Time will tell, and I plan to go beyond your loyal Giacomo for an answer.”
“I will shut up and not bring it up till next week.”
“You are also sleeping on the floor till then.”
It was six days later that Luigi and Guido entered their lives. The twins were found at a Mormon mini-temple in the outskirts of Pissaccotta, Italy, by two Mormon missionaries.
The mini-temple was only occupied during times when a stake president in the US sent their least-liked missionaries. This was a well-known practice among the local stake and area presidents and was always humorous conversation at the annual area meetings over nonalcoholic drinks. Although since the church had not enforced use of caffeine, they were now drinking heavily caffeinated sodas.
It was now occupied for over five months since a Mormon ward in North Carolina decided that two of their least favorites would go there for their mission trip.
The two Mormons were on their two-year mission being sent to this dirt-floored mini-temple in hopes that they would see the light of Morona and become better Mormons.
Rupert and Gilly were the unlucky missionaries. Their daily routine was to bike-ride into town looking for any eye contact that could signal someone to talk to and record their names for their weekly written reports.
After a long three hours of noncommitment, they went to the community facilities on the outskirts of Pissaccotta and got ready to head back to their tent inside the mini-temple. As they rode up the road to their “home,” they saw a woman dressed in all-black burlap quickly leaving their area. They tried to catch her since they thought she was looking to convert to become a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. When they yelled out to her, she simply gave them the international sign for personal dissatisfaction. They didn’t take this as an answer and decided to ride faster to catch her and give her the Book of Mormon. As they were starting to stand up to race toward her, they heard the sound of a baby crying in stereo.
When the two missionaries got back to the small tent that they had set up inside the mini-temple, they heard, then saw two babies, very close together. In the middle of them, an attached note said, “Sorry, had to give them up. Please name them Luigi and Guido.”
They each tried to lift one to check them over and found that they were conjoined at the toes. No way to tell them apart since they were identical with deep black hair and bright dark olive-brown eyes.
It was a serious dilemma for two teenagers. They were discussing what to do or was it a sign, and if it was, what did it mean. Mary and Emilio were walking on a path around the town having a lively, animated discussion about no children and on their way to visit Giacomo, the town medic.
They were on a seldom-used shortcut nearing the small valley where no one goes since it was close to the Mormon mini-temple. They were walking past the Mormon mini-temple and heard a baby crying and two young voices arguing.
Voice 1 said, “Rupert, I don’t care what you say, we just can’t leave the babies here when we go out to find people to preach to. It’s not fair, what would happen if someone came by and took them?”
Rupert sniped back, “Look, Gilly, they will be okay. No one comes in here anyway. We will just give them some water before we leave, let them nap, and we will be back in three hours anyway. That would be enough time to tell the ward back in North Carolina that we did our job today.”
“Then we can figure out what to do with them while we have a few Italian beers.”
“I don’t know if it’s right to do that,” an angry Gilly answered. “Why don’t one of us ride into town, at least get some milk, give it to them in the bottle that lady left.”
“Okay,” Rupert snapped back. “Let’s look around town and see if anyone is looking for a baby with toes together.”
“If we can’t find anyone, we’ll bring them to the local midwife and see if she will take them.”
“We can’t bring them back to the US since we don’t have any passports or paperwork since the Italy ward president took our passports and little money to keep us from leaving early! Plus, the parishioners at the ward will think they are ours.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Gilly spat out. “We’re screwed. We have some obligation to take them somewhere. We just can’t leave them here. Maybe the spirit of Joseph Smith is testing our commitment to doing right. Shit, shit, shit.”
When Mary and Emilio were close to the mini-temple, Mary saw that the front door was open with two tired-looking young men in white shirts holding small bags, standing next to their designer bicycles, which later will be stolen by a roving gang of gypsy cycle thieves. The boys stopped talking and just looked at them.
Emilio asked what was going on. The boys recognized him as the well-known pig massager they saw as they peddled around town.
Gilly and Rupert, in rapid storytelling, said, “We were in town preaching and looking for lost souls in need of converting and contributing to our mission. When we were done, we rode back here to conclude our afternoon prayers since we are devout Mormons, and we saw this lady hurrying away. We went to chase her on our bikes since we thought she was looking for us to convert her when we heard the babies crying, and we didn’t know what to do and we thought that they were hurt, so we went into our mini-temple and saw them lying in our tent, so we went over and tried to pick them up and found that their toes were stuck together, and we didn’t know what to do, so we were discussing what to do when you walked up.”
Emilio saw this to be an easy decision. He said [in English], “Tell you whata I ama gonna do. We are gonna take thesa babies from youa so thata you can continua your selling youra Bibles and religion.”
Mary continued Emilio’s start, “You lads don’t tell nobody about this as it surely would not speak well of your mission here.”
“We will bring them to our small home and tell everyone that they are my sisters from the old country, who recently died at the hands of Irish hooligans and that we are taking a lifelong look-after as my sister would come to expect.”
The Mormon boys were now smiling at their good fortune.
Being well-schooled Mormons and realizing that life brought many opportunities, Gilly asked them for a donation to maintain their mini-temple.
Emilio, looking confused as he felt that they should be paying him to take the babies from them, said, “Ima gonna tella you this: we no gotta no money and ifa we did, it no go to you. Ima goina no mention this to nobody that you boysa trying to take advantage of usa poor locals.” He continued, “I will tella you this, when youa gotta farm getting animals, I coma and rubba your pork for youa at a reduced price.”
The boys put their heads together and thought about praying over their decision yet were afraid this couple would leave. Gilly looked at them. “Tell you what, we have received our sign from Joseph Smith and his council. We will let you take the two babies, and we will deny that they were every here. Deal?”
Mary, filled with excitement, said, “Yes, indeed, deal!”
“Here is the note that the woman left us to give them these nice Italian names.”
Once Mary and Emilio had possession of the twins, they knew that they had to find a way to separate them, discreetly as Pissaccotta is a small village. The only medical care they had without
