12 June 2016

This week we worked in the office doing our normal duties.  On Thursday we went to Pavia to inspect two apartments, one with missionaries and one that we had inspected a week or so ago, where the missionaries had left it vacant following our going to help them clean (mold on ceiling in bathroom.) We gave them specific instructions about how they were to leave it (clean and ready for the next set or to turn back over to the landlord.)  The new mission president will have to decide whether to put missionaries back in it or have us close it. Anyway, the first (with missionaries) was okay but certainly not very clean.  We worked with them for an hour, on the bathroom and kitchen.  The pair included a big guy from the US and a small Italian from Rome.  Myrna helped the big guy with the bathroom, including cleaning the bathtub and ceiling. We bought some muriatic acid, which did wonders on the toilet and bathtub. As I was standing by the bathtub the elder accidentally sprayed me with water, in the crotch, but it was fairly warm and dried in about an hour. I  I helped the Italian in the kitchen. The tiled walls had not been cleaned for a long time and were pretty greasy, etc.Then we went to the other apartment, the one that had been closed, and saw that the missionary had finished the bathroom ceiling but had not done much else.  You may have seen the defrosting chicken in a previous post.  I had to clean the chicken bones they left in the sink, along with cleaning the stove, etc. They left food in the refrigerator, including milk, and had washed towels, but left them wet in the washing machine (missionaries in our mission don't get dryers, they use drying racks).   Myrna worked on the toilet and shower. We worked for about two hours.

Bathroom sink, they left a lot of stuff, which we threw out.  If this apartment is closed, we will have to go back and do a thorough cleaning. All of the senior couples in our mission are assigned about six or so apartments to inspect.  How much they actually clean is up to them. In fact, our mission president's wife thinks we should hire the work done and have the missionaries pay for it.








As we were walking down the street we saw a museum owned and operated by the City of Como. We went in and the young man who sold us our ticket noticed our name tags and told us he is a member, who served his mission in Sicily a few years ago.  The museum is in an old home of a very wealthy family, who probably owned it for centuries.  All of the rooms were well decorated and now have interesting displays.  This is a very old pipe organ, which has been restored and is played for concerts, etc.  Notice how beautiful the walls in this room are.  The entire museum is like this.  It would be wonderful to tour even without the displays, which were unique and very interesting. This part of Italy has been inhabited by people since at least the ice, stone and iron ages, many centuries before Christ.  You may remember, from National Geographic a few years ago, they found an ice age guy who had been preserved in a glacier, and they were doing tests of his body.  That is not too far from Como and the museum has lots of stuff from those very ancient times.





In the following pictures pay attention also to the walls, ceilings and floors of the museum itself, they were spectacular.













These are artifacts from the 9th century before Christ dug up in the 1970s near Como.













Beautiful marble floors.
















Roman lamps from the time of Christ.  When Christ talked about having oil in your lamp, this was the kind he was referring to.









These little gods were worshiped.  These things were probably brought to Italy during the mid 1800s, when rich people were in awe of Egyptian artifacts, and everyone had to have a mummy in their house. In fact, the mummy that Joseph Smith bought which contained the Pearl of Great Price had been in Trieste, Italy before coming to the US and making its way to Nauvoo.












Another nearby room where there were large wall paintings from the 1600s.