On Friday we went to the dentist (endodontist) in Milano. He spent almost two hours on Myrna's molar working on three root canals. President Allen is a dentist and has done many of these, and agreed that what Myrna is getting is difficult. It will take several more trips to the dentist, the next appointment is at the end of October. That evening we went to our ward's talent show at the church in Milano. I was asked, by the bishop's wife, to sing the last hymn in the Italian hymnal, which is from Verid's opera, Nabucco. I accompanied myself on the piano and tried to sound somewhat operatic. We have some pretty interesting talent in the ward. Our own assistants to the president were the MCs, and did a great job.
Bishop's wife, Nancy Villacorta, who was in charge of the ward function, here dancing and singing with two Primary aged girls.
Brother Cano, husband of our cleaning lady, who was in the hospital for about six months following his being run over by a big truck, while he was on his bike, is back to mostly "normal" and did a funny performance, in Spanish.
This South American transplant also did a number, in Spanish.
These young people in the ward were certainly not inhibited.
On Wed. night we had the Friolo family over to our apartment for dinner. Myrna made sloppy joes, potato salad and apple cake with gelato. We are their home teachers. This 10 year old, Michael Friolo, did a very impressive dialogue on stage with his 6 year old sister, Ashley. He ate 2.5 sloppy joes, made with buns the size of the biggest buns they sell at Burger King (not where we bought them--they sell them at regular grocery stores). He is very talented little guy, also uninhibited, who will be moving to Los Angeles, California in a few weeks, when his older sister gets her mission call, she hopes is to Temple Square in Salt Lake.
On the right is the older sister, who is awaiting her mission call, which could come any day (she has invited us to watch her open the letter). She natively speaks Italian and Spanish, as well as French and English, is beautiful, outgoing, and talented, so where ever the Lord calls her she will be a blessing.
One of our missionaries, Anziano Rizzo, performed some great magic, and used Davide Friolo, father of the above, who is also a counselor in the bishopric, as his Vanna White. It was a fun evening, even though Myrna's mouth hurt because the dentist did not use any anesthetic. Sister Allen rode with us (President was still working on transfers), and we took an interesting route home, by accident, but it was okay, because the assistants took the normal route and arrived home when we did.
Last week was pretty busy, getting ready for 35 new missionaries, the most we have ever had at any one time, and General Conference, which means inspecting missionary apartments. (We inspect missionary apartments twice a year, the week before General Conference.) As I may have mentioned in a previous post, President Allen's birthday was in Sept. and he asked all of the missionaries to spend at least 4 hours thoroughly cleaning their apartments as a birthday gift to him, because he believes, because it is true, that you are a better missionary if you live in a clean environment. So inspecting apartments should have been easy, because they should have all been very clean, e.g. floors mopped, walls and windows washed, ovens and refrigerators cleaned, filters over ovens cleaned, mold off bathroom ceilings, bath tubs, toilets and bidets without rings, garbage all out, etc. But as you can probably imagine, 19-20 year olds don't always do what they should, when they should, but at least more than half of the apartments we checked were in wonderful shape. President Allen was so busy trying to figure out where to put all the new missionaries (it takes an unbelievable amount of time and spiritual energy to make those eternally significant personality matches) that they didn't have time to check the apartments on their list, so we did some for them too. We were so busy that we just went as fast as we could to do these apartments, didn't even check out churches, (well, I did look in one, and bought two new ties in Como), but we got to see some new cities and meet wonderful missionaries in their home turf. We went to Como and Busto Arsizio, checking two apartments in each city, both anziani and sorelle apartments. Of course, sister's apartments are cleaner and usually nicer
Just down the street from the anziani's apartment in Como was this little convenience place, the kind I used all the time in Italy 50 years ago, but have not seen until I saw (and used, for old times sake) this one.
This is the street where the anziani live in Como. If you enlarge it, you can see that at the end of the street is the backside of the city's more than 1,000 year old duomo.
If you stand at the base and look up, this is what greets your eye. See the statues of the naked men near the top. This is what Michaelangeo was thinking he was making his David for, the outside of the duomo in Florence, but it exceeded everyone's expectations, so they put it on the ground and made the 20 year old famous.
If you turn to the left from this piazza, you see the opera house of Como, and we could hear a soprano going through her scales as we walked by about 11 am on Saturday. The sign said they were having Mozart's Magic Flute opera that evening. It would have been nice to attend, maybe someday.
