Sunday 12 June 2016

This week we worked in the office doing our normal duties.  On Thursday we wen to Pavia to inspect two apartments, one with missionaries and one that we had inspected a week or so ago, where the missionaries had left it vacant following our going to help them clean (mold on ceiling in bathroom.) We gave them specific instructions about how they were to leave it (clean and ready for the next set or to turn back over to the landlord.)  The new mission president will have to decide whether to put missionaries back in it or have us close it. Anyway, the first (with missionaries) was okay but certainly not very clean.  We worked with them for an hour, on the bathroom and kitchen.  The pair included a big guy from the US and a small Italian from Rome.  Myrna helped the big guy with the bathroom, including cleaning the bathtub and ceiling. We bought some muriatic acid, which did wonders on the toilet and bathtub. As I was standing by the bathtub the elder accidentally sprayed me with water, in the crotch, but it was fairly warm and dried in about an hour. I  I helped the Italian in the kitchen. The tiled walls had not been cleaned for a long time and were pretty greasy, etc.Then we went to the other apartment, the one that had been closed, and saw that the missionary had finished the bathroom ceiling but had not done much else.  You may have seen the defrosting chicken in a previous post.  I had to clean the chicken bones they left in the sink, along with cleaning the stove, etc. They left food in the refrigerator, including milk, and had washed towels, but left them wet in the washing machine (missionaries in our mission don't get dryers, they use drying racks).   Myrna worked on the toilet and shower. We worked for about two hours.

Bathroom sink, they left a lot of stuff, which we threw out.  If this apartment is closed, we will have to go back and do a thorough cleaning. All of the senior couples in our mission are assigned about six or so apartments to inspect.  How much they actually clean is up to them. In fact, our mission president's wife thinks we should hire the work done and have the missionaries pay for it.

Coming back from Pavia we drove through rice growing country.  It was a nice day and I had my camera, so out the window, while driving, I took this pix of a sign by the side of the road advertising a brand of rice, they grow

The sign is for Scotti brand rice, and says, since 1860 we have more value in rice, and to the right in the pix is a field of rice.

The mission home and office cleaning lady, Sorella Cano, who is originally from Equador, has lived in Italy for over 20 years and has been working on becoming an Italian citizen. She finally finished the process, which is probably more difficult than becoming a US citizen, so we had a festa (party) for her at the mission office.  Myrna made her a cake and we ordered pizza.

Sorella Cano cutting her cake.  It is interesting that she cut a round piece from the center and then cut it like a pie--apparently Equadorians and Italians cut cake differently than we do.  Here is the president and wife, Myrna and our guest of honor.

The office elders. The assistants to the president have scambio (exchanges) where missionaries from other places come to work with them and were here that day.  This day we had two from Florence, which included the elder who trained me to do the finances, Anziano Brooks, which he did before I came. He is the second from right. After the festa I asked him if he wanted to come to my office and pay a couple of bills, for old times sake,which he declined.  He is a very good missionary, as all of these are.  The only one not in the pix was sitting to my left, Anziano Thompson, with Sorella Cano to his left.

This sister's husband was the life of the party at our Christmas festas in the ward, of which they are active members. (She was just released as the Primary president and he was in the Elder's Quorum presidency.)  He dressed in a mariachi costume and sang with his guitar.  Sadly, he was riding his bike and was run over by a car and has been in the hospital since a little after Christmas and is not expected to be released until about next Christmas time. He is having rehab and is visited about weekly by the APs, who are also in our ward.  I suspect in the US he would be home going in for therapy a few times a week, but here they do it all on an inpatient basis.  Healthcare is free, for Italians, so there is no need to find cheaper ways to do it, although I think I would prefer to be home.

On Saturday, our P day, we decided to check out Como, thinking that Amy and her family will enjoy seeing in in two weeks when they come.  It is about an hour north of here, so we went by ourselves.  Here are a few pix of that beautiful city that lies at the bottom of a couple of large lakes, which start in Switzerland. We drove in and were easily able to find parking in a large parking garage owned by the city of Como.  We were parked on the sixth floor for about 6 hours and paid 9,50 euros (about 10 dollars) to park all day, which we though was great.  The downtown is all walkable. We headed for the duomo, which is always in the center of any Italian city.

