Institute on the road

I woke up Friday morning after well more than eight hours of sleep, which felt great. We each went shopping for a bit before leaving for the Institute. I walked up to Todis looking for more hamburger buns for Sloppy Joes in the evening; no luck on that, but I did stock up on tortillas. Dee walked to the big covered market a few blocks away to get a bunch of sweet potatoes for upcoming Thanksgiving meals. They are not usually available in the regular markets, not being well known here. She bought a huge bag of them. 

We got to the Institute at the regular hour. Sammy showed up right away, before heading over to the Friendship Center for the Benincosas' self-reliance class. He and Dee visited while I worked on my lessons, and she ended up a bit behind with her cooking. We both agree that spending time with the kids is the most important thing we do, but there are times when we just have things to do. Matteo, Donatella, and Valentina also showed up quite early for the Seminary class, but they entertained themselves. 

Dee had Sloppy Joes to prepare for the evening meal, as well as cooking some of the sweet potatoes for our Thanksgiving dinner appointment with the Guidara family on Saturday afternoon. She only had time for the former, which would be enough. 

There was a big group of kids (10) for Seminary Doctrinal Mastery, plus Marlene at the start who graduated last spring but wanted to play one game with us. Our lesson was on Christ's key role in the plan of salvation. We made a quick list of all the main points and events in the plan, then discussed how Christ played a critical part in each of them. After that we did a few scripture games, finishing as always with their favorite, bingo. Dee just put out store-bought cookies for them, which made them happy. Then we had to run them out the door because we needed to get on the road. It was too bad, because they really like hanging out together after class.

With our site council, we had decided to hold our Institute class and dinner in Ostia (Rome 4 ward) this one time, about 20 miles from downtown. Only a handful of kids attend the Institute campus from there, so we thought some outreach might help build connections. It is a huge effort to take a dinner on the road! We had done it a couple of times before, but sometimes you forget. The car was stuffed full, with a crock pot full of Sloppy Joes between Dee's feet, plus buns, chips, salad, plastic ware, serving utensils, printed scriptures, cleaning supplies, plus the huge bag of sweet potatoes which we carried all over Rome.

The traffic was horrible, perhaps not surprisingly at that hour, and it took us over 90 minutes to get there. Both we and Ugo were late for our own class. His comment was "this is why we have a campus downtown!" It was all on surface streets, which means lots of crazy twists and turns and opportunities for wrong turns. Ugo says that even Romans hate driving in Rome, and I can see why. No two streets ever seem to come together at right angles, often with multiple streams of traffic merging from all directions. Google Maps can only help so much. At one point the traffic was so slow that I took a different turn and let the GPS redirect me, which perhaps helped a bit. Below is a screenshot of one of the suggested directions on my phone -- that kind of thing happens a lot here!

Because of the distance (it would have been much faster taking the train, but we had too much stuff for that), only a handful of our kids made the trip, joining about eight others from Ostia. It ended up as very nice evening. My lesson was on D&C 50 - 56, spending most of our time on teaching by the spirit and also on the importance of accepting callings even when we don't understand why the Lord is asking us to do it. We have observed something very odd (to us) here: the kids from Rome really do not want to go serve in the Milano mission -- it is too close to home,while for an American that would be exciting. By contrast, Daniele here just got called to Arizona, which is very exotic for them but could be rather ho-hum for an American missionary. We talked about that contrast, and that we are called to people, not places. I read a favorite Orson Scott Card article "It's a matter of how, not where, we serve", as well as the well-known poem:

Father, where shall I work today?
And my love flowed warm and free.
Then He pointed me out a tiny spot,
And said, “Tend that for me.”

I answered quickly, “Oh, no, not that.
Why, no one would ever see,
No matter how well my work was done.
Not that little place for me!”

And the word He spoke, it was not stern,
He answered me tenderly,
“Ah, little one, search that heart of thine;
Art thou working for them or me'

Nazareth was a little place,
And so was Galilee.”

We had a very nice discussion on both topics. After the lesson everyone enjoyed the dinner -- many hadn't ever tasted Sloppy Joes. There weren't people enough to finish everything off, so we would bring much of it home. The kids were helpful in carrying the stuff to and from the car, which was fortunately parked just across the street. At the end we played a fun memory game which I had never seen before.

 

 

While everyone was eating, I got to hold 5-month old baby Mathias, the son of Fabrizio and Joselyn. Sooooo cute! He was hungry, so his mom gave me the bottle and I fed him until he fell asleep in my arms. There is something wonderful and satisfying about having a sleeping baby in your arms.

On the way home we ended up missing a turn that would have taken us onto the freeway, despite both of us watching carefully. The signs are not lit at all, and Google isn't always great when there are two options that are only a few degrees apart. Unfortunately, the road we were on then had no way to exit or turn around for miles, so instead of the quick and well-known route on the freeway, we got to drive through downtown Rome again, never my favorite thing. I also don't like not knowing (at least roughly) what route I am taking, usually scouting out the routes ahead of time; by contrast, Dee is very happy to let the GPS just tell her everything to do. We got home about 11pm, both quite tired and Dee not feeling well at all. Even though we enjoyed the evening, we agreed that taking our show on the road is probably not in our future again.