If you turn the other direction, back toward the missionary apartment, you can see the mountains in the background. I wonder who lives on top? Como is a very pleasant city, no wonder Elder and Sister Holland wanted to spend some relaxing time there.
On our trip to inspect apartments, we were entering Legnano (see the sign) and I spotted a Fudruckers restaurant, which we had never seen in Italy. I am not sure the Americanization of Italy is a good thing, but Italians like hamburgers. There are two McDonald's in Como.
We got back from Busto on Saturday afternoon and spent the afternoon doing grocery shopping, etc. getting ready for this week, which includes Jan's coming. While Myrna baked cookies and muffins (she has baked at least a million this week), I went by myself to the Saturday open market in Opera, the first time I have ever been (we always go somewhere on Saturday, our P-day). I bought some fresh cilantro for salsa and fresh peaches.
This is one of the several fruit and veggie stands at the Saturday market in Opera. Every city seems to have at least one.
I passed by this Italian bank, founded in 1472. Now old Chris Dove (Christopher Columbus) could have had an account at this one. Interesting! (The Church uses St. Paul's Bank in Italy.)
Then we watched the Saturday morning session of General Conference in our office on the large monitor, starting at 6 pm on Saturday evening, and the afternoon session from 10 pm until midnight. On Sunday morning we watched the priesthood session, and the Sunday morning session at 6 pm, which was live in Salt Lake. We were also able to Skpe with Kevin and Jeff, which was fun. We were too tired to watch the Sunday afternoon session on Sunday night, so we watched it on Monday evening. All of the sessions were uplifting. We especially enjoyed hearing Elder Holland, since we had just seen him here a few weeks ago.
Today I took a couple of pix of the two new Italian anziani who came from the MTC in Spain, they came a day early--those from the Provo MTC come tomorrow, two hours after Jan arrives. Here are the pix of the elders with Pres and Sister Allen which I took today.
They are both humble, righteous and obedient young men, one speaks some English, the other does not. I trained them for about an hour in their use of money, including ATMs, and bikes, all in Italian, which went well. I have developed a PowerPoint which I use, and today I added a new picture that I found online of the "widow's mite" to teach the importance of their privilege of spending tithing funds. Only missionaries and some general authorities get to live on tithing money. I tell them they are not expected to pay tithing on their missions, because they are spending tithing funds, but they should save at least 10% of what they get, for emergencies, and to stay in the habit of paying tithing, and they need to pay a generous fast offering in the ward or branch where they are serving. I also took them to the ATM at the post office to get their €150 contribution to the bike fund. They had used ATMs before, which not all missionaries have done.
They both come from Southern Italy, not in our mission. Also, one of our assistants to the President, Anziano Santoro, is from Southern Italy, and I am sure he will become a great leader in the Church, actually he already is. Interestingly, he does have a "girlfriend" sister missionary, who he is careful to have an appropriate relationship with while they are missionaries, and, should they actually get married in the future, I am sure they will make a great couple to continue to lead the Church in Italy. It is a great privilege to get to work with these talented and spiritual leaders.
Because Anziano Thompson is leaving the office on Thursday to become a zone leader in Como, and he will be a good one, Sister Allen tried out her new waffle maker and fed us breakfast at the mission home this morning. It was a very pleasant experience.
Anziani Anderson and Scoggin, who are remaining in the office, inviting us to dine this morning.
This was Anziano Santoro's first experience at eating a waffle, which he said he liked--what else could he say?
Anziano Barragon (left) and Anziano Thompson (right) piled Anziano Anderson's last waffle with a lot of stuff, that he ate all of. It would be nice to be young and have a hollow leg again.
There's fog in the kitchen from all of Myrna's cookie and muffin baking. Do you know what they call a muffin in Italy? A muffin; I guess plural would be muffini. (Muffo, which sounds sort of like muffin, means mold, which we have been looking for on bathroom ceilings this week.) I also learned that the word biscuit comes from Italian, and is biscotto in Italian, which means twice (bis) cooked (cotto). In Italy they call Myrna's cookies biscotti, although she only bakes them once. Well, she is back up in the kitchen making more cookies and muffins, and it is time for bed, so I will say ciao for now.
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