29 May 2016

This is Sunday afternoon. After we returned from church, ate lunch, and I had an hour nap with our air conditioner on (I did, Myrna came down and talked with the young missionaries).  That is a big deal, because we have an air conditioner in our bedroom and living room, but have not been able to get them to work, until today.  I guess I just wasn't pushing the right buttons, kind of like a fancy TV remote, which I have never been very good at.  It brought the temperature right down and I used the bedspread because it was a little cold.  The weather has warmed up quite a bit, although today it was raining.  Church was good, we had the Relief Society program.  Myrna even wore a black skirt and white top, as instructed, and sang with the RS choir.  Yes, Myrna sang, there were about 30 of them. They sang "as sisters in Zion," in Italian, of course. For third hour on this 5th Sunday, the bishop gave the lesson for the combined adult priesthood and women.  He started with the story of the 3 little pigs, which apparently Italians have heard.  He told two versions, the first, Disney-like version and the second, he called it the "true" version where the first two little pigs get eaten by the wolf because they weren't obedient.  Then he had a woman, who actually lives in Opera and draws really well on the white board, draw a tongue and some knives coming out of it, which he used with scriptures to tell about the bad, cutting things, we say about each other. He spoke the rest of the time about speaking nice and being nice to each other in our ward family.  It was a great lesson.

On Tuesday we had new missionary training in Milano, at a church building.


The assistants to the president talking to the new missionaries, who were all sisters this time, with President and Sister Dibb looking on.  I also presented about 45 minutes to them on how to use their mission funding (debit) cards, take care of their bikes and what to do it they lost their wallet or purse, etc.  Fairly mundane things, but it all happens, and, as a scripture says, all things are spiritual unto the Lord..  





Yesterday, Saturday P-Day, President and Sister Dibb invited us to ride in their car along with the two office missionaries, to a famous little touristy town two hours north of here called Bellagio, which is on Lake Como.  We have been planing for weeks to go there with the office missionaries, but we were going to take the bus (a three hour ride) because driving is pretty difficult.  The first hour is on freeway and is fine, but then you get to the lake and have to drive around it on a very small windy road only wide enough for one vehicle, but there is traffic going both ways and bikes and motorcycles, etc.  I rode in the seat behind the President, who drove, and has been driving here for 3 years and isn't scared to drive anywhere.
    
I was sitting behind him and this is a pix with his ear in the upper right and the car in front of us and a bus coming toward us.  We were so close to the other side, where Myrna sat, that she could have rolled down her window and touched the side of the mountain, and I could certainly have touched the side of the bus as we passed it, all the way following this Mercedes, of which there were many.






All of the streets, other than the main street, go up or down the mountain, which can get quite steep.  Here is Myrna, from behind.  I didn't notice, until I got home and saw the pix, that the Italian lady to the left of her was wearing about the same outfit she was wearing, although missionary dresses are longer than Italians wear.  Most Italian women still wear dresses, at least the older ones. The young ones do not generally wear dresses.






The church was open after lunch time, which isn't all that common.  (Most close from about noon to 3 pm.  Duomos are generally open, but not parish churches, like this one.)  Of course, we went inside for me to check out the organ.
















Right across the street from the church was a little shop that sold scarfs and men's ties.among other things tourists would like.  The silk is actually woven in Bellagio and is very famous (they even sell these ties in Nordstroms), and it wasn't all that expensive either.  Only 12 euro for a tie, and 5 or 16 for a woman't scarf.  I didn't buy a tie, but I am cheap, but I bought Myrna a necklace.  Sister Dibb had bought a glass nativity set there some time ago and broke one of the wise men, so she wanted to replace it, which she was able to do.  They also bought a hand painted oil painting of Bellagio, which President is going to have to hand carry home.







This street leads down to the lake.  We had lunch at a little restaurant. Myrna and I split a salad and lasagna.  The lasagna I made this week was better, I thought.  The APs brought us down a piece of one they made today, for us to taste, which was really good.



In this pix you can see the bell tower of the church and some of the hotels and larger buildings in this fairly small town.





We walked out on the lake on one of many piers.














