Last Suppers (Leo's and Kenny's)

This was a busy week, getting ready for new missionaries this coming week, especially for Myrna, who has to get all their documents ready for their permessi di soggiorno, or permits to remain the country.  Italy is very bureaucratic about these kinds of things. I had to go to a tobacco shop and buy 25 special postage-like stamps for 16.50 euros each, which they only sell the at these shops and you have to pay cash (€412.50), no credit cards are accepted,  As I came back from the walk, I thought that this sort of thing was the last straw that separated America from England, tax stamps. This past week we brought the last new missionaries back in for more training.  We went to Bologna (a two hour trip one way) on Monday and Milano on Tuesday.  I use a PowerPoint to further train them on their use of money and bikes, etc., and we fed them lunch.

Lunch at the church in Bologna at new missionary training.  Myrna made them sloppy joes.

Watermelon, from Italy, along with grapes, are now in season and they are excellent.  I told the new missionaries that bologna in the US, sometimes called baloney, is actually mortadella in Bologna, but tastes somewhat the same, and perhaps we should have served it. No one admitted that they had eaten it in Italy.  We had a repeat performance on Tuesday in Milano for the other half of the last round of new missionaries.

Myrna also made fresh apple cake, which we served with whipped cream from a can (Spray Pan brand), this was the last piece, which they devoured.

With 16 new missionaries coming this week, there will be transfers, and two of our office elders will go, one home to Utah and one back out as a regular missionary, to Trieste.  Anziano Osborne asked Myrna to make him her chicken salad one more time, so she said she would do it on Saturday.  So we went shopping Friday evening and she got up early and cooked all Saturday morning, including her crescent rolls, brownies, cookies x 2, etc. Anziano Osborne also wanted to see Leonardo's Last Supper, so he ordered tickets for 1:45 pm for all of us, and the President asked if we wanted to ride to Lugano with them to a baptism afterward, which we were planning on going to with the Salatini anyway because Anziano Mochellin, who is also going home, called and invited us (he also wanted us to bring cookies).

President and Sister Allen came for lunch, which we had in the conference room, on Saturday, which is P-day for some.

The missionary to the right is Anziano Osborne, Anziano Anderson on the far left is his replacement, and Anziano Barragon, from West Valley City, is the assistant to the president, who is remaining.

To the left is Anziano Thompson (whose hair was just cut by Anziano Pesci), who is staying, along with Anziano Scoggin, in the middle, and Anziano Pesci, on the right, is going home after completing his mission as an assistant to the president this week. He bore his testimony today in Sacrament Meeting, and I am looking forward to hearing it again when he departs this coming week. He has been an excellent missionary, faithful to the end.

We rode with President and Sister Allen to this old church in Milano, which is the church for a monastery, which is to the left of the church. The door under the red banner leads to the refractory, or dining hall, for the monks, where in 1495 Leonardo da Vinci decorated the far end wall with a very large painting of Christ's Last Supper.  We had to get tickets (€12 each) several weeks in advance.  They only let 25 people at a time go in, and only for 15 minutes.

Rather than stand out in the sun, we would have liked to have gone into the church, which would have been fairly cool, but, according to this sign on the door, during August it isn't open very many hours a day.  During August, many people in Italy go on vacation and lots of things shut down.

So we waited in the shade across the street and talked to people.  Two sets of missionaries were able to give away two Books of Mormon. We met and spoke with an elderly couple from Vermont, who really wanted to see the Last Supper but were told at the ticket office that you must order tickets at least two weeks ahead of time.  I am sure they would have paid us much more than what we paid for ours, but we were just friendly with them and wished them well on their European tour.

If you put your finger over the bottom of an always running fountain, water will shoot out the top, and you can get a drink, as did Anziano Thompson, sporting his new haircut.

Once we got inside we waited some more, but were able to read some history and see parts of old frescos on the walls, see above.

