Happy Anniversary!

Today is our 1-month Italian anniversary. On the one hand, it feels like the time has passed quickly. On the other, it feels like we’ve been here for ages…living in this hotel. I have to admit that the joy of hotel living wore off after about 2 weeks. I will happily exchange maid service and breakfast for my own bed (complete with electric blanket!...that probably won’t work without a transformer…better add that to the list, too!)

We signed paperwork on our house Monday. Another new experience! We met the owner and his English-speaking daughter at the real estate office, along with the agent and our interpreter. After some question-answer exchanges, the agent began the reading of the contract – in Italian. We had already read it in English, so weren’t too concerned about this part. About 2 pages into it, the owner stopped her and asked if we couldn’t just sign the papers and be done with it! He said something to the effect of, “These people don’t understand Italian, and I’ve already read the contract.” That seemed to satisfy everyone and then Jeremy had a flurry of paperwork to sign. They sign all but the back page, sideways in the right-hand margin. The owner has to sign in all of the same places.

I was impressed by how solicitious they were – would you like the Christmas tree lights taken out of the big tree? We are having the barn space repaired and are renting it to you for free (only 1 paper to sign for that!). Do you like gardening? There’s a place prepared for you to use. We’re installing an electric pump to bring the water up from the well for watering the yard and garden in the summer time. ..a lot of extra things that no one in the U.S. would offer as part of a rental contract until it were specifically requested…and maybe not even then. His daughter even offered to loan me a coat until the rest of our stuff is delivered! An added bonus is that they threw in the lawn care! Although The Linguist was willing to attack the acre of lawn with the offered riding mower, I told him he didn’t know what he was getting himself into (and in all reality it would be me because he’ll end up TDY at the start of mowing and return after it’s over…at least that’s the general pattern!) After caring for 2 lawns in MT all last summer, I felt like I knew exactly what we were biting off – not horrible, but certainly not insignificant.

We are happy to report that our fast shipment has arrived…just 2 weeks after the slow shipment! So on the 15^th when we take possession of the house, we’ll be able to have beds AND blankets! Happy day! Our van is still sitting in Vicenza waiting for the part to fix the window. We were told it should arrive 10 days from last Friday, so maybe just 2 more trips to church on the bus? Last week was bad in that the weather dropped about 10 degrees while we were inside. The walk/ride over was just fine, but we nearly froze to death waiting 30 minutes for our bus and walking the ½ mile from the stop back to the hotel. Rosa wanted a hot bath immediately. The rest of us put on our pajamas and climbed in the big bed together to eat Halloween candy…so it wasn’t all bad!

The Linguist succeeded in getting the coupon book for the gas coupons, but when he tried to exchange those for the actually cards you use at the gas station the office was closed (at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday) because Thursday was a holiday. He also managed to get the girls to YW in Vicenza…which may have been the week’s highlight! There’s a huge, functioning branch of English-speaking youth and adults up there! Pianogurl is now hounding us to attend church in Vicenza. We’re considering it -- but it’s a little over an hour one way to drive it (in good traffic), gas (with the coupons we have yet to procure) is about $4.35/gallon, there’s a $6.80 toll each way and when the fog rolls in, we won’t be able to go at all. Hmmm….

Our other highlight is that we finally have seminary figured out for Pianogurl! We were trying to get permission for her to Skype in on a class taught by our friends in San Antonio, but because of red tape, it just wasn’t working out. We finally learned about a Skype seminary out of Rome! It’s interesting how things work out – no one in our stake here had any idea it was available, so we would never have found out about it without trying to cut through the San Antonio red tape.

What struck me most, though, was the manner in which things were handled. The person in San Antonio followed all of the rules and procedure to the letter, but had she taken a personal interest, she could have put us directly in contact with the teacher in Rome with very little effort. Rather than feeling like a lopped-off branch, we would have felt loved and cared for in the gospel context. Fortunately, Heavenly Father sent another, who did exactly that. Food for thought in the way we approach others in our callings and jobs -- there’s what is required and then what we would want someone to do for us. The choice of which role we play is ours.

I also had another interesting lesson on perspective in chatting with the seminary teacher in Rome. I said something about getting into our house in 3 more weeks, and she said, “You get a house?!” Rome is all apartments. When I said something about youth stuff in Vicenza being far away, she said, “You have youth activities weekly only an hour away?!” In Rome the traffic is so bad that they have youth activities only once every 3 months! And so I was reminded that despite delays and frustrations and more delays, that we are greatly blessed and have much to be thankful for!

So I'm learning a lot here in Italy! Which, I suppose, is the point.