in the land of confections

Wonderful thing(s):  We do Institute Saturday evenings for those who can't make it to the regular class on Friday evenings.  As I mentioned yesterday, none of our potential seven students came yesterday.  In all fairness, three of them were involved with the baptism, which followed immediately, and they had things to do with family who aren't members.  One of them was anxious to do the class today, so we agreed to have a 1:00 class.  We had already planned to attend church in Florence today, since part of our responsibility is also to work with the young adults there, so we had to come back to Prato right after church.  However, it was worth it.  Nertil and Xiomara attended class, and our discussion about the Three Witnesses to The Book of Mormon, and about receiving personal revelation as taught by the experiences of Oliver Cowdery, was highly effectual.  Translation:  we were all uplifted and enlightened.  Glad to be here!

Second wonderful thing:  dinner and a demonstration of Family Home Evening with the sister missionaries and a new member, Rafaella, and her mother, also fairly new, Donata.  We had a marvelous discussion.  There was a beautiful spirit there; we were all strengthened.  They loved the FHE, but they have their doubts about being able to initiate it in their home.  Little by little.  We shall see.

Fun thing:  our FHE games.  They were of the silly variety, where you pass the scissors around, "open" or "closed"; and where people try to figure out how the person smelling the broomstick can discern where someone touched it.  Ci siamo divertiti (we enjoyed ourselves ).
And:  the incredible confection that Rafaella and Donata contributed to the dinner.  Here in Italy, we have learned that if you invite someone to dinner, they are very likely to bring a dessert.  What a dessert!  It was called "meringuetta" or something like that.  Let me see if I can describe it:  it came in a charming box, it wa about 10" in diameter and about 3" high.  The entire outside shell - about 1/2" thick - was a crisp meringue, with powdered sugar in a design on top.  Inside was a very creamy gelato.  It was delicious, and it was rich beyond rich.  It was like something you read about in a fairy tale.  Luckily, there was the usual Sunday evening meeting for the youth tonight - but even they could only manage a morsel.  We sent the remains home with a young woman who has a large family.  I'm sure her mom was really happy about that.