Taco Tuesday and choir

A comparatively easy day today. We shopped at Lidl on the way into the Institute, mostly food for us at home, but also stuff for Taco Tuesday, including the meat. Once at the Institute, we brought most of our stuff inside to keep it refrigerated during the day. Tacos went well today -- it's getting easier to make everything and get the place ready, and the ganziani and some of the kids helped out. 

Unlike many afternoons, there was a steady stream of kids coming into the center, so we got to chat with a bunch of them, which was nice. 

My wife helped ClaudiaM with her family history, which went very well. You've seen a picture of Claudia before, holding a handmade tortilla with Nutella. She's an awesome gal: very sharp, served her mission in Toronto, and her English is practically flawless.

At 6pm, we have a choir class, taught by Brother Rossato, who is an amazing musician. Only a few of the kids know how to sing parts in choral music -- surprisingly, they don't have music in the schools here. So it was fun to work with a few of them to help them learn their part to "What Child Is This", translated into Italian. My wife is a terrific alto and sat next to a girl who needed help with that part, while I was the lone bass and did ok. That particular Christmas song is not known here at all, so I also helped the sopranos learn the melody by singing along with them an octave lower.

At 7pm, there were English classes and Ugo's online Institute class. My wife tried to sit in on the Institute class, but the room was full and she was tired, so we decided we could leave a bit early. I was on intercom duty during class: sitting in the entryway, answering the intercom, and ringing people in.

The outgoing ganziani said their goodbyes to everyone, bearing a nice testimony of the gospel after lunch. We found out that the new ganziani will arrive sometime Thursday. Apparently one of them is an Elder Waddell, son of Bishop Chris Waddell of the Presiding Bishopric, our former stake president in Del Mar. Mormons live in a small world!

More relaxed Monday

It was nice to have a bit more time. In the morning, we rearranged the bedroom to put my desk in the living room, which allowed us to move my chest of drawers next to my wardrobe. Much nicer! I now have room for my stuff in my desk, using two cheap Ikea desks with one as a return. 

At the Institute, my wife made a dessert (snickerdoodle crumb cake -- yummers!) for FHE. I reconfigured the WiFi network, bringing in our "old" router and putting it into the library as an access point (AP) and taking the truly old/cheap AP from the library into the big second classroom. Nobody knew the admin passwords for the routers, so I had to reset everything to factory default and configure it all again. We have three different WiFi routers, each with a different name starting with LDS (LDSAccess, LDSbiblioteca, and LDSaula2), with the configuration all documented. The WiFi coverage is now better, and there are also open ethernet ports if somebody wants to hook up their laptop. We also brought in the old USB HP inkjet printer, after having configured our fancy new Canon MX495 (only 40 euros on amazon.it!) here at home. It's nice to be able to print and scan from anywhere in the apartment. There's very fancy OKI color laser printer in the office at the Institute, but it's so old nobody else can install drivers for it, so it's nice to have an easier option for a quick print.

My FHE lesson used a fun video by Elder David Bednar, talking about asking in faith in our prayers. The message is important and inspiring, but the way he does it makes everyone laugh at ourselves. Several people shared experiences where prayers have been answered after acting in faith. After the lesson, we ate dessert and played the game Cover Your Assets. The kids love it, and we're slowly learning how it goes, though the strategy will take a while to get down.

The ganziani (that's our nickname for the Anziani serving the GANS :-), Anziani Anderson and Fuller, both learned that they will be transferred away this week. We really have enjoyed them: fine young men, good workers, and very helpful for us. 

Anziani Anderson and Fuller with the Whitings

 

By the time we left the Institute, just after 9pm, I was really tired and crashed quite well, sleeping about nine hours, which never happens for me. I am feeling quite refreshed this morning (Tuesday).

Long/wonderful Sunday

Today we left our apartment just before 9am for church and stayed all day, returning here at 8:30pm. It was a long but wonderful day. After all the activity this weekend and a couple of short nights, we are exhausted. No alarms tomorrow morning!

My wife got up early to bake another chocolate lava cake, which needed to cool enough to to transport. Church was very nice, though we were both very tired. After the three hours of meetings, folks from the local charity brought two large vans to load the hygiene kits from yesterday. The ward (mostly men, but a few women, of all ages) formed a long bucket brigade to move the boxes from the large storage room outside and down the stairs to where the vans were waiting. It took over half an hour of handing boxes along the line, but we got it all done.

