This week the rest (final four) of the zone conferences were held in the southern part of the mission. We didn't have anything to do with them, and other senior couples made the lunches (not all were Thanksgiving dinners, like ours). President and Sorella Allen, and the APs went and Sorella Hoopes and I stayed in the office all week, along with the three office anziani. They had their meetings, and go out "finding" every afternoon and evening, so, we were alone in the office pretty much all week. Next week we have a General Authority 70, Elder Johnson, coming for a "mission tour." We will have two mission conferences (half of the mission at each), one in Milano and the other in Modena, which we will also be attending, because we're doing the food. The entire mission is coming, where Christmas gifts will be distributed, which Myrna also worked on, along with Sorella Allen, this week. We are serving sloppy joes, for 220 total souls, so we've spent a lot of time this week buying and preparing for that luncheon. We bought 90 kilos of hamburger, which we watched being ground at Eurospin. They actually invited me into the butcher room of the supermarket (which you can see in through a large glass window and watch the butchers), and asked me what we were going to do with all that meat. I had fun telling the two young butchers about sloppy joes, as well as the Church and our missionary program. Italians sell ground meat for ragù (think spaghetti sauce), although it is usually a mix of beef and pork. We had the ground beef specially made for us, and it was even on sale. They took very large chunks of nice looking beef (comes in sealed plastic bags, which one could buy at Metro), trimmed a little of the fat and ground it up in a large machine. I suspect in the US it would be labeled about 10-15% fat (I have no idea how they measure fat content), but Italians don't sell it by fat content, and it was only 4.99 euros a kilo, which is about $2.50 per pound. They also sell "hamburgers," which are already pattied out ground beef, and costs a lost more. Apparently Italians don't realize that you can patty out your own hamburgers. We bought nice big buns also at Eurospin, although we bought all they had and need to go to other stores to get more tomorrow. They are made in a big bakery somewhere, have a shelf life until March of next year, but are pretty good, and even have sesame seeds on top. We also went 17.4 kilometers (one way, I keep track because we are reimbursed mileage) to Metro, Italy's version of Costco, and bought two large containers (5 liters each) of catsup for 12 euros, although Heinz, which they also sell there, was 15, and other ingredients, like worshistershire sauce, bottles of water (so each missionary can have their own) and potato chips. We bought the local, San Carlo brand of chips (they also sell Lays), 75 cents for two serving size (50 cm) bags, although we got one for each missionary. (I don't know why we just didn't buy large bags, but that wasn't our decision) to go with the sloppy joes. I chopped a heck of a lot of onions during the week and Myrna cooked the meat mix in our kitchen, in many batches over two days.
Sloppy Joes cooking on our stove, cooled on the kitchen table out on the balcony (probably colder out there than in our refrigerator.)
Sloppy joe mix cooling on our balcony, before we put it in freezer bags, 8-9 cup bags, and into the large (for Italy) freezer at the mission home.
Bottles of water, buns and potato chips stored in the mission office, ready for the conference.
Next to my desk I have two little rose bushes, which were on sale at IPER, two for 2.99, and my avacado, above the radiator, so they all keep pretty warm, and get sunlight during the day.
In the mission office we have a Christmas tree with der blinken lights! We get many packages from the post office, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, etc, each day for the missionaries. (Some with pretty stiff import fees,) It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.
As I type this I can hear the assistants to the president, Anziani Santoro e Pyper, in the office next door, planning their work for next week, which includes having the Genova anziani here tomorrow for scambio. They are both excellent missionaries, for whom I have a lot of love and respect.
Myrna also worked this week in her "spare time" (early mornings) stuffing cute little bags we bought, at IKEA, for all of the 220 missionaries, including seniors, with chocolate, some of which David and Megan brought us from the US.
We have our own little Christmas tree and Nativity, which David and Megan brought, and for which Kristin sent some cute ornamenti she made with paint stirrers.
David and Megan also brought our cute Christmas stockings.
Myrna bought this live plant, which in Italy, literally translated, is called a Christmas Star.
Yesterday (Saturday) morning, Sorelle Hoopes e Allen wrapped their secret gifts for all of the missionaries. I went over to the new mall (within walking distance, but I didn't walk--it was too cold) to see if the Ferrari store was open yet, it wasn't, and found the office elders there taking pix.
Anziano Noah Anderson pointing to Noe, his first name in Italian, at the new mall. Because it was cold and I wanted to find a warm place that wasn't a store where people would try to sell me something, I went into the new McDonalds and had a chocolate shake (they are only €1). This week I had this silly idea that Myrna and I would buy each other a bottle of profuma (perfune) for Christmas and I have been doing research about suitable (for missionaries) flavors it on line. Italians use more perfume than do Americans, and they make a lot in Italy, although perhaps not as much as in France. Because of what I have read online, I am interested in Ferrari Black (actually made invented by Enzio Ferrari and sold at their stores). Then, in the afternoon, we went to the IPER mall (larger and inside, where it is also warm, but very busy) and went to several profumerie (perfume stores), and smelled until our noses became very confused, but did not buy, yet. Myrna says I am too cheap to buy good stuff, but we will see. It is 6 pm on Sunday and I have washed my left hand many times, including a shower this morning, but can still smell the Ferrari Red (they didn't have Black) from 32 hours ago. It smells different each time, but is still faintly there. (I think I have a dozen little slips of white paper with various uomo e donna profuma smells in my jacket pocket.)
One time when we got back from a trip, the office anziani had taken a picture they took of themselves and installed it on our monitors as our screen savers. There used to be a pix of the temple in Richland, WA, that Anziano Brooks had installed when we came, and I have never taken off. This evening I found Anziano Anderson's mission blog and took off this picture, which is my now my screen saver. He is in the middle bottom. They may have taken taken this pix at a store where they, at least the three on the right, could wear the same red jacket. Interesting...
This morning we went to church at our Navigli Ward, pretty normal, and this afternoon I went with my new home teaching companion, Chris Dansie, to see Gianna and her daughter (and two dogs), and came back to the office and found my blog (lost it this week because IMOS made me take off all my "favorite" places) and wrote this blog post. I will now do today's rimborsi and go up to our apartment in a while.
Anyway, this was a less busy week, but next week should be pretty busy. We'll see!
Ciao for now.
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