28 May 2017, Typical Week with Imperia

I am sure that to those who may read this blog, of whom I am not sure there are any, all you think we do is go on ausfluges (excursions, or outflights in German, as we used to call them, learned from my German speaking trainers 51 years ago). It is true that in this blog I usually insert pix and write about our excursions, and not much about our "normal" service as missionaries, which is generally anything but "normal" or boring.  So I will attempt to give a brief play-by-play of the week, of which I didn't take many pix, other than on Saturday.

We begin most Monday mornings with an office meeting-devotional at 9:00 am, with President and Sorella Allen, the APs, anziani Brooks and DaPonte and the office anziani, Hogan and Wilson. We sing a hymn, have a prayer and a devotional thought by whomever wants to share something, with President Allen concluding.  Then we talk about the week and everyone's planned activities.  This week started our every 6 weeks zone conferences, all attended by the Allens and APs, and the rest of us attending one,  Tuesday it was in Alessandria, Wednesday in Verona and Thursday in Milano, and again more next week, down south and east. When it was our turn on the agenda, we talked about closing apartments and apartments on which we are paying rent but there are no missionaries in, some 12 in all. We need to meet with the landlord of the one in Imperia, some 2.5 hours south of here, on the Mediterranean, by the end of June. The furniture has been moved out, but we need to make sure it is thoroughly clean.  We decided that we could go on Saturday, our p-day, to make sure it is okay, and, we wanted to see the Mediterranean coast anyway.  I spent the rest of Monday paying bills and Sorella Hoopes helping missionaries with their permessi, and, in the evening, we went to the grocery store to buy things so Myrna could make the dessert, fresh apple cake, for the Alessandria zone conference.  We could have gone to any of the conferences, but went to the one in Alessnadria on Tuesday so we would be in the office on Thursday so the office anziani could attend theirs in Milano, which is also our zone.

At zone conference in Alessandria, Anziano Thompson sang a duet with Sorella McHardy.  They did a great job.  He goes home in June, his entire family is coming to get him and I believe we will have a meal with them, at least he asked us to. We have been close to him since we worked in the office with him, and it will be interesting to meet his parents and sisters.

During the APs part of the program they asked the missionaries what makes them happy, the responses were written on the white board.  Here is Anziano DaPonte standing by the board, and you may be able to read the things they said, not all written in the order they said them.  One missionary, seconded by several, said "Sorella Hoopes makes me happy."  She was mentioned even before President Allen. The missionaries really do like her.

This is a pix of the Torino zone, which, for "official" use (I often take the official pix), I crop using Picassa.

This is the Genova zone, the other older senior couple are Miles and Patty Hall, who are a fairly new senior couple and live in Genova.  In speaking with them at this conference we learned they lived in Eugene, Oregon, when we were in Cottage Grove.  He is a dentist, but worked for Selectcare (an insurance company) and I am sure I negotiated our hospital contracts with him, and he remembered me. We talked about people we know in Eugene, etc., which was fun.

On Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday, we worked in the office, on Thursday by ourselves because the office anziani were at their zone meeting in Milano. On Wed. I payed the quarterly rents for 28 apartments, spending a total of about €78,000 of the "widow's mites."  This process takes about all day and is generally done on or about the 24th of the month.  Every day, 365 days a year,  I also reimburse missionaries for what they spend, like transportation, spending anywhere from €200 to €4000 a day.

On Thursday evening we went to teach my piano student (I am down to only one, who practices), at the Navigli church, starting at 7 pm. We didn't have a key to the church and had to wait for the sorelle to come to let us in, so the lesson started a little late, and after about 10 minutes President Allen called me.  I later wrote this:

MARIA TOLOSA   On Thursday, 25 May, we were at the church at Navigli. I was teaching piano to my “best” student, Samantha Buttoni.  I had a call from President Allen asking us to go to Linate airport to pick up Maria Tolosa, who was a sister missionary until she was released a few weeks ago.  So we left and picked her up.  She was very happy to see us and had been talking to a lady about the Church, getting contact information, when I found her at the airport.  We took her to the Mission home, where President Allen said she could spend the night. They would be returning from a baptism in Lugano.  She wasn’t feeling well, so we got her a wet towel for her forehead, an apple and water, and she laid on the couch and talked with us until the Allens arrived.  We learned that when she was released she flew to Phoenix, Arizona, where her family now lives (they moved from Spain while she was on her mission) and she started working in the Mesa Temple on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, working with Spanish sessions. I told her about Jean and Dean working there on Saturday, and described them, hoping they can meet each other. She was on her way to Spain to visit family, had a layover in Milano, and apparently there was a problem with the airline (maybe like Amy had in Zurich) and she couldn't fly out until the next day at 4 pm.  She is a wonderful sister, and sort of reminds me of Kristin (looks as well as mannerisms).