There must have been well over 2000 kits completed.

After that, we prepared for the grigliata (roasted meat on the grill) lunch/dinner for the GANS. Our entire car was full of soft drinks, juices, water, with some salad fixings and my wife's cake and other desserts, plus paper goods. It took three trips with help to get it all upstairs to the church. Ugo brought the grill and the meat. After most of the ward went home, the entire bishopric stayed to cook the meat: sausage, spiedini (tiny lamb shish kabobs), and other big chunks of meat, plus roasted slices of bread that are eaten with various spreads. There were about 30 kids who showed up, and everyone ate until they were stuffed. 

We still brought home a bunch of stuff (our trunk is completely full) to take to the Institute tomorrow.
 
After a few hours of eating and visiting, we all watched a broadcast from Germany, where three member of the Seventy (Elders DeFeo, Clayton, and Sabin) with their wives all spoke, followed by Elder Ballard of the Twelve. It was very good, though the internet video connection was briefly lost a few times, and some of the (simultaneous) translators struggled mightily. All members 18 years and older were invited, and the chapel was basically full by the time it got going. We are blessed to have living apostles and prophets in our day.

There is an American family living here in our ward, where the dad works for the Army at a NATO facility nearby. He has access to the PX on the base, which is basically a US supermarket. He offered to get us some stuff there which isn't readily accessible in Italian stores, so we jumped at the chance. Here is the stuff he brought to church today for us:

Probably the biggest score is the lotion Kleenex, which simply are not to be found and are indispensable when you have a bad cold.

Off to bed real soon now, exhausted but happy. Hopefully not all our weekends will be quite so busy!

We don't need no stinking P-day

Saturday is nominally our preparation day, but so far we have only really had one day off. We did get the morning at home, and I bought a few things at the neighborhood grocery store (Conad), which is convenient but not cheap, as well as at the Chinese store where I bought another padded floor mat. Then I assembled my new Ikea rolling set of desk drawers, which always takes some time. 

I also configured our new TP-Link wifi router (model Archer C7) from amazon.it:

It turns out that the very inexpensive D-Link model I had bought the first weekend is a little slow and didn't have a few key features that I like (e.g., a guest network), so we will take the "old" one to the Institute where it will work just fine. The new wifi SSID name is Cimone, after the street name of the mission home, with a very Italian LDS password. The guest network is LDSAccess, which will allow the Sorelle living just below us to use their tablets without leaving home. The mission is allowing the young missionaries to use tablets for lots of things now, though not for unlimited use; however, very few of them have internet at home.

In the early afternoon we headed out to Lidl to buy some drinks for the fireside by Chad Webb and for yet another GANS activity Sunday evening. This we did on the way to a stake youth service project at our ward building: assembling 2000 hygiene kits for refugees and local homeless people through a Catholic charity. I helped on the assembly line for a bit, but then they kicked me off once enough kids showed up to man all the spots. It was fun to see and meet a bunch of members of all ages.

Sarah Perego, across from me on the assembly line

 

We also got to play Santa Claus, handing out the gifts from home to three young missionaries in our ward.

From there went to the Rome West stake center on Via Bra, where Chad Webb gave a wonderful fireside talk to the GANS from the Rome area. He was wonderful, really engaging the kids with great stories, and explaining how the Lord loves to forgive us, while we often want to feel unworthy when we have messed up. Oscar, one of the GANS who served  a mission in England, did simultaneous translation, with about half of the kids wearing a wireless headset. Brother Webb spoke way too fast, but Oscar said he managed ok. Italian generally has so many more syllables than English that live translation is very challenging; I have done it a few times, and my brain is always exhausted after a bit. Oscar also accompanied the hymns on the piano.

Oscar at work

Because it is such a busy weekend, with GANS activities all three nights, we were concerned about how many kids would actually show up, but there was a pretty good-sized group. My wife got to sit and enjoy the whole thing for once, while I and the GANS missionaries (on the back row in the photo above) helped set up food/drinks and receive the 18 pizzas near the end of the talk, from a pizza place right across the street.

 

 

As always, the kids loved hanging out together afterwards, so we got home after 9pm. It's fun to watch Italians congregate. They are very demonstrative of their emotions: when they first see each other, they give each other kisses on each cheek (bacietti). Even the guys do it to each other, so we often join in the custom.

It was another busy day, but full of the spirit. We love it here.

