Sister Piccinelli's Old Friend

The Manti Temple where our family was sealed.

We got to feed the missionaries this evening. That only happens a time or two each year. There were three of them this time. One was from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. His English is amazingly good. Another has an Italian surname, but he's actually from Argentina. Go figure. The third is a big Samoan boy -- from Hawaii! A story goes with it, of course. His father is retired military and chose that place to retire.

It's always great to have those young guys in your home. They really do bring a good spirit with them. Our mission president told us to use that fact. A couple of months before my mission ended, he instituted The Concentration Visit. He said that, because they have not yet received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, our contacts cannot always have that Spirit of Truth with them as they ponder what they've read and what we've taught them. Therefore, said President Dan Charles Jorgensen, we will start taking the spirit with us into their homes every day, whether we have an appointment or not. We would concentrate on keeping the spirit in their lives and homes as much as possible while they were being taught.

This scared me. I have always been timid about being pushy with people. I'd rather not talk with them at all if my presence is going to annoy them. Besides, the Italians are hyper-conscious of courtesy and notice any breeches of it instantly. It was going to take faith for me to do this thing. But I had never baptized anyone yet and I had only two months left, so I thought I'd give the mission president's idea a try.

Elder Madison Upshaw Sowell and I had just started teaching a young couple named Piccinelli. She was expecting their first child. He was an inlaid floor artisan and did gorgeous work. Sometimes we'd drop by in the evening, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. But we were there in their home at least once in every 24-hour period. At first I couldn't tell how it was affecting them. They didn't seeem annoyed, but they did seem surprised a couple of times.

Then one afternoon Elder Sowell and I rang the doorbell and were met by a smiling, exuberant Sister Piccinelli. She seemed anxious to tell us that she was gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon. "Every day, after I finish my housework," she said, "I think 'What can I do now?' And then I remember the Book of Mormon lying by my bed. I run to get it and it's like meeting an old friend!"

As delightful as this was, we still worried, because Brother Piccinelli, while a very nice fellow, was much less demonstrative and didn't seem that excited about what we were teaching them. We just kept on going over there every day or evening. Then, when the time came for us to challenge them to be baptized, they both said yes! I hardly knew what to do. I'd been out for 23 months and this had never happened before.

We had only been in the city of Varese for a short time. Not only did we not have a baptismal font, we didn't even have a chapel. We were meeting in a rented room. About 6 to 10 people were coming to church each week. Elder Nielsen was the district leader. I was told that I was the Sunday School president. Apparently a sunday school was an even smaller division of the Church than a branch! I'd never known this before.

We had to take a bus to the city of Como, the same mountainous place with the gorgeous lake where Churchill used to go to paint (and where the honeymoon scenes for Anakin Skywalker and the princess were filmed.) There the tiny branch had a collapsible baptismal font made of tightly woven cloth supported by a metal frame. There we baptized and confirmed the Piccinellis.

I called them once when I got home to Idaho, but it was expensive and, besides, I was soon distracted by other things, most of them female. I wondered for many years about the Piccinelli family. How did their baby's life turn out? Did they remain active in the Church? A couple of years ago I decided to Google Elder Sowell's name and several things came up including his email address. Did he have some news for me!

He had been back to Italy as President Sowell of one of the missions there! There were now lots of Piccinellis in the Church. Apparently, the original couple whom we'd baptized had moved to Australia! I was almost choking as I struggled to take all this in. Elder Sowell even said that he'd said kind things about his old companion in a recent talk over there. As Alma and the Sons of Mosiah might have said, "my joy was full."

Now comes the cherry on top. President Monson announced during conference earlier this month that a temple will be built in Rome! It was that same great man, Elder Monson, who explained to my stake president and his wife that their son and the rest of us in Italy in the early seventies were chiefly sewing missionaries. Most of the reaping would come later. What had we sewed? Well we had passed out lots of pamphlets and given many a discussion or Family Home Evening. But the thing we tried hardest to do, even competing mission-wide to do it more than anyone else, was to "place" copies of the Book of Mormon with as many Italians as we possibly could. We each placed hundreds of them in the course of our two-year missions. Sister Piccinell's "old friend" must have befriended many, many more Italians over the past 35 years.

The Savage Mako

Erik Green tries out the Mako.

This is destined to disappoint those who wish that Brother Jim (or Uncle Jim or Grandpa Jim or dad Jim or son Jim or whatever he might be to you) would lighten up already about the guns. I regret to inform you that such a day will never dawn.

There are several reasons why I enjoy firearms.

They are Historical. Perhaps no human invention has been used to make more history, good and bad, than the firearm. Ships, trains, planes, terraced farming, the telegraph, the telephone, television, radio, and the internet all put together would be hard pressed, I think, to make more history than have firearms.

Firearms are more reliable than just about any other human invention. True, there are enough break-downs to keep lots of gunsmiths busy in any population of 100,000 or so, but that's nothing compared to the rate at which our cars and trucks need repair or new parts. I have one rifle about which I recently wrote a post which is 108 years old and still going strong.

Firearms are as lovely as swords, as elegant as dress daggers, as versatile as a P-51 Mustang, and as handy as a walking stick.

This one is called the Savage Mako. The maker, Savage, has been around a long time, more than a century, I'm sure. This model, called the Mako, has a bull barrel (heavy and untapered) which is meant to minimize the vibration which does occur microscopically in any barrel as the bullet moves though it so quickly, rather like turning on the hose suddenly and watching the end of it flip wildly around on the grass for a few moments. This microscopic flipping around can ruin accuracy, thus defeating the purpose of the firearms. Hence, bull barrels and the modern synthetic reinforced barrels to minimize all that vibration.

Since this model was named for the Mako shark, the cut-outs in the forearm are in the shape of sharks' teeth and two representations of sharks are visible on the stock, one on the right side of the receiver, the other on the grip cap.

Savage has patended a device they call the "Accu-trigger." This allows the trigger pull to be very light, thus minimizing unwanted movement at the moment of firing which can ruin accuracy. It also avoids unintended discharges, since the safety in the trigger itself must be depressed all the way back to the face of the trigger before the trigger's rearward motion can begin.

The thumbhole stock is far from a new affectation, but it's fun and gives the shooter a detectable measure of increased confidence in the grip. Besides, it looks really cool and I'd never owned one before I got this one in November of 2006.

It shoots, too. Witness the group my wife fired in my blog about my reasons for being proud of her. As a final testimony of its prowess, here is a target which I fired at 25 yards not long ago. The first two bulls were not too impressive. But when I got my head together and really concentrated, the third bull shows what the rifle was capable of all along. There are three shots there!

There Is Beauty All Around

Aesthetics have always pleased me. As child I was blessed with parents who filled our home with many kinds of good music. My mother decorated our walls with John James Audubon. She taught us what Currier &Ives prints were. I recall sitting by her as a small fellow and looking at the book of Grandma Moses art she was perusing.

Even as a little boy I could tell that there was something entirely different and altogether appealing about the faces of little girls. My upbringing allowed us time to stop quite literally to smell the roses and every other type of flower. We learned the names of many of them.

Since I was not blessed to be a painter, sculptor, or any other type of artist, the Lord saw to it that I would be blessed to possess the works of many who were so blessed. I love to leaf through books of the prints of famous artists and illustrators. I have a fairly extensive collection of recorded music. And I can take pictures. Dear old Harold Nielsen taught me how to wield a camera so as to preserve that which pleased me about a scene or a face. Here are a few of my favorite faces and things, all of them beautiful to me.