Anziano and Sorella Hoopes, Sorella and President Dibb.  They are finishing their 3 year mission at the end of June, so this may be their last visit to this beautiful area of northern Italy.












No visit like this should be done without having gelato, ice cream, and, of course, we did.  We even found a place to sit out in front of the shop. We generally buy it in cups, because cones drip on our clothes.











From the car window headed south, with lots of towns on both sides of the lake, with mountains in the background. The lake runs north to south,  but there are two fingers, with Switzerland to the north, where the water starts from Alps.






It was a very nice day.  We left at 10:30 am and were back home by 5 pm, which is the young missionary P-day (seniors don't have designated hours like they do).  We came back to the office and checked our emails, etc., and then went with the APs to a baptism in Milano. Yesterday they were having the world soccer play off, two Spanish teams playing each other, in Milano, so the President had warned missionaries not to go out in Milano yesterday for safety reasons, but he gave us all, including the APs, permission to go to the baptism, which happened during the time of the soccer game, which didn't start until about 8:35 pm.  They had perhaps the world's largest TV monitor set up in the piazza in front of the duomo, and it would have been fun to go, but that would be too dangerous.

I will tell about our experience last evening because I didn't take any pix.  We have been assigned to home teach 4 families, including the bishop.  We had our appointment at his home last evening.  Myrna made bar cookies and I talked about Pres. Monson's talk about Alice in Wonderland, which Italians have all heard of (at least our families knew about it.).  We had never been to their home before, which is in a relatively poor neighborhood, where we had a hard time finding a place to park, but we did. Their living room, furnished with fine couches and a large TV, also has the kitchen in the other side, with a dining table, etc, all in the same room.  I suspect they have one bathroom and two bedrooms, maybe 500 square feet.  They have 3 children, one daughter in her 20s working somewhere, a son 20, on a mission in Chile, and a girl, 15 at home.  The bishop is a caregiver at a 71 bed nursing home and his wife is a caregiver at another nursing home, 55 beds. (These are, by American standards, small nursing homes.)  They are both from Peru, but have been in Italy for over 20 years and speak good Italian. They do not speak English, although the wife's sister was there when we first came (she left with the daughter, who she was taking to the church for a seminary test), and she is learning English. He said it normally takes the daughter a half hour on the bus, with a 1.50 ticket, to get to the church for Seminary, but this time the aunt took her.  So the four of of us talked for about an hour, then we had dinner.  She served us a plate with boiled potatoes with a Peruvian white sauce on it (I discussed the concept of gravy, which this was sort of), and a large pile of flavored rice with a chicken leg (with skin, which we all ate) in it, and a fairly large salad, which we ate on our plate after we had eaten the potatoes, rice and chicken.  For dessert they first offered fresh fruit, but we all opted for the cookies Myrna made.  We drank water, and had a wonderful meal. They were very hospitable, and we didn't have a hard time communicating with them in Italian for 2 hours. We will enjoy going there home teaching.

22 May 2016





This is our smaller balcony, right off our bedroom.  The plant on this side of the middle geranium is basil. We bought a small basil plant at the grocery store and we pick leaves for making things.











I took this pix from our balcony about 8:30 pm last evening and it shows the same place I took from the ground, with the caffeteria on the corner.  Across the street, on the same side as the caffeteria, is the city well where I get water in my bottle.







I emptied the mission mail box and took out these natural gas bills, which I will pay tomorrow.  We have about 100 active missionary apartments, and the bills come on different days for the electricity, gas, water, trash, etc. That is my main work, although every day I also get letters and emails from missionaries who send me receipts for transportation (bus, metro, train), medical and other reimbursable expenses that I reimburse by putting money on their debit cards.  All of this work is done on-line, we do not write checks.

21 May 2016

Today was our regular P-day, we got our work done, even though we took off on Wed, so we went to Milano today to see what we want to see in preparation for Amy's family visit at the end of June.  Here are some of the things we saw today, some of which we have already seen:

You come up out of the metro station onto the large piazza of the duomo, or cathedral.  Duomo comes from Latin and refers to house of God, and is what Italians call cathedrals, which means that is where the bishop's cathedra, or throne, is located. Any large church is not necessarily a cathedral.  We wanted to go to the roof, which costs 15 euros each (about 18 or so dollars), so we stood in line to buy tickets.  It also costs 1 euro to go to the bathroom at the duomo, those Catholics know how to make money.