We read that during 1943 the monastery, with the Last Supper on a wall, was bombed out during World War Two, and then has been re-built, as was much of Milano. (Actually, if you read about it on-line, you will see that Napoleon's soldiers bunked in the monastery and when they got bored they used the Last Supper for target practice, with Jesus' face as the bullseye.  They hit the mark at least a couple of times, but the mural was restored.)

Out a window we could see the inside the monastery, much different than the city streets outside and the monk's inner garden, where they could stroll and contemplate the meaning of life.

There is still some restoration work being done to the monastery.  We didn't see any monks, perhaps there aren't any left now.

Then into a very well climate-controlled entryway

Then into a very plain (only because a lot of the frescoes were destroyed during the war) large dining hall, where, on the end, is one of the world's most famous murals. We got 15 minutes in that room with 25 other people from around the world.

The other end of the room has a large fresco, in much better shape than the Last Supper, of the crucifixion by a fairly famous artist, Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, who lived from 1440 until 1502.

You can take pictures in there, but not using flash and no video.

You have to hold the camera pretty steady, because there isn't much light in there.

The world's best experts have tried "restoration" work, but the fresco is pretty far gone.  Actually, it started to deteriorate as soon as Leonardo finished it 500 years ago, while Christopher Columbus was still out at sea.  Leonardo tried an experimental way of painting, on dry instead of wet plaster, because he wanted brighter colors, but it failed miserably. There are two full size copies of it mentioned in Wikipedia, one in England and one in Switzerland, which we have seen and wrote about in this blog, with pix, which are much brighter and in better shape, and is free to see in a beautiful little church.

All the walls in the dining room were originally well decorated with frescoes, but have never been re-painted since the war.

At the base of the cross, on the other side of the room, the painter wrote his name and date, 1495. It was done at the same time Leonardo was painting the other end with his masterpiece, which he kept coming back to work on.  He was never satisfied with Christ's face.

In that fresco (on the other side of the room), there are a few extra people, who certainly weren't at the actual crucifixion of Christ, like this bishop, who probably paid the artist well to paint him in it. This was common for the rich and famous to pay to have themselves inserted in historical paintings.

More of  the rich and famous from the 1400s.

One parting shot of the other side of the dining room, of the Last Supper.

Coming out of the monastery into the bright light of day.

One of the piazzas within Milano, this one has a statue of Giuseppe Verdi, a famous opera composer.

Another new soccer stadium going out of Milano.

Heading north we went past many little towns, all with old churches, up against the mountains.

At the border between Italy and Switzerland, the traffic slowed down.

We easily found the LDS church, only a year old, in Lugano, Switzerland, where we went to attend a baptism.

In the chapel we waited for people to come.  I don't think I have ever been to a baptism that started on time. I played the piano as no one had been asked to play.

In the hallway there was this sign giving information about the church's "hotel" at the Swiss Temple near Bern, for members wanting to stay all night. It only costs €27.72 for a family needing 6 beds to stay there.

There was a nice potluck dinner after the baptism.  Myrna took two kinds of cookies, chocolate chip and some made from a mix that Anziano Mocellin's mother sent from France, that he forgot to take with him when he left the mission office as an assistant to the president.  He goes home (dies) this week (so we will see him again this week at the mission office), and was pretty happy to be able to baptize the only person he was able to get in the water with during his two year mission in Italy. A father, originally from Italy, of a family who are already members.

Elder Kenny Mocellin, from Le Grand-Lemps, Isère (near Lyon), France, is a pretty special young man and will become a wonderful French policeman (that is what he says he wants to become).  If I ever get stopped by a policeman in France, and it is him, I expect to get a hug instead of a ticket, unless, of course, I deserve it.

What do you think the Swiss bring to a baptism pot luck, you guessed it, Swiss cheese. (This plate was full when it came, and there was another like it with dry sausage)

And because they also speak Italian, the "main course" was pizza. These were the leftovers.

And because they are also Europeans, the young men and little boys found a soccer ball to kick on the little bit of grass behind the church.

It was a fairly busy, but wonderful P-day in sunny, but not too hot this week, northern Italy.

Ciao.