This week went by way too fast, but we had busy fun. On Monday we got caught up with work that we didn't have time for last week. On Monday evening we went with President and Sorella Allen to Como, about an hour away, to a family home evening, at the request of Anziano Thompson, the ZL, who used to work in the office. We went early so we could see the lights around the Dumo (Cathedral) in Como. I don't remember lots of Christmas lights 50 years ago, but they certainly have them now.
This is us standing in the back of the Duomo of Como. To the left, in this picture, is the opera house, which was also lit up with moving figures.
The front of the opera house, where they were having Christmas productions, i.e, Nutcracker.
You walk around the Duomo and this is the piazza, showing a city street, with lights above. They have moving figures projected on the store buildings downtown. It is quite impressive.
This is the gallery (above where the bishop lives) on the lake side of the Duomo, and the old bell tower (in blue lights). There is also music, some even live. There was a man signing carols, with his hat on the ground (for donations). Sister Allen and I joined in with him when he sang in English, and I threw in a euro at the end for good will.
The other side of the duomo. Again, the projected pictures move and dance with the music. The full moon behind the tower was real, but there was a lot of fog and clouds.
There was also a very large, real, lighted Christmas tree in the piazza. The weather was cool, but not too cold to enjoy being out.
There was a mass going on inside one of the chapels (there are several) of the Duomo, so I didn't take any pictures, but they had lots of special Christmas decorations in the big church. This is a pix of the main door of the Duomo. I may have mentioned this before, but I learned that the two statues on opposite sides of the large door on the bottom, which are probably at about 20 feet above the ground, are of Pliny the older and Pliny the younger, who were from Como and were famous historians (we learn a lot about how the Romans lived from their writings). They were Romans, and this was a famous Roman city long before Christ. The Plinys were not Christian, and one of them even persecuted Christians--they are certainly not Catholic saints. I guess the church decided to showcase them on the front of the Duomo, probably during medieval times, and they have glass cases to protect these statues, I suppose to keep them from being damaged. I Goggled Pliny to make sure I was spelling their names right, and learned that the father added these famous sayings to our vocabularies:
In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
There is always something new out of Africa.
Home is where the heart is.
We drove over to the small apartment (normal for Italians) of the members who were hosting this family home evening. There were about 20 people, including two sister missionaries and two elders, us and President and Sister Allen. The sisters put on the program, which was well done. We sang Christmas carols, prayed, read scriptures, and had a guessing game, and ate and ate. There were four investigators and one less active in attendance.
This family, like many traditional Italians, do not have a Christmas tree, but, instead, put up a traditional manger scene, presepe, that sort of grows every year, complete with lights. It was hard to take pictures, because of the low light and my hand-camera movement. I think that in Italy, much more than in the US, Christ (at least the baby) is the center of Christmas.
Of course, no Italian festa is complete without lots of food. Here you see polenta (corn meal mush, the yellow stuff) with a verza (Savoy cabbage) soup, in the black pot. It was flavored with a ham hock, and the Italians seemed to enjoy eating the big pieces of fat. You put polenta in your dish and pour soup over it. There were also variations on pizza (including with whole cherry tomatoes) and a couple of homemade quiche pies, which, interestingly, included some sliced wurstel (hot dogs).
This is about the same pix as above, unfortunately, more out of focus, but which shows the rest of the small kitchen end of the living room.
The rest of the living room, to the right of the last picture, full of people enjoying FHE "refreshments", including, later on, candy, etc.
Italians are big on these kinds of pictures, more formally showing who was there. This is a part-member family, the father is taking the lessons. Italy is becoming integrated at a very fast pace, and, according to the news I recently heard waiting for Myrna at the dentist's office, fewer people are having fewer children, so kids are prized.
On Wednesday and Thursday we attended mission conferences. A General Authority 70, Elder Johnson, came from Germany for a three day tour of the mission. We had half of our missionaries, about 100, attend a conference in Milano on Wed, and the other half in Modena on Thursday.
Sorella Hoopes made sloppy joes for 220 people, which were served with potato chips, clementines, and carrot sticks. For dessert she made apple cake, on which whipped cream was squirted.
This was taken about 7 am on Thursday as we were loading the van to drive two hours south to Modena. The drive was mostly on freeway, but there was a lot of fog, so we couldn't see much of the countryside.
The church building in Modena is fairly new, and is free standing LDS meetinghouse with a grass lawn and a park in the back, and lots of parking.
Behind the church parking space.
The conference started at 11 am, went two hours, broke an hour for lunch, and finished after two more hours.
President Allen asked several sets of missionaries to come up and share their miracle stories, which were really interesting and inspiring. We were in and out getting lunch ready in the Relief Society room (they don't have a cultural hall).
Sorelle telling their miracle stories. At the end we distributed wrapped Christmas gifts to everyone. Sorella Allen and Hoopes made garment bags (I will tell more about them after Christmas) and Myrna stuffed cute little bags with chocolate, much of which David brought from the US. That evening, when we got home, President Allen asked us to go to dinner at a local restaurant with Elder Johnson and his wife. He was a seminary teacher and knows the Murdocks from Soda Springs, and was a missionary companion in Norway with a hospital administrator from Idaho I worked with
On Friday we made lunch for a Consiglio (council) of zone leaders at the Lampugnano stake center in Milano. There were only 36 to feed there. Copia Salatini usually do this lunch, but her sister was visiting and so we helped them. We made minestrone (hamburger, Italian veggies specially frozen for minestrone soup, and passata tomato sauce) bakery rolls, and Myrna made fresh apple cake, which the missionaries really like.
Yesterday, Saturday, we cleaned house, shopped for groceries, and otherwise got ready for feeding missionaries, nine of whom go home today. As I type this they are in the conference room eating potato soup that Sorella Hoopes made after church today. (More missionaries came than planned, bringing companions, so we had to scramble to enlarge the pot.) Yesterday we also went shopping for perfume. I brought home about ten samples on little pieces of paper, but we still haven't decided what kind we want to buy for each other. It is harder than you would think--too many choices of confusing but lovely smells.
On our way to church today we picked up the elderly sister whose husband broke his leg and can't drive her (the one who gave me the trout several weeks ago). She again wanted to come home after the first hour, but yesterday I told her that Myrna was teaching Sunday School today and we couldn't come home until after the second hour, with which her husband was okay. Myrna gave a great end-of-year lesson, and we came home and made the potato soup for the missionaries who go home early tomorrow morning and one (to Argentina) on Tuesday. They were to go home after Christmas, but President Allen arranged it so they could be home for Christmas, which will be nice for them and their families. As we are longer on the mission we become closer to some of the missionaries, and are sad to to see them leave.
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