On Friday morning, Sorella Hoopes had an appointment at the physical therapy department at the Humanitatas hospital in Rozzano, which is nearby.  We didn't have to wait long for her to be seen by a nice therapist, whose English was very good.  He gave her a set of exercises, of which he drew little pictures, that she does twice a day, for tendonitis in her shoulder. The shots of cortisone and the pain patches (lidocaine) the doctor gave her seem to be working, and she is feeling less pain and has better range of motion.  We worked the rest of the day in the office, and I went to the grocery store in the evening and bought deisel for our car, while Myrna went with Sorella Allen to IKEA and OBI, like Home Depot.

On Saturday morning we left at 7 am and drove down to Imperia, getting there about 10:30. From Google I learned there were historically two cities on either side of the Imperia river, which the dictator, during the second world war, Benito Mussolini, caused should become one city called Imperia.  It is an active seaport and they grow flowers, in greenhouses, for use all over Europe. 

The GPS took us near the street in Imperia that the missionary apartment we are closing is on, but there was no place to park--not uncommon in Italy.  I took this pix from the street above (city is on the side of a hill), where we parked, and had to walk down with our mops and buckets, and bags of cleaning supplies, etc.

This is where we walked to the street below, and you can see how close it is to the Mediterranean Sea. It was a pretty warm day. with little sea breeze to speak of.

The apartment had two bathrooms, which were not really too bad, but needed to be swept and mopped, and the sinks, mirrors, etc. needed cleaning.  However, they had shut off the water, so we improvised. (Water from the toilet tanks, etc.)

Sorella Hoopes does an over-the-top job with everything she does, and with a sore shoulder to boot. (I actually did most of the sweeping, while she cleaned.)  We spent a little over an hour cleaning the apartment, and thought we left it in pretty good shape. We left the keys we brought from the office inside the apartment (we were happy the door locked without them), and hope the Halls (a senior couple who live nearby) can go preside over the closing, and we get our deposit back.

This is looking toward the sea from Imperia.  On our way out of Imperia we looked for some beach area we could explore, but didn't see any that was easy to get to, so we got back on the freeway and stopped in one little town that advertised it had a borgo medievale (medieval area), but we couldn't find it after driving around a little.

By then we were hungry, and a place by the side of the road in another small town had a big sign saying they had a hamburger special for €6.50, and it appeared to be within walking distance of a beach, so we indulged.  The hamburgers were actually pretty good and we enjoyed being the only ones eating at their picnic table on the main street.

From the main street with the hamburger place, we walked down some streets which seemed to lead to the beach, and I asked people we met on the street where the beach was, and they pointed the way to go.

There were a lot of orange trees used perhaps for decoration, I don't know whether the oranges were good to eat or not, most down low had apparently been picked.

We had to wait for a train to pass across the street.  The track parallels the beach.

We found a passageway that said it was free to go to the spiagga (beach.)

There was even a free, changing-bathroom place, but there were also commercial places which rented tables, umbrellas and sun chairs.

And there it was.  There were a few people out swimming. We didn't touch the water to see how warm it was, but it was a pretty hot day, and no breeze to speak of.  This is considered the Italian Riviera.  Actually, the famous French Riviera, with the independent country, Monaco, is not very far away, but is not in our mission.

This is looking in the other direction down the beach. There were many little towns along the sea coast, each with their beaches, etc. However, we saw no empty beaches we could explore, they all had people in developed places.  All of the towns were on the side of mountains, going right down to the sea.

So when we got home on Saturday evening we needed to buy a few things from the store, like milk and cereal (I like museli and Myrna likes a different kind) for the weekend, and Myrna wanted to get some flowers to plant on the balcony, as we did (maybe in April) of last year.  We want our balcony to look inviting for our replacements when they come the end of July.

So we went to our neighborhood OBI, sort of like Home Depot store, to buy plants. They had these wood fired barbecue set-ups outside, in front of the store, for €99, and I have seen people barbecue and bake pizzas, etc., in them. Our next door neighbor has one on his deck, and I can watch them from my window in the office.  They are made of concrete block like things and seem to work okay.

It could have been at Home Depot garden area, and the prices were about the same.

But they did have some interesting varieties we have never seen before. Myrna really liked this variety of rose bush. Looks somewhat German.

And they had these weird flowers.  We went home and Myrna planted what we bought, including geraniums and panzies.

