Braided apple strudel

We are both getting better: a lot less coughing today, but it seems to hang on forever. It was cold, dropping down to freezing overnight and a high of only 11 degrees C (52 F) during the day. Fortunately our apartment is reasonably warm; the heating during the day seems to help overnight. We are getting pretty comfortable with centigrade temperatures, including programming Alexa and Google Home to give temps in centigrade. In the morning we went to Lidl to do some food shopping, both for us and Institute, then got downtown a bit early. 

My knee has been hurting me a fair amount the last few days, and today it was much worse. There's a bump on the front of the tibia about a two inches below the kneecap, sore to the touch and painful when standing up and sitting down (not too bad just standing or sitting). Very odd, because there is no muscle or fat there, just skin and bone. Hopefully it will pass. I've been taking a bunch of ibuprofen to try to keep the pain and any swelling down.

Dee is awesome in the kitchen! She spent the afternoon on a wonderful treat for FHE tonight: apple strudel. She bought the dough and prepared the apples, then braided the dough by cutting and folding it just right. Pinterest is her best friend these days.

Of course it was all devoured. 

A couple of sister missionaries from out of town (Terni) came by the Institute for much of the afternoon. It was their P-day, and they got warm, had internet access, and enjoyed some chicken soup my wife had just made. We made some friends today.

About half a dozen kids showed up for FHE, which is typical, followed by two rousing games of Cover Your Assets, the final one of which was won by my wife.

My lesson was on Eric Liddell, the Scottish sprinter who was the main character in the movie Chariots of Fire. These kids are too young to know the move or the story, though a few of them had heard of it. What makes the story special to me, beyond the wonderful devotion he showed to his faith by refusing to run in his favored event at the 1924 Olympics because the final was on a Sunday, is that in the late 1980s I became friends with a man from England who had known him. After the Olympics, Eric went to China as a Christian missionary. When WW II broke out, the Japanese captured that part of China, and Eric spent the war in a brutal prison camp, where my friend was a youngster whose parents were also there as Christian missionaries. My friend (I don't remember his name now) cried as he told the story of how Eric was his hero: Eric was always encouraging and counseling the kids, and he gave most of his food to the kids. He ended up dying of a tumor brought on in part because of his malnutrition, in effect sacrificing his life for the children. I have read a biography of Eric Liddell, and the way he gave his life to Christ is very inspiring.

Tonight missionary transfers were announced, and our two Ganziani are staying for at least another six weeks. We are delighted, as they are very good missionaries and easy to work with. The missionaries in our ward are being cut back from two sets of elders to one pair, as fewer new ones are arriving this week -- the numbers in the mission go up and down a bit throughout the year. There will still be a pair of sister missionaries in our ward. A transfer is quite a logistical and financial exercise, with almost 60 missionaries out of about 200 moving later this week. The mission office staff (senior couples) arranges most of the air/train travel because the mission is so large geographically. Fortunately, we senior couples don't get transferred!