We got up this morning and it was raining and fairly cool, for June. About 9:30 we headed south and stopped at an old church whose organ I had seen but never played. Myrna waited in the car for me to see if I could play it. There was no one there, but the church was open, as they usually are in the mornings (they close from about noon until 3 pm.) I walked up the wooden staircase behind the altar and saw the organ and since no one was there, I flipped the switch and the blower came on, so, without sitting at the bench, I pulled the principale 8 stops to see if they would play (there was an electronic organ on the floor in front of the altar, which is usually a good sign that the antique organ does not work.) Anyway, it played beautifully. So I tested a few more stops and they all played, although the trumpet was quite flat, as they usually are. I really wanted to sit down and play it, in fact, have Myrna come in and video me, but Myrna tells me I need permission. So I went outside and found the phone number of the paracco, the priest in charge, and called, but no one was there. So we left to go further south, with an idea of going to Piacenza, which was 45 minutes south.
After walking around for over an hour, we were tired so we came back home and had lunch. Then we waited until 3 pm, when the church with the organ would open back up and headed back down. It is 6 KM and takes about 11 minutes to drive from our home to that church. The church was again open but the priest did not answer his cell phone again. I was able to get through to the assistant, who said he was out of town and I would need to speak with the priest. Anyway, we headed back down south to the Certosa di Pavia to better prepare for where we will go when Amy's family comes. We got all the way down to Pavia and then headed back home. On the way back the priest called saying he received a call from my number. He told me I could come back tomorrow at 3 pm to play it, which I hope we can do. He said at 4 pm he has 15 baptisms to perform, which sounds like a lot. Maybe they are having a sale or something. I didn't take many pix, but here are a few.
Outside of church with organ I want to play. The church was actually built in the 1100s but it was re-built in the 1600s and again in the 1800s.
On Tuesday morning, Myrna and I drove down to Piacenza to check out a missionary apartment where the sister missionaries are moving out. One went home on Thursday, with 17 others (only 2 came in this week), and the other was transferred, so no one is now living in this apartment. During July we get about 20 new missionaries and the new president will need to decide what to do with this apartment; either put more missionaries in it or close it, which is a lot of work (for me because I have to close the utilities, etc.), Anyway, we wanted to see what shape it was in and encourage the sisters to clean it well before leaving. In fact, we stayed about an hour and helped them clean. Then we drove north to Pavia and checked out another apartment, this one occupied by elders, who are also moving out. We also and helped them clean. These are typical missionary apartments in our mission.
The street where the Pavia apartment is located. It is on the 5th floor of the apartment building. Parking is always at a premium, but neither set of missionaries have cars. They walk or ride the bus.
Living room, where the sisters study. They said the pix on the wall were they when they came, and when they come off the walls need repainting because the sticky pulled off the paint. We didn't take them off, because if missionaries move back in, they can keep the pix.
Kitchen was also okay. This is a typical Italian kitchen, pretty little.
But the elder's apartment was a different story.
Myrna began working on the bathroom, and one of the elders got on a ladder and started using a washcloth with a bleach mixture to clean the mold off the ceiling, as we instructed him. I took the cloth into the kitchen and kept wringing it out with new bleach solution. My hands smelled strongly of bleach all the rest of the day. The mold was pretty gross, but it came off with a lot of scrubbing, and bleach solution.
Italy is so humid that mold grows easily and it must be cleaned continually or it gets pretty gross. You probably don't want to see the rest of the pix that I took for comparison purposes. I hope that when we go back in a few weeks both apartments are clean and ready for the next set of missionaries, or to be closed.
One of my ideas for today was to go to back to Piacenza, where I served 50 years ago, where we went this week to check out an apartment, but it didn't work out. However, as I requested, Kevin sent me a scan of a slide that I took 49 years ago of a boy in a red t-shirt and I wrote a little "tender mercy" story about it. Maybe you have heard me tell this story when I have shown this pix over the past five decades.
In 1967, I was called to be a senior companion and to open a new city, which never had missionaries. It is Piacenza, about 45 minutes south of where we now live in Opera. (We went there on Tuesday, 31 May 2016, to inspect an apartment.) I was sent from Torino, which is about a couple of hours away by train. I arrived about 11 am and my companion, a greenie, coming from the US, was to arrive during early evening. My most pressing job for the day was to find us an apartment, because I did not have enough money for a hotel. In those days we paid for all of our expenses and found our own apartments; we weren't reimbursed for anything. Anyway, I arrived at the train station in Piacenza and thought that because a lot of people were coming and going, and they sold newspapers there, it would be good place to try to ask someone if they knew of an apartment we could afford. (We didn't have cell phones then.) Of course, I prayed continually to find someone who could tell me about an apartment. I bought newspapers and looked and asked people, but didn't find anything that seemed promising. So after eating lunch at the train station, I thought I would walk towards the duomo (cathedral), which is always the center place in an Italian city. However, very close to the train station is a city park, and I had a strong feeling to walk through the park, which was beautiful that spring day. I had my camera and I was even taking pictures of flowers, etc. There weren't many people in the park, and those I asked seemed annoyed, let alone knew of apartments. I found a secluded place and prayed more intently than I had ever prayed before. Shortly thereafter, I saw a boy playing in the water. He was all alone, school was in session and I wondered why he was even there. Since I was taking pix of flowers, etc., I took one of him before he saw me. When he realized I was there, he responded in a friendly manner. I told him I was looking for an apartment and he immediately said that his grandfather had apartments for rent and he would take me to him, which he did. We walked together quite a while and found his nonno, and within a short time I had rented an apartment we could afford in a decent part of Piacenza. One of my current assignments in this mission is to pay the rent and utilities for our 100 or so missionary apartments, so this now seems more amazing. Anyway, by the time I walked back to the train station to pick up my companion, we had a roof over our heads and I had gone to some little shops (they didn't have supermarkets then like they do now) and bought some food. Finding that boy was a tender mercy if there ever was one, and, even more important, I knew that the Lord had heard me and answered my prayers.
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