Then we took the elevator to the roof, for 3 euros, to see the statues on top and the city of Milano. It was quite a sight for sore feet.





























What is amazing is that there are statues you could never see from the ground, you have to walk around the roof and look down, or up,or sideways, to see them.













The piazza in front of the duomo, in the front is the statue of the Italian equivalent of George Washington, who lived in the 1800s.












This was a church with a separate chapel full of skulls and bones, from the days of the black plague, of people who wanted to be buried within the church, and they certainly were.













They even used the bones to make designs.










And some are just there, behind wire, I suppose to keep them safe, so tourists wouldn't take them home for souvenoirs.

















Myrna sitting at the fountain in front of the castle.














It was a large city inside the walls.  On the left are bleachers, where they now have concerts, etc.








We came home and rested for about an hour, then went grocery shopping for the week, Myrna cooked up some pasta for dinner and we ate it with some Ragù alla Bolognese I made last week (we freeze it). Now she is up making pound cakes for the new missionary orientation, for about 30, we are catering on Tuesday. We will serve it with fresh strawberries and whipped cream.  The main course will be chicken salad on croissants, which we have already ordered from the neighborhood bakery. (Myrna is making the salad, we are looking for chicken breasts on sale, which we hope to find on Monday afternoon, so we don't have to freeze them.). All of these new missionaries are sisters.  Had there been some elders, Myrna was gong to make Cafè Rio pulled pork and she is going to try making flour tortillas, which you can actually buy (in the international section of the grocery store), but they are expensive and not very fresh.  I also watered our "garden" out on the balcony from our bedroom today, it is doing well. The weather is certainly changeable.  All week it rained and was a little chilly, but today it got up probably in the 80s and was sunny.  We will sleep with the windows open tonight, and when it gets really hot we have air conditioning, which most Italians don't.

Florence on Wednesday

20 May 2016.

On Wed of this week we went to Florence with a senior couple, Denis and Jackie Hawkins, who live and work in the area offices in Germany.  He works with me on finance and she with the mental health issues of missionaries (young and old) for about 12 missions in Europe. She mostly uses skype to work with missionaries, and did it in her hotel room, while he sat with me helping me with things I am still learning. They are going home from their 23 month mission this fall and are making another tour of Europe, they were in Rome last week.  He worked with me on Monday and Tuesday and then asked if we could go with them to Florence on Wed, which the president readily agreed to.  We left about 8:30 am, riding the Frecccaosa, the red arrow train (fast), getting in at 10:30, and we had 11:15 entrance tickets to the Uffizi Gallery, one of the world's most famous. I will post a few of the hundreds of pix I took, with some brief comments.




Train station at Rogoredo, Milano, closest to where we live, There is a subway, bus and train station here and is very convenient.  It cost 100 round trip for each of us to go to Florence.  It takes almost 4 hours to drive there on the freeway.










The Uffizi, literally means offices, were built in the 1500s by the Medici family, which ruled Florence and the Renissance for almost 400 years--the US isn't even that old. They were government offices, three stories (there were no elevators then) with long hallways and large office rooms, which now house art collected by the Medici and their successors.









It is arranged chronologically, this is one of the first things we saw, a Greek casket from about 400 BC.











Again, there are 3 stories of hallways, with pained ceilings (from the 1500s), doors leading into offices, now with art, and with a lot of statues and paintings in the hallways.  Notice the many small portraits along the ceiling, which have been there for over 500 years.









Look out the other window and you can see the River Arno, with its famous Ponte Vecchio (old bridge).  According to Dad (Lamro) who camped on this side of the river for six months in a tent during the winter, they did not bomb out this bridge because it was not wide enough to get a tank through--all the rest were bombed out.










Look out another window and you can see houses where regular Florentine people still live, and lived when Dad would take his army rations in the evening, when they stopped shooting at the Germans.  The Italian housewives would cook up the American rations, along with what they had, and make nice home made meals. Dad said he tried to teach them the gospel in his poor Italian with no translated materials.  He also said the electricity went off at night, so the Germans could not see what to shoot at, so they used lamps and candles behind closed shuttered windows, which they still have.




