March 4

March 4

Sunday—Since the music is rare in this ward, I ended up playing the piano for sacrament meeting.  I wished I had of taken advantage of Organ lessons while is college.  I had a great conductor.  I could always get his downbeat but I did have a problem or two with time in the opening song.  I mean those dotted 8^th notes in a couple of places in the chorus.  I just know it is page 28 in the German hymn book, which is not the same as ours.  The last song is a german hymn which I had never heard before.  I played it about 6-7 times for prelude, so had it pretty good, with just a few mistakes.

I am more than happy to be playing the piano.  At least there is something I can do besides cooking, and even that is going by the wayside.  When all the Young Adults live at home they eat before they come.  So we are switching to snacks.  Any recipes anyone, to serve about 12 people.  Sweet, sweet and salty, salty, herbs—any flavors will do just not to complicated.  However, I am cooking for next weekend for about 50.  The request is chili.  The chili in the cans here are way to sweet.  They add sugar.  But there is a recipe that I am going to use as a base, that should not be as sweet.  Although their tomato sauce is also sweet, so I am going to have add some cocoa powder to neutralize it.  I made enchiladas which were a big hit.  The meat was seasoned just right.  Lots of spice but not a lot of heat.  It was the tomato sauce that I really struggled with.  I made cream of potato and carrot soup that was scrumptious.  Then served it with bread and apful strudel for desert.  However, they drag in late and if they eat it cuts into institute instruction time.  They have a new and great teacher.  He is really the most important.

Cleaned out the closets yesterday.  We have one designated area, but the couple before us had a little problem with purchasing and hording all over the church.  The bishop was glad that I was gathering it into one spot…  It allowed me to take inventory of what we have.  There is enough plastic ware to supply a small army for a year.  There are as many napkins.  It fills the majority of two of the three shelves.  I think because it was so spread around she didn’t know what she had so kept purchasing.  There were large bottles of ketchup hidden in the back.  The problem with purchasing in bulk like that is, it doesn’t get used and the viable date comes and goes.  There is quite a collection of supplies like spices.  I need to find recipes for snacks to use them up, like herbed nuts.

When I fixed my apful strudel they really liked it but thought it tasted like Christmas because I put cinnamon and cardaman in