This was a fine week in paradise, and time is flying by way too fast. Here are a few pics from my cell phone and camera to help remind me what happened.
On my morning walk this week, I took this pix of the self service milk products vending machine next to the movie theater and outpatient lab. You buy a plastic liter bottle for 20 cents and put it under the tap, put a euro in and get a liter of cold, whole, unpastuerized milk, which I have never done, and you can buy other things like cheese, yoghurt, eggs, and even a liter of rice. You can even take a rest on the cow chair. Maybe Amber would want one of these for her front porch.
The APs and office anziani cleaned their apartments this week. Actually, Sorelle Hoopes and Allen felt sorry for the office anzani and cleaned their bathroom. They had new missionaries stay in their apartments with them, and their apartments were supposed to be the model for the new missionaries of what clean was, and it was, by them time they stayed there.
The landlord of the APs apartment came over one evening, right after they had gone out to "find," to complain about how they don't separate their trash according to Italian law. I went with him to their building, where the couple who are responsible for the building took me on a tour to show me how the anziani took out their trash (in the big black bags) and did not put it in the large brown bin, in the proper bags, for umido day. It is hard for Americans to realize how serious Italians are about separating trash and taking it out in the right bags on the right day. I promised they would improve. Sometimes older folks, like these people, feel they have to talk to people about their own age to get the youngsters to do what they should. It happens all the time with landlords who call me.
This week we got to do something we have never done, we went to the airport to pick up newly arriving missionaries. We had to take Sorella LoRusso with us, because we couldn't let her stay in the office by herself, and we drove the largest van, and then brought it back with the new missionaries' luggage, while they went to the duomo. Sorella Hoopes had to sit in the back on the luggage, not in a seat or belt, because Sorella LoRusso was sitting up front because of her foot, for which she went home this week. We had to wait about an hour for the new missionaries' plane to come in (it was late and then next day there was a strike), but it was fun to see them come out of Arrivi (arrival), as we have seen our children do, but this was at the Linage airport.
One evening we drove out a few blocks from where we live to this game preserve. I don't know how big it is, but it seems pretty big. It is getting hot and humid, and there were mosquitoes, and we didn't wear spray, but we did fine. I don't think I got bit once.
We walked down this path, which follows a stream, which I think comes from the spring that starts the River Lambro. (I always think of my dad when I read or say it.)
The stream, about which saw evidence of water dwelling animals, with long tails, but they weren't beavers, maybe muskrats.
At the end, before we saw apartment buildings, there were some little garden spots. I am not sure how you get one of these, whether they are by squatting, rent, purchase or what. But there were several, and we seem them all over. When we first saw them out in wild places, I thought that perhaps people grew pot or something illegal and we could be shot, but we have never seen any, that I would know of, nor have we been shot at.
In one of the little gardens I saw something that looks like cucumbers.
So I used the telephoto feature of the camera and saw the cool way they grow cucumbers on this fence, so you can easily see and harvest the fruit.
There were apricot trees, with ripe apricots.
In the wild part there were blackberry brambles with blackberries, that should be ripe soon.
There was an abandoned place with a very large fig tree, which is about to have ripe figs.
At the new missionary training this week, Sorella Hoopes gave her hour long training on getting a permesso.
In the foreground is Sorella LoRusso in the back of the Cimiano chapel, with Sorella Hoopes doing her training the new missionaries.
Sorella LoRusso cut Myrna's cookie bars and helped in the kitchen. We grew to love and appreciate her, and hope to go to her father's restaurant in Draper.
This is the standard lunch we make for the new missionaries at the Cimiano chapel.
The new missionaries recite our mission scripture, emphasizing the word "sta," (is) which means, behold, a marvelous work IS about come come forth among the children of men.
And they ponder this graph, where they learn they are to live in the upper right quadrant.
That same evening we put on the dinner for the missionaries who are returning home (twinkling) the next day. The table is set with the salads.
The APs serve, and we work the kitchen and clean up.
I should have taken a pix of the main course, sesame chicken with mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes, watermelon wedges (a first, usually it is carrots and zucchini), it was pretty good. For dessert there was gelato with cookie. We went in for the testimony meeting, which lasted about 1.5 hours, it is always a spiritual treat.
After which, about 9:30 pm, some of the parents started to arrive, This is always an emotional event, which is fun to experience, and take pix of.
I am stopping right in the middle of a busy afternoon to write some thoughts, before I forget them, but I may edit them later. Last evening, after the testimony meeting with the departing missionaries, Anziano Josh Thompson asked us to be his surrogate parents as the three of us went in the president’s office, where we used our ipad to skype his stake president in Los Angeles. This stake president has never met Anziano Thompson, so we heard his entire conversion story again. He went to BYU as a non-member and was converted and baptized, after a miraculous healing, by his roommate, and then went on a mission a year later. His mother, Tatiana, is a Mexican, who teaches yoga in Rome, and his father, John, is an inactive Seventh Day Adventist, about my age. The stake president gave Josh some good advice and then released him, so he could spend several weeks with his mother and two sisters (one his twin), who came this morning to get him. This morning Josh asked me to go to the barber shop with him so he could get a haircut, because, even though he was released, he shouldn’t be alone. We had known that he wanted his family to meet us, and asked us to have lunch (which meant feed them), so this morning Myrna made enough chicken salad and rolls to feed the world, and it seems the world came. I went to the store this morning as soon as it opened to buy chicken breasts, etc., and it all worked out, with both the Ferraras and Salatinos, Pres and Sis Allen, and all the office anziani having lunch. We spent about two hours with lunch in the conference room, a lot of reminiscing and "roasts" (i never did mention the maggots). The Thompsons are going to visit some of the cities where he served, and are currently arguing about how much time they can spend, as his mother and sisters want to get to their villa, which is an hour north of Rome. His father, who is currently having health issues, comes in tomorrow. Josh certainly takes after his mother, they are both pretty “bossy,” to use her word. Anyway, we will see him again. Myrna has become closer to him than to any of the other missionaries we have known.