A copy of Michaelangelo's David (the original was moved in the 1800s into its own building, to keep him out of the weather).  Inside this building is also a museum, which we did not have time to see.  There are many museums and art galleries in Florence.

15 May 2016

Last week was busy at the mission office.  We had a zone conference on Tuesday, so Myrna and I were out of the office all day.  We attended the zone conference in Milano (about a half hour away) and made lunch for the 30 missionaries who attended.  We made sloppy joes, potato salad, baked beans , potato chips, veggie trays, and for dessert, Myrna made pound cake, which we topped with fresh strawberries and whipped cream.  It was quite an undertaking to buy all of the things, cook/prepare them and then take them to the Italian ward building and serve them. The mission president, who is leaving at the end of June, took us to a new store called Metro.  It is like a Costco, and mainly sells to restaurants, where we were able to buy large quantities of things we can't get at Italian supermarkets.  For the potato salad we bought potatoes where the sign said they are good for salads, they were grown in Israel, but they were pretty mushy, but the salad was excellent. The missionaries eat a lot of pizza and pasta, so we like to make things they don't normally get.  We also attended the zone conference, the first I have attended and the second one Myrna has attended.  I did not attend the first because I was being trained in my job at the mission office that day.  It was inspiring, everyone did a great job encouraging better missionary work.  At the end we sing our mission song, which I accompanied on the piano.  This is where everyone stands in a circle, arms around shoulders (interesting how they separate the sisters from the elders, using senior couples as "bridges",) and at the end we kneel in prayer. The rest of the week was fairly "normal" although every day is an adventure here in Italy.

On Saturday, our P-day, we cleaned the apartment a little and then drove south to Pavia, which is becoming sort of our favorite get away, because it is close and we know where things are now.  I was able to play an old organ, about half way down, for about an hour, the longest I have been able to play one so far.  When we got there the church was locked, so we went to the next town down the road.

I had spoken with my brother Fred, the day before and he asked me if I could take pix of all of the graves in a cemetery so a scout could organize having the graves (pix and text) put in Find-a-Grave as his Eagle Project.   I chose a small cemetery in a tiny farming village, which is now more of a commuter town as I suppose most of the people who live there commute to Milano every day to work. Anyway, I systematically took pix of each and every grave marker, most were in the walls, and since we only have one camera, I took them all while Myrna mostly meditated. It was a beautiful spring day.  After taking the pix, which took about an hour, we stooped off at the church in that town and fond the priest just leaving, who serves both churches (the one with the organ that plays).  I asked him if I could go play that organ and he told me where to find the sacristano, the caretaker, by asking at the gas station.  We drove back down, about a mile, gave the gas station attendant a 20 euro note for diesel, and ask him where to find Mario, the caretaker.  He pointed to his house, so while he was filling the tank, I went to Mario's house and spoke with his daughter, who said the priest had already called her to tell Mario I was coming and he needed to open the church for me.  The doors are so old they don't open with a key from the outside, there are bars from the inside, and by the time we got over to the church he had pedaled over and let us in.  I played for about an hour while Myrna took videos.

In the evening we went to a baptism of a young man, Leonardo  who will be a leader of the Church some day, mark my word. He was taught by the APs. This was in our ward, which the APs also attend.  There were almost as many people there as who attend sacrament meeting, although there were a lot of young single adults from Milano, who have been working with the young man who was baptized.  The institute instructor for the area, along with his wife and 3 children attended.  They are a young couple, he is Italian and she served her mission in Italy and came back and married him.

Today at Sacrament meeting I played the prelude, then the piano player showed up and took over.  The new convert was confirmed and the talks were good, as were the rest of the meetings. I was asked to speak in church in two weeks, with other missionaries. This afternoon we went home teaching to a sister, Gianna Lanfranceschina, and her daughter.  She has three children in the US, one in Alaska, one attending BYU-I and one in Pleasant Grove.  When her youngest daughter graduates from high school next year, they are both moving, along with their two dogs, to live with one of their children.  It is too bad that Italy loses good members to the US, but it has always been way.


