is all about people." We talked about how the church is about people, not buildings or programs. Several of the kids, including Sheyla and Jomar, shared wonderful experiences where they had grown a lot by taking on difficult callings as new converts. Teaching the 12-13 year-olds in Sunday School was a common theme; that was my first calling too, when a freshman in college. The lesson didn't all follow my original outline, but it ended up as a very nice and heartfelt exchange.

Dee made her CandyCrack dessert: saltine crackers topped with butter and sugar, plus chocolate on some of them. I have made these several times, but this time, I put the brown sugar in the pan first, and the butter didn't melt fast enough. The sugar got hard, but ended up as crunchy bits on the crackers, which turned out to be the favorite of everyone! I will have to do it intentionally next time.

 

 

 

After dessert, there was a rousing game of Five Crowns.

 

We got home a bit early, which was nice because I was tired and able to get to bed a bit earlier than usual.

Mud storm

Sunday was a long and rather unusual -- but quite enjoyable -- day. We each gave a talk in Sacrament meeting, and it seemed to go well enough. In any case, it is over and we are happy to move on. You can read my talk here (in English and Italian) and you can listen to Dee's talk here and my talk here (Italian only).

My wife got recruited to help out in Primary for both hours, as the music leader wasn't there. It is known to be pretty chaotic in our ward Primary, with the President being the sole leader/teacher with more than half a dozen young kids who don't know how to behave. Dee was able to help out a bit, but more importantly she gave some suggestions to the President on how to try to improve things, which were very appreciated. 

After the three hours, we stayed around a bit to help out Sorella Elia Magnanti with her family history. I did a few updates (e.g., BIOS) on her computer while we ate lunch, as well as installing the Legacy Family Tree software, which Dee configured for her. Dee brought some bread and cheese, and Elia brought quite a spread to eat. Dee was able to do a few things to help with her family history, but the internet is so slow there that it wasn't as productive as we had hoped. We hope to meet with a couple of ward members after church once a month to help with their family history. It is a service we can offer, very willingly.

Several of our GANS stayed around and fixed some pasta to eat, along with the Anziani who barbecued hot dogs to share. The kids tend to hang around for food after our ward meetings, which is a really nice thing.

 

It had rained a bit while we were in church. When we left, our car was absolutely filthy: it had rained mud! Apparently there are sandstorms in northern Africa which blow over the Mediterranean via sirocco winds and end up getting deposited here. Fortunately, the wiper fluid and wipers were able to clean the windshield well enough for us to see and drive home, but I predict another car wash in our immediate future.

 

 

We were not at home very long before leaving for stake choir practice, which was to start at 4:30pm. Next month is stake conference, so they are preparing, and we like to sing. Everyone forgot to bring keys to the nearby Roma 2 chapel, so about a dozen of us waited outside for over half an hour while the director ran home to get keys. None of the locals seemed to be fazed by it, so we decided to follow suit, even though practice started 45 minutes late. We are singing some very nice songs from American arrangements, with the Italian lyrics written in by hand. Unfortunately for us, (a) we don't know the hymn lyrics well and (b) the handwriting is quite difficult for us to read. So we struggled, not knowing the words or the music yet. Fortunately, we now have copies to study for next week's practice!

Waiting outside for the keys

Choir practice -- just three men

We got home about 7pm, later than we had expected, and the Balzottis then came over for Dee to help him with his family history. As is usual with them, we had a delightful and laughter-filled visit along the way. They left after 10pm, so it was a late night for us, but lots of fun.

Trastevere

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful P-day, about 80 degrees as the high temperature and sunny until mid-afternoon. Spring is definitely here and summer will be here soon. In the morning, we left at 9:45am with the Balzottis to do some sightseeing downtown. We got off the subway at Circus Maximus and walked over to Trastevere ("beyond the Tiber"), on the other side of the river. On the way we stopped to see la bocca della verità (the mouth of truth), a very famous tourist spot. The line wasn't long, which is unusual, so we got to take a photo in front of it.

The river Tiber

Us in front of Circus Maximus

Bocca della Verità: our hands did not get bitten off (this time)

We had downloaded the free Rick Steves app on our phones, plus his audio guide for several sites in Rome, including Trastevere. The audio guide was quite helpful, almost as good as a paid guide, but a lot cheaper (free)! Along the way we went into three different beautiful churches, two of which had live wedding masses going on (Santa Cecilia and Santa Maria), so we were not able to get close to the altar. Here are some more photos from the churches:

 

 

 

 

As we were exiting the Santa Maria in Trastevere church after completing the audio guide, a woman behind us asked if this was our P-day, thus immediately identifying herself as a Mormon! She said she was from Utah, so we asked where, and the answer was Heber. I then asked, "Do you know an Emily Ricks?", the Sorella (from Heber) whom we dropped at the airport last week to transfer to Cagliari. The woman said, "that is my daughter." Small world! She had waited to come to Rome until her daughter was gone, so that she wouldn't run into her. It is strongly not allowed for parents to come see their young missionaries, as it would be extremely distracting. So we took a photo, which I sent to Sorella Ricks.