We went to church today as usual, and the meetings were good. Sacrament meeting included several of our missionaries, and one young man, Christiano Baiamonte, who was baptized a year ago, to whom I gave one piano lesson (he couldn't come any more).  He is moving to London, England, on Wednesday to go to acting school. In priesthood class (high priest, with whom the potential anziani meet), he sat next to me and I saw that he didn't have Gospel Library on his phone.  He tried but couldn't download it. After the meetings I asked the APs to help him download it and encouraged him to read from the Book of Mormon every day, which he said he would do  I hope he does well, being anxious that he is living with other young men from acting school that he does not know.

From the pulpit today the bishop announced that a missionary, Sorella LoRusso, broke her leg (actually ankle) in two places yesterday playing soccer, and was in the hospital.

So after church we went with President and Sorella Allen to the hospital, in Milano, not the private one Myrna and I have been to.  This is a public hospital, more like what I thought government hospitals would be like in Italy.  It was very big and confusing to get into.  Here is the main entrance of the orthopedic wing, and the big guy entering is Brother Darco, the former Catholic priest who spoke at our apartment a few weeks ago at a high priest social.

Unlike what I thought Italian public hospitals would have in their entry lobbies, this one had a small bank branch office of Intesa SanPaolo, the same bank we use.

The large waiting room on the ground floor was closed, it was a Sunday.

Sorella LoRusso was in a wheelchair in a very small visiting room, and it was very hot in there.  There seemed to be no air conditioning in that large hospital. Many more people, from church, were coming to visit her, so we moved her into the hallway (which had signs that said keep equipment out of the hall, just like ours in Soda Springs, but didn't mention patients).

The bishop's daughter took this pix, with my cell phone camera, of all the missionaries who came to visit Sorella LaRusso.  She had a cast and did not seem to be in any pain.  Her companion stays with her during the day, but goes to stay with the other sister missionaries at night.

President Allen and a few of us went to find a nursing station to ask her prognosis and what would happen to her.  We waited quite a while for the nurse to finish what he was doing (talking to a patient), and said that we would know more tomorrow after 11 am when the doctor sees her.  Sorella LoRusso said she thinks she heard that she may be operated on, in that hospital, on Thursday, we will see.

While waiting, I took this pix of the hallway where the patient rooms are located.  I walked down it to the end, but did not take a pix, as all the patient rooms had four beds down one side of the wall, each with a small TV on the opposite wall, and every bed was full. It was warm, the patients were mostly unclothed, using their sheets for privacy (some apparently didn't care about privacy).  There were no cubicle curtains I could see. There was a large bathroom down the hall, where, while we were there, Sorella LoRusso went to brush her teeth.  I saw an ice machine in one supply room, but it appeared to be broken, as it did not have any ice in it. Italians generally do not like ice, and I saw no sign of ice in the physical therapy place we visited on Friday. Interesting.

I did snap this pix of a sign on the wall in the hospital, about religious services.  It says, the chaplain, Don (the usual title for a parish priest) Renato, as normal, is present every day and upon request will do confessions, communion and annointings of the sick, by calling (an internal number).  The Chapel is reachable using elevator No II, touch Monoblocco B, first floor, with the hours of the holy mass listed.  As can be seen, the name of this facility is the Hospital Agency, Orthopedic Institute of Gaetano Pini (also located on a street named for him).  I don't know who he is.

As we were leaving the hospital, I snapped this pix of the front of it.  We parked in a public parking garage, which charged €6.40 for the hour or so we were there.

When we got back to the mission office we learned that two big missionaries were coming into the office, arriving about 9 pm, and they hadn't had anything to eat since 2 pm, when they got on the train.  The office anziani, with whom they were staying, said they didn't have any food in their apartment.  So we went up and microwaved some sugo I made and froze, cooked up some pasta, Myrna made a quick pan of microwave brownies and we found a new container of gelato (chocolate and panna) in our freezer, and we fed all four missionaries. For our dinner a couple of hours earlier, I had made a pasta with ham and cream for Myrna, trying to duplicate what she ate earlier in the week at a restaurant, and spaghetti alla carbonara for me, on which I am still practicing my cooking technique (so it doesn't look like scrambled eggs--it is supposed to be a cheesy egg sauce with bacon). So that was the week, until about 10:00 pm,when Myrna did her 20 minutes of exercises, while I played a Hauptwerk organ, and then we read from the D&C to each other, as we do every night before we go to bed about 10:42 pm. So, there you have it, a play-by-play of the week, but I am sure I forgot something interesting.  

Ciao for now.