Cemetery just as you enter the little village.  It has about 500 graves.  There are hundreds of thousands of cemeteries in Italy like this one. Graves can only remain in the cemetery for about 100 years, although the family could continue to pay, I guess forever, but we have seen few very old graves, even though the villages have been inhabited for over 2,000 years.  We were told that if there is no one to pay the cemetery they dig up the bones, put them in a common grave and put someone else in the spot. I assume and hope that the cemetery keeps a record of who was buried in the cemetery and we need to learn more about this.




Inside the cemetery.  We only saw one person, a man about my age, who was bringing fresh flowers to put on his son's grave. He showed us the grave and I told him what I was doing and he was excited about the possibility of anyone in the world being able to see the grave on a website.





The grave of the son, Muro Cima, who died last year of a heat attack.  The young man was not married and lived with his parents.  His father visits the grave every day, taking fresh flowers. I did not have the presence of mind to tell him that he will be able to see his son again in the spirit world, and about the Plan of Salvation, and I wish that I would have.  However. I am going to find the appropriate tract at the mission office and take it back to the cemetery and leave it next to the grave with a note giving our names and addresses. Perhaps the man will call us and we









Outside of the next church down the road, with an organ which I played for about an hour, and Myrna took videos.

8 May 2016

Yesterday (Saturday) Myrna and I drove two hours, mostly on Autostrada (toll freeway, where you can drive quite fast), to a mountain village north of Torino to find the village, population 450, of  Castelnuovo Nigra.  This is the place where Amber Caretto's (our daughter-in-law, married to Mark) Italian ancestors came from a little after 1900.  We found a pix of the birth record for her grandfather on Family Search, although it has probably not been officially indexed. My brother, Fred Hoopes, who has indexed over 12,000 of these Italian records, helped us decipher the writing,




Our goal was to find Grandpa Peter's grave, and we did. This is the grave, which even includes a pix. Graves are mostly found in the walls around the town cemetery.  The people can only be buried there for about 100 or so years, then the remains  are removed (dumped in a common grave). We need to learn more about this.  We couldn't do it yesterday, because the city hall was closed on Saturday, our P-day. There are a few people who are actually buried in the ground, but this is probably expensive, and also isn't forever.




The village is a charming place, and there were a few people around yesterday.  We spoke with the only other person at the cemetery, a nice looking, relatively young Italian woman, who, when we told her who we were looking for, said she is related to them.  She said that last summer a couple from Colorado, USA, came to look for their ancestors.








This is the "Main Street" of Castelnuova (which means new castle) Nigra.  We followed this woman, who was walking down the middle of the road with her fresh flowers. Thankfully, no cars were coming.  Italians drive way too fast.  In the background is the main piazza with the old church, which, of course, we visited.






The front door of the village church, which had a sign on the side that says it is being restored by government grants.













Inside the church, there was one old man praying when we first went in.  As he left, he told us to keep the door open so the sun could get in to help warm up the cold church.

Church from inside the main front door. Lots of marble. There has probably been a church here for 800 or more years, but most decorations are from the 1600s, according to style of architecture, painting, etc.









An old street sign, saying Via Caretto Capella, or the way to Caretto Chapel. We went on the road but did not find a chapel.









We drove a couple of kilometers straight up (lots of switch backs) the mountain to a place called Caretto, marked by a sign, that says Caretto Inf, which I suppose means Caretto Inferiore, or lower Caretto, although we did not find an upper Caretto or a chapel, just a few houses, some of which looked like summer homes for wealthy people from the city, perhaps Torino. This is in the province of Torino, which has several million people.




This is now Sunday evening.  We went home/visiting teaching this evening to two of our assigned four families.  It was a good and somewhat unusual experience.  I took a pix of one of the apartment buildings with my cell phone, and when I get the cable from our apartment I will upload it and write about home teaching.   This has been another great week.  Today was Mother's day, both in Italy and the US.  In Relief Society today Myrna received a long stem fresh red rose and they had refreshments.  Italians are into fresh flowers, and the roses around where we live are beginning to bloom, and I suppose will bloom all summer. Also, along the roads there are lots of red poppies, like what you see in tourist pix of Italy.