By then it was getting a bit late for us, because we still needed to finish our talks, so we left the Balzottis to do more exploring and grabbed a tram. That took us to Piazza Venezia downtown, and from there we grabbed express bus #80 which goes right past our apartment complex on the way to the Porta di Roma mall. It took us a while to find the correct place to pick up the bus in the very large Piazza, but overall it all went very smoothly. The whole trip home took about an hour; for some reason the bus skipped our stop so we had to walk a few extra blocks home. It was quite warm by then -- about 2:30pm -- and we were tired and thirsty and hungry. The whole outing took longer than we had planned, but we were very delighted to have seen some cool stuff. Everywhere you turn, Rome has so many great things to see.

These are crypt covers from some catacombs, now set into the wall of the Santa Maria di Trastevere Church.

I liked this cool old wall from Palatine Hill, above the Circus Maximus track (where they used to have chariot races in Roman times).

There are water fountains which run all the time, found all over Rome. Just plug the hole at the bottom of the spigot and it becomes a drinking fountain with water coming out the top. Deb Balzotti demonstrated for me.

Clever name for a restaurant.

We then spent the afternoon and evening mostly working on our talks for Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. My talk is formatted in two columns in Word, with each paragraph occupying two cells in the table, English on the left and Italian on the right. Dee writes: I showed Doug how to do this! I plan to give a printed copy to the young missionaries doing the translation in church, which will hopefully be a help to them, assuming I stick to my script reasonably well. I called my mom and my sister Marilyn, and Dee and I walked down together to Conad and the Chinese store at 6pm to get a few things. Having not slept well the night before, I went to bed pretty early.

I stayed up late working on my talk, but it was totally worth it to have spent the time seeing the sights on a beautiful day. Being assigned a topic makes for some really wonderful study. I was assigned repentance, and read some powerful scriptures and conference talks. I also set up all the dual-column two-language pages, which takes a long time. If anybody has a better way, please let us know! One of the talks I used had not been translated by the Church, so it took a little longer. Even though I'm grateful for the spirit I felt and the things I learned, I'll be so glad when the talk is over! I don't get nervous speaking in public anymore, which is also a blessing.

Zone Conference: smartphones!

Friday was Zone Conference, which started at 9am at the Roma 1 chapel on the other side of town. We left home at 7:45am and made it there in less than an hour, with Sorelle Summerhays and Helgesen in tow from the apartment beneath us. As usual, it was a very enjoyable event, with lots of training and inspiration. The mission president, his assistants, and the zone leaders and sister training leaders taking turns leading the training.

Anziano Rodriguez, a new assistant to the president, told a very funny but also instructive story. Once he attended a Sacrament meeting where a speaker got up and started by saying that he really didn't like giving talks or preparing for them. So he had procrastinated working on his talk until the end, and ultimately he decided just to rely on the spirit to tell him what to say. He then asked the congregation to wait a minute while he waited for inspiration on his message. After a bit, he looked up and said "brothers and sisters, the spirit has just spoken to me, and what it told me is that I should have prepared a talk!" 😀

Adrian, one of our GANS who leaves in less than two weeks on his mission to Milano, was invited by President Pickerd to attend. Fortunately I mentioned to him a couple of days earlier that he should wear a suit, as otherwise he would have showed up in much more casual attire. He looked good and seemed to enjoy it all (especially lunch :-). Because he doesn't speak English, they had live headset translation for him and a young Sorella, both originally from South America. Part of the time Elder Sanchez did the translation from English into Spanish for them, but when the Simoncini couple showed up, Elder Melling did translation into Italian for a couple of hours. That is exhausting work! Adrian didn't have a name tag yet, so I loaned him one of mine to wear so that he would fit in better. That earned a couple of double takes at first, but he looked very natural wearing a name tag.

In the afternoon, each pair of young missionaries was given a Samsung smartphone to use. Eventually all the missionaries will have a smartphone, brought with them from home, but they will always only have one SIM card between them. The phone will move with the missionaries, but the SIM card will stay in the area when a transfer occurs so that people can continue to contact their local missionaries. Having WhatsApp in particular will be a huge advantage for them. We left when they started doing the training and configuration, which looked to go on for a while. Here are Sorelle Summerhays and Helgesen with their smartphone later in the evening:

We got to the Institute about 3:30pm, earlier than we had thought. Fortunately we missed rush hour traffic, since we had to drive through downtown, past the Vatican, to get there. 

I did some final polishing of my lesson, and Dee worked in the kitchen to prepare her Crack Chicken specialty (chicken, bacon, cream cheese, cheddar, and ranch powder). It was served in warmed pita bread, which is called pane arabo (Arab bread) here and is not well known. She had done a bunch of the prep in the days before, so it went fairly quickly, but she still ended up needing every minute. Dee writes:We were delighted to be able to serve some Easter Colomba cake that Ugo had bought for us at a discounted price of 99 cents each, on clearance. Also, I cooked up the frozen french fries to help make room for all the Wednesday ice cream.

