4 July 2017, Navilgi Ward Baptism, 4th of July

I couldn't get the pix to upload in the last post, so I opened this new one and they did.

Last evening, after visiting the Navigli district in Milano, we had a baptism of Tiziana Origlio, who has the white with flowers dress in the middle.  She wanted a pix of her with all of the missionaries who attended her baptism, so this is it.

This is a pix of almost everyone else who attended her baptism, but not her boyfriend, who was taking pix too.  He is a member, but I suppose not too active, at least he didn't baptize her.  She asked President Allen to do it. She was confirmed after the baptism because they said she has to work on Sundays, so she wasn't there in sacrament meeting today (neither was he).

This is a pix of Myrna and me with our bishop, Alberto Villacorta, and his wife, Nancy. They have lived in Italy for a long time, are from Peru, and have a son currently serving a mission there. We are their home teachers.  They both work as caregivers in nursing homes, different ones, and have crazy schedules, live in a fairly humble home, but have a car, and are very hospitable.

This lovely young lady is Valerin Montoya, who recently received her full-time mission call to Salt Lake City, to work at Temple Square.  She enters the MTC on 14 November 2017.  She is of South American origin and speaks Spanish, Italian, and some English, which I am sure will improve.  We learned there is another GANS (giovane adulti non sposati) young lady from Bergamo who also received her call to Temple Square. Hopefully, we can see them there sometime early next spring.

On Sunday at church, I attended Fratello Angiuli's Sunday School lesson, followed by his priesthood lesson. He was baptized 20 years ago and a year later made the bishop.  He is now the high priest group leader and a high counselor.  He is a plumber who has done work at our apartment. I really enjoy his teaching style.

On Friday of last week and on Monday we went to Bergamo to clean out the apartment we are closing.  We had to give six months notice, but the landlord said if we would clean and paint the apartment and he could rent it to someone else, we could get out of a few months of rent, so we are working on that. We'd like to get it done so our replacements don't have to worry about it.

There was certainly a lot of accumulated junk in the apartment.  It was on the cord to the vacuum cleaner that Sorella Hoopes tripped and fell to the hard floor, hitting her tailbone and head.  Five days later it still hurts, but, hopefully, it will get better, as is her tendonitis.

The strong backed anziani had to take the big stuff down the six flights of stairs.

Sorella Hoopes worked on the kitchen for several hours, which we thought we would have to remove (as we did in Verese), but, in the end, didn't--thank heaven--literally.

Sorella Allen and the two young sorelle cleaned the bathroom, including with toothbrushes.

I took detailed pix of the window mechanism, which we thought was broken and we would have to replace, but President Allen, a dentist who was raised on a farm in Salmon, Idaho, (so he's pretty handy) figured out how to make work, so we don't have to replace it, thank heaven--again literally.

On Tuesday, 4 July, we had the Salatini and Sorella Ney over for dinner.  President and Sorella Allen and the APs started zone conference, so they were in Florence.  We invited the office anziani, but they teach English in Lodi every Tuesday, so we fed them lunch on Wed. with the leftovers. Anziano Salatino brought shiskabobs he bought at Metro, which had really good sausage on either end, which we barbecued using the grill at the mission home.  Myrna made potato, broccoli-coliflower and fruit salads, and brownies and ice cream.  We had a lovely 4th of July dinner together, just us old folks.

They came already threaded on sticks, from Metro (like Costco) and the sausage at the end was the best we have had.

Every morning I go for a walk and see how the rice is doing. I am lamenting the fact I won't be able watch it be harvested in the fall.

I walked past this graffiti on a wall, behind which is an abandoned fig tree, laden with fichi, I won't be here to glean.

This morning a young lady, wearing a vest with the logo of the City of Opera, was out taking notes about the trees the city has planted.  Each has a number!

Anziano Hogan has a cat fetish, he loves them. So, on my walk (see the new leather shoes I bought to hike in Rome) this gatto came up to me and laid down so I could pet it.  I showed Anz. Hogan the pix, about which he got excited, asking why this doesn't ever happen to him.


Ciao for now.