Chad Webb and tons of kids

Friday evening we had a visit from Chad Webb, who is the head of Seminary and Institute for the entire world. Basically, Chad is Ugo's third-level manager. He had helped approve renting the Rome Institute location a year ago, which was a big deal because there are very few standalone Institute facilities in Europe. He had just arrived from the US and so was rather jet-lagged, but he and a few of the people under him were there to check out our Institute campus in person.

Ugo got the word out to all the GANS to be there if at all possible, to make sure that that Chad and his people saw the place packed, which it was! Our attendance sheet (everyone has to sign in when they walk in the door) didn't even fit on one page, which is hasn't happened before as far as we know. 

There were over 25 kids in the Book of Mormon class; there wasn't even room for me in the room, so I bowed out to let a student have my seat.

Ugo was given the go-ahead to start looking for a larger facility downtown, which is awesome and what we had hoped for.

My wife spent the entire day shopping and cooking. She has cooked more in these three weeks than she had in the last ten years at home! She made two crock pots of sloppy joes (disorindati giuseppi :-), plus four pans of chocolate lava cakes, for the meal after class. Everything was devoured before the kids went home. They absolutely loved the cakes! Kids were hugging her and just eating until they were stuffed. The young missionaries were a great help, cleaning and washing dishes and serving food as needed. We got home late after cleaning up -- nobody wanted to leave!

I taught my Seminary Doctrinal Mastery class at 4pm, after a bunch of prep. There were four kids in person (including Ugo's oldest son Josh), plus one teacher who participated online via Zoom. It took me a while to get all the tech set up, to show my Powerpoint on the big-screen TV and online, but it all worked out. At a few points the kids had to help me with some Italian words/grammar; e.g., what is the word for "nerd" (me), is the word for "manual" (manuale) feminine or masculine, etc. Overall, I think I did pretty well language-wise, and the content went well. As with most teenagers, they were a little reticent to participate with a new teacher, but they had some good comments and seemed to enjoy my stories.

It was a wonderful day. It has been three weeks since I passed out on the plane, and we're all better and feeling like we have been here forever (in a good way). Maybe someday we'll get some down time again, but in the meanwhile we are being blessed and love being here.

Busy Thursday

No cooking today, but very busy. In the morning we exercised (6 times up the stairs total for me today, including a final climb in the evening), then I got the car washed at an self-service place nearby. We had to get to the Institute a bit early for our weekly site council meeting, which was productive. Ugo was late (which may be his middle name, just sayin' :-), so we started without him.

After that we had a number of things to do around the "office", including hanging a very nice new plaque outside the office door:

It replaced a rather worn out piece of paper taped there, so it was quite a nice upgrade. The mounting hardware is very nice brass, but aligning all four holes was a bit of a challenge which Ugo and I finally figured out. We're sprucing the place up a bit for an important visitor tomorrow, and the paintings and plaque make quite a nice improvement.

I also wired up a few extra ethernet jacks around the office. Apparently the prior tenant was some kind of computer place -- there are multiple jacks in walls throughout and three 24-jack rack-mount sets of jacks near the router. I bought a small ethernet switch a week ago and mapped things out. Now it's possible to connect with a cable in a couple of the rooms instead of Wifi; wired is always better, especially for all the video we use. I also reconfigured the main router to change its Wifi name to LDSAccess (from the obscure default vendor-based name), which many of you will recognize as the Wifi name in LDS chapels throughout the world. This way, almost any member who walks into the Institute will automatically connect.

So we used lots of tools yesterday! We have a small set at home and a small set, including a drill, at the office. Almost all of it came in handy.

Somebody in town from the US dropped off a big and heavy suitcase, laden with a bunch of packages for four missionaries here from their parents. Three of them are serving in the Rome area (one is in our ward), so they will get their stuff soon, while one is in Sicily and will have to wait a while.

In the evening we had the first English Book of Mormon class, taught online via Zoom by Kristen and EricH. He is a project manager at the LDS temple site here in Rome. They've been here for about six months. I was the IT support.We had three students (word got out too late to have more yet), including one in Brazil, one in Palermo, and one in Malta.  It was a lot of fun.

Friday I teach my first lesson: a Seminary doctrinal mastery class. It will be in Italian, so I'll need a bit of extra time/effort to prepare, but I'm excited about being with the high-school age kids. Many of you know that I taught early morning Seminary for nine years, and it was my favorite calling ever!