Final Institute Friday for 2017
The young sisters who stayed here Thursday night left just after 7:30am Friday, so we at least got to see them in the morning. The nice thing is that we two could wait to shower for a while after they left, letting the water heater catch up! It can't handle four showers in a row. The weather is still cold, but definitely warmer than the past few days. I went to Conad and bought some food for us, and then we left rather early for the Institute. On the way into town, we filled up our car, as we had been putting a bunch of kilometers on it in recent days.
I had left my laptop at the Institute overnight, because we had so much other stuff to take and didn't know what security would be like at the InterSOS center. Thus I was a bit behind, and spent most of the afternoon catching up on things: posting photos from our InterSOS visit on the Institute Facebook page, sending photos of our InterSOS visit to the church Public Affairs folks, updating our blog, preparing for my Seminary lesson, touching bases with the InterSOS folks on a few followup issues, coordinating getting the 80+ backpacks to our refugee service project Saturday, and sending out updates and instructions on Facebook and WhatsApp for the activities Friday and Saturday. We definitely take advantage of our tech!
My Seminary class went quite well in the afternoon. My usual three students were there, plus one more, Matteo, who usually can't come but made it today because there's no school tomorrow (Christmas break!). We had a great discussion on Priesthood and keys that went overtime because we were going strong. They all learned some new things, and they had great questions. A couple of them didn't want their picture taken, but I took it anyway. We will take a couple of weeks off for the break and then start up again.
Meanwhile my wife, who was tired from the short night before, spent the afternoon cooking for Institute class. She made a pasta casserole with chicken, cheddar cheese (which is very hard to find here), and bread crumbs, and the kids loved it.
Ugo's Book of Mormon Institute class in the evening was wonderful. He is so good at getting the kids involved and thinking. Attendance was quite low, because two of the main wards we cover had their ward Christmas party tonight, and those kids wanted to be in their ward. Because attendance was small, though we weren't sure before the evening, we had an entire extra uncooked casserole that we brought home to freeze and use next week.
Dee made a small pan without chicken for our vegetarian, Gustavo, who was beaming from ear to ear; he really loves my wife!
My in-laws are going through a really challenging time right now, with neither one in good health. Dee spent a bunch of time on the phone in the past couple of days, trying to help in various ways. Thank goodness for Skype, and for family and friends at home. It's not clear how this will work out, so pray for us -- we could use it.