Sorella Hoopes and Anziano Joshua Thompson.
This is a pix I took on 21 June, when they returned for his luggage, but without Josh's twin sister (who was bored with the trip and went to their villa.) I took pix of them when they came the day after his release, but I don't know where that file is.
For the going home dinner at the mission home last evening, with the usual sesame chicken, Myrna helped Sister Allen, making the mushroom sauce, etc. Usually the two APs help serve, but there was a disaster to which they had to respond. Anziano Liu, who had been in Vicenza, which is about two hours southeast from here, couldn’t find his passport, after looking through all of his luggage. He decided he had left it in Vicenza at the apartment, so two missionaries got in the car and drove there, while we were having dinner. The Okimoto couple, who live there, went over and could not find it. When the elders got there they thought it was a wild goose chase, but decided they needed to look some more, after asking Anziano Liu to keep looking here. Anyway, after a while they even took all of the blankets out of the closet that Anziano Liu had put up before he left, and found his passport in the middle of a blanket. No one would have known that, including Anziano Liu, so it was certain a “tender mercy” that they were able to found it. Today is a nationwide strike of transportation, including airlines, so everyone has been on edge.
This is a pix of the go home dinner. Anziano Liu us to the left of President Allen.
This is a pix of the go home dinner. Anziano Liu us to the left of President Allen.
The final testimonies were sweet and the spirit was certainly there in abundance. Sorella LoRusso, who went home this morning with the other departing missionaries, was getting around pretty good with her crutches and was not in significant pain. Four of the missionaries' parents came to get them, and that was a touching experience to watch.
Lots of other noteworthy things have happened.
The Ferraras finished their mission, went to France for a week, and came back. We took them to dinner at a new (to us) restaurant (maybe the best we have ever been to), which was very good, near the Locata train station, and said goodby to them before they flew home to Minnesota.
I have been interested in how I am doing managing my diabetes, so on Monday I had a Hemoglobin A1C done at the Humanitas hospital, and on Thursday morning I saw Dr. Giuseppe Favacchio, a specialist in geriatrics and diabetes. My A1C was 6.7%. He reviewed my medications and said my diabetes is in good control and I don't need to take insulin. He said I need weight loss, I have gained at least 10 kilos, and he gave me a diet, which is interesting, because it is not only in Italian, but includes only Italian food. On the way out of the hospital, which is a large, private teaching facility, I saw they were having an exhibit for doctors and hospital folks, like the kind I used to attend, so I walked though it and snapped the above pix. I didn't take any samples though.
On Sunday, 18 June 2017, we were invited by Carlos and Rosemary Mongiovi, my companion, or colleague, as they call them now, from Bergamo 50 years ago, to go to church with them and dinner at their home afterward. It took a half hour to get to the Muggiò ward building, which is a very nice, and relatively old, freestanding LDS church near Milano.
I snapped this at the back of the Gospel Essentials class today in Muggiò, with the missionaries teaching it. The Italian guy with the bald head had red hair, which stuck out straight, and he had funny glasses and a big nose--he was a living circus clown.
I didn't want to take a pix in sacrament meeting, but I took this of the empty chapel after church. It is a fairly large chapel, for Italy, and today it was fairly full.
This was out in the foyer after church, with kids running around and people talking, but they don't do it in the chapel. In fact, everyone waits quietly to leave the chapel until the bishop gets up or the sacrament trays leave, which every happens first.
We went to the Mongiovi apartment after church for lunch, which took almost 5 hours. This was the salad course. We started with pasta, then salad, then chicken and the dish that looks like lasagna, but it was eggplant parmesian, fruit course, and a dolci of chocolate and crema gelato. Myrna made raspberry cookies. You always should take things when you go to an Italian home.
Rosemary Mongiovi and Sorella Hoopes, after dinner.
I tried to take a "selfie" with my phone, and this is the best I could do, of the four of us. We had a good time together.
Today was Father's Day (in the US, but not Italy), and Myrna made me biscuits and bacon gravy, which were, of course, nostalgically wonderful.
And, yes, the biscuits were heart shaped, with Myrna using my cookie cutter I made from a tuna fish can for Valentine's Day. We will leave it in the drawer for the Griffiths, who take our place, and maybe they will get heart shaped cookies or biscuits.
On Sunday evening Anziano Will Osborne came with his family. They have been traveling in Italy three weeks. They are from Utah, he will attend BYU, and live with his younger, and taller, brother. They are a nice family and I hope we get to see him again too.
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