It was sprinkling a little, so we took our umbrellas.  Myrna wore her raincoat, I was just in a short sleeved shirt and thought the weather was great.  At the right you can see the face of the duomo, or cathedral.

The duomo of Como.  They were having a big service in the church, so we went in for a few minutes and realized it was the ordination of new priests.  The guy at the door told us it would be over in 2.5 hours, so it was long. Of course, I wanted to hear the organ, which I did, along with a choir. When we got home I tried to google it and saw that they had had a similar ordination of 24 new priests in the duomo of Milano at that same hour, of which there is a Youtube.  Across from the duomo is a restaurant, with seating outside.  This was  only 10:30 am, so there weren't many diners yet.

We walked down a couple of blocks to the water front. This is Lake Como. The big white guy in the middle is a father swan. These are "wild" and live on the water.

He was watching his wife, who was nearby sitting on four eggs (we watched her turn them.)  the city had put up the barriers to keep the water out, although, unfortunately, there was a lot of trash around that she had used to build her nest.  There were, of course, signs telling you not to feed them.


There were lots of boats, but I suspect mostly tourist type.  They do catch fish on these lakes.  If you follow the lake north you end up in Bellagio, where we went with the president a few weeks ago.  The water up north is cleaner, it seemed.

The lakes (it is like a V, with Como a the bottom) are fairly narrow, with fairly steep mountains on either side.  The mountains have houses on them and little towns about every mile or so.  We took a funiculare (tram that goes up the hill) to see it from the top.


View of Como from the funiculare.  It took about 8 minutes and 10 euros for the ride up (price included ride down).  There was a church at the top of the funiculare in a little town there.

Church at the top. Of course, I went in to check out the organ.  There was no one in the church, it had an organ, which I suspect was broken.

Main altar painting. It was about 10 feet high.

Saint's bones under the altar.  There was a sign which told who she was and that they have only been there since 1998, so they are still venerating bones.

This sign says it is a remembrance of the 90th anniversary of the beautification of Maddalena Albrici (beautification is prior to becoming a saint) whose mortal remains are conserved in the cathedral of Como, which were put in this box to be venerated in this altar, Brunate (the name of the little town), 16 May 1998.

Showing the rear of the church and the organ.  I looked for the staircase to ascend to the organ, and found that in the baptistry the wooden walls had been painted so they looked like curtains, which they weren't, and in the left panel is a keyhole, where you put the key to open the door to go up to the organ.  Pretty tricky.

The big bowl on the stand is the baptism "font."


Myrna walking up the road on the side of the mountain.

One of the thousands of homes, called a villa (a villa in Italy is a single dwelling) on the side of the hill.  Many of the rich and famous of the world have villas on Lake Como.

Looking down the hill toward the lake and you can see another town on the other side of the lake.

Looking south, the other side of Como and little towns all around.

We got off the funiclare as people were getting on, it goes every 15 minutes.

It was lunch time and we were hungry. There were waiters out on the street trying to get tourists to eat to their restaurant.  There are also lots of old hotels next to the water.

We finally chose a restaurant downtown and had a pizza.  As you can see, it was right next to McDonalds (they are everywhere and are always busy, but we have yet to eat at one, although I go to the bathroom in them, they have nice, clean ones) with a Foot Locker store on the other side of the street.

Looking the other way from where we ate you can see the piazza del duomo. There is a large structure to the left of it, which I is, by the sign, where the bishop lives.

This was a street scene, a couple of guys eating ice cream, which is common, but also a little toothless beggar woman.  This is right in front of the structure next to the duomo.

I tried to get a pix of her face, but she never turned my way at the right time, and I didn't want to be too obvious.  You can see in her hand her little plastic cup she puts in front of tourists, who put coins in it.

Around the corner from the duomo is the old (probably from the 1800s) Valdesian Church.  This is the ancient Protestant sect I have written about. They only started building churches in the 1800s after they gained their freedom of religion. There is also a Jewish section, but we didn't see the synagogue.

A couple, probably German, were eating spaghetti at the restaurant across from the Valdesian Church.

We had a gelato (ice cream) at this shop. There is a young African (immigrant, boat people) begging (holding out his hat) in front of it. They are everywhere now in well populated areas of Italy.


Como has been a silk producing city for many centuries, but has been hurt in the past 50 or so years by cheaper Chinese silk.  They make ties and scarves with the silk, and this is a tie shop which is fairly well know (at least to missionaries)m called A Picci.  I bought a yellow and red striped tie for 10 euros, one of the cheaper ones, they had them from 10 to about 80 euros each.