Kids started showing up for the evening a bit early, and by 7pm we actually had a good quorum to start the class. That never happens! When he showed up early for the first time ever, I actually said to Claudio, "who are you, and what did you do to the real Claudio?" 😉 We had quite a nice class on 4 Nephi and Mormon 1-6, with lots of questions from me and thoughtful responses from the students, as well as some good laughs along the way. Class ended a bit early, which left Dee with the problem of needing to warm the bread when the oven was already in use, but a couple of girls helped her by warming pita bread in the microwave as fast as they could to keep up. Everyone had their fill and loved it. Dee was asked for the recipe by one young man who asked her in English to "learn me how to make this!"

 

 

 

 

 

I got to show a favorite youtube video of dancing to a few GANS. When Junior saw it, he got all excited. It turns out he knows how to tango. Alkmini liked it, too. This is the same video I sent to my parents, of two 15 year olds who won a national swing competition in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz3iNTJta2A

The Simoncinis have the job to man the Rome Temple Information Center, a trailer on the temple grounds with a lovely picture window looking out on the site. It has been quite busy in its first couple of weeks, with much of the traffic being tourists from the US. We learned that they really don't get a day off, as it is open all seven days, with shorter hours on Sunday. The young missionaries help out in the afternoon, but we want to offer to sub for them regularly one morning a week before going to the Institute. It would be fun for us and hopefully give them a bit of down time, so we will see what they say. President Pickerd gave us the ok to make them that offer.

My sister Karen & her husband Dave have been doing some research and planning for their trip to London and Italy in October. They had a number of good questions about airports and getting around here, so we talked on the phone for a while after we returned home from the Institute. Their trip is longer than our other visitors', so they have enough time to do Venice and maybe Ravenna, one of our favorite spots. It was fun to talk with them, but late when we finally got to bed.

Low-grit or high-grit towels?

Thursday we woke up to good news: our dryer got fixed at home for less than $250 for the entire service call. The belt just needed to be replaced. Rich handled it very well, making the decision while we slept, since it was the middle of the night for us. Our washer and dryer are 10 years old, so we should get at least a few more years out of them. Dee could have picked out a new set online, but it would have been far more difficult. Thank you, Rich and B&B Appliance!

When Dee puts out fresh towels, my question is always "are these towels low or high grit?" That is, because we don't have a dryer to fluff them, the towels dry stiff and coarse here; even the softer ones are rough.  Dee writes: I love the scratchy towels! Doug yearns for fluffy.

In the morning I walked over to Todis to buy some hamburger buns and pita bread for upcoming Friday night dinners. They also had a great sale on generic cream cheese (one-third the price of the Philadelphia name brand), so I bought four of those, as well as some packages of sliced lunch meat for sandwiches for the kids. I took our little rolling cart, which ended up very full. All this food is for the Institute, as is often the case.

It was threatening to rain, but I drove anyway to wash the car, because it was absolutely filthy. The trees here, and often the rain itself, seem to ooze dirt and almost mud. So the car looks much better on the outside, and I vacuumed the side as well. I think the car now weighs ten pounds less. The fact that Friday is Zone Conference gave me some extra incentive to have it clean.

I also sent a long email to my sister and her husband with recommendations on preparing for their trip here this fall. It was mostly a repeat of my usual suggestions for international travel, cut and pasted from prior emails with a few edits specific to them. There are so many little things you can do with a bit of planning that make travel more secure and enjoyable; we have accumulated quite a list over the years.

The afternoon was spent on lesson prep for Dee's FH class in the evening and for my Book of Mormon class Friday. We will be at Zone Conference until mid-afternoon Friday, so the Institute will be closed. No Seminary, but we will have our usual Friday evening class and dinner. I posted Anziano Wijesundera's photo on our Institute "wall of fame" in the hall, alongside all the other missionaries who have served here.

 

I also got to take a photo of the sugar cube temple with daylight instead of our rather anemic fluorescent ceiling lights. Hopefully this gives a slightly better view:

With no scheduled activities, we had only a couple of kids show up all day, though there was a missionary lesson taught. That was ok, because we needed the time for lesson prep. Ugo came by for a while to do a Zoom conference for his job, and he also spent some time training the Ganziani. We agreed that we should write up a document explaining how the Ganziani and the Institute campus are supposed to work together, as the institutional knowledge doesn't always seem to be preserved well when transfers occur. Our campus is an unusual setup here, so the young missionaries don't have any way to know how it is supposed to work.

Dee writes: I overheard Anziano Wijesundera ask his companion if he wanted some ice cream. Sadly for the anziani, that ice cream is off limits, to reserve it for the Wednesday afternoon gatherings. We need to do this to conserve our budget and because it takes time to go get more; it's also an effort to lug it up the stairs.

The English class had only a couple of students tonight, including Arsene, but they seemed to have a very fun lesson with everyone contributing. Dee gave her final FH lesson for this semester, so she will get a bit of a break before starting up again, probably next month. It's been a great learning experience to teach the class, but I'm also doing the happy dance for having a little down time.