Winter again

All of a sudden it got cold again, as we had assumed would happen at some point. We had been comfortable with light jackets and even shirtsleeves for a while, but Thursday the high was in the 40s, so back to sweaters and heavier jackets. In the morning I ran down to the Chinese store and bought a mouse pad with a fun design of a 200 euro bill (I've never seen one, not even sure if that's a thing!):

My mouse had started having some trouble on my solid-white desktop, and the mouse pad seems to help. In addition I bought a triple plug adapter. Here in Italy they have three different kinds/sizes of AC plugs, and there is no rhyme or reason (as far as I can tell) as to which wall outlet will have which type. In one of the rooms at the Institute, we just found that our outlet strips wouldn't plug into the walls. This adapter fixes that. It's only 1.5 euros, but it's a pain to have to keep so many types of adapters.

We had district meeting in the morning, which was our first with Anziano Ferrara (he's American, with Italian ancestry) as our new district leader. He's very good, and we enjoyed the meeting quite a bit. After a lengthy review of how things were going, we discussed goals and plans, and he had each pair of missionaries set some goals, which we did. He did some good teaching and challenging, which we enjoyed very much.

Then we drove downtown to Institute, where we spent some time preparing for our lessons. At 3:30pm we had a campus council meeting, with four of the six GANS leaders present in person, plus one on the phone. It was the largest such gathering in some time. Ugo was also there. The meeting was quite productive, discussing the upcoming schedule of events, plus reviewing how things are going and making some assignments. These are great kids to be around! We had a St. Valentine's dance planned next month, but the bishop of the building where it was to happen had inadvertently double booked it, and so we lost our slot. Still trying to figure out what to do on that one.

One of our GANS, Dario, is going through a real tough time, in addition to being sick for a few days. His dad is no longer in the picture at all. His mom is going through chemotherapy, and things aren't looking good. This is an only child, just out of high school -- hard to imagine how tough that is. He is a convert of slightly over a year, and his ward has been very helpful to him and his mom. We're trying to be supportive in every way we can think of. I've been messaging with him all week to see how he is feeling, giving him a few tips on OTC meds to take, and fortunately he seems to be doing much better physically.

In the evening my wife gave her family history class, with the Magnantis (who had us over to lunch yesterday) joining in the online festivities. I was only present for the first 15 minutes, but Dee seemed to have everything well in hand. Getting used to presenting using Zoom takes a while, and we did a dry run for her to set up all the tech again.  I left her class to make myself available to teach English if the Ganziani needed to break the class into two groups. Turned out they didn't need me, and their class had a great time -- the laughter was almost continuous as they went through different language scenarios. Anziani Osmond and Waddell seem to be born entertainers! So I had an hour to work on my lessons for Friday, which was needed. By the time we got home I was exhausted, after a long day.