Ties in the shop.

Ladies silk scarves.

As we were walking down the street we saw a museum owned and operated by the City of Como. We went in and the young man who sold us our ticket noticed our name tags and told us he is a member, who served his mission in Sicily a few years ago.  The museum is in an old home of a very wealthy family, who probably owned it for centuries.  All of the rooms were well decorated and now have interesting displays.  This is a very old pipe organ, which has been restored and is played for concerts, etc.  Notice how beautiful the walls in this room are.  The entire museum is like this.  It would be wonderful to tour even without the displays, which were unique and very interesting. This part of Italy has been inhabited by people since at least the ice, stone and iron ages, many centuries before Christ.  You may remember, from National Geographic a few years ago, they found an ice age guy who had been preserved in a glacier, and they were doing tests of his body.  That is not too far from Como and the museum has lots of stuff from those very ancient times. In the following pictures pay attention also to the walls, ceilings and floors of the museum itself, they were spectacular.

Ice age pots which have been dug up, some glued back together. This reminded me of my brother in law, Paul, who liked to find ancient Indian artifacts and glue them back together.

These are artifacts from the 9th century before Christ dug up in the 1970s near Como.

Lots of these rooms with pottery, metal work, etc.

This room did not have ancient stuff, probably because it had so many of its own statues.  The statues had all of their body parts, but had been covered by metal fig leaves, so I suppose this family was into modesty.

Map of the area showing the sites where they have found prehistoric things.

Wheeled vehicle restored.

Glassware predating the Greeks and Romans

Side of a marble building showing writing, from which they are able to read.  This is writing from the fourth through first century before Christ, as shown on the next pix, which gives a description of the writing.


This room must have suffered water damage, but notice the painted walls.

Beautiful marble floors.

Roman lamps from the time of Christ.  When Christ talked about having oil in your lamp, this was the kind he was referring to.

Ancient vestments for priests

Ladies fans, with ivory and nicely painted paper.

More rooms in this family's house.

Clock from the 1600s.

Newer clock. These were not displays per se, but the family's things here and there.

Lots of items from their collection of ceramics.

traditional clothing from Como area, worn at festas, etc.

More clothes from the 1600s

gentlemen's suit from the 1700s, reminds me of George Washington

Many documents from the mid 1800s, when Italy was becoming a Republic.  Prior to that there had been kings with many kingdoms in all the parts of Italy.  This is one, when enlarged, at the top says Victor Emanule II, for the grace of God and the nation, the King of Italy, with his signature.

Uniforms during the Risorgamento, or period when Italy was becoming a country.

There were lots of uniforms, swords, guns, etc. in this museum

Hats also.

Lots more guns, Mark would like to see these, maybe he owns some like these.

this room had wooden floors, which were also very impressive.

They had rooms full of Egyptian things, this explains that these things were from the 7th to the second century before Christ.

These little gods were worshiped.  These things were probably brought to Italy during the mid 1800s, when rich people were in awe of Egyptian artifacts, and everyone had to have a mummy in their house. In fact, the mummy that Joseph Smith bought which contained the Pearl of Great Price had been in Trieste, Italy before coming to the US and making its way to Nauvoo.

This is the family's own private mummy.

Her feet sticking out the end of the sarcaughgus, or how ever you spell it.

More information about her.

And here she is in all her glory.


Another nearby room where there were large wall paintings from the 1600s.

And a large meeting room.


Lots of ancient Greek pottery in another room.

There were so many rooms in this house I cannot remember them all, I think the map says there are some 35 in all.

Outside in the court yard there were larger marble stones from various ancient sites.

Gave markers from the dark ages times.

Rooms full of old stone things, these rooms may have been used for storage of vehicles and other things out back.

A pretty impressive garden out back.

This was a floor, I can't remember whether it was Greek or Roman.


Well, I just found the second post with most of these same pix, but they are a little different.  It is getting late and I am tried of looking at this blog, so I will not kill this one or the other, I will just post them both and after looking at the first, you can skip through the second.  Hardly anyone posts any comments on this site, so I suppose I am just doing it for myself, but it should always be available.  I hope I can keep all of these pictures, and not lose them.  I do take many more than I post and enjoy it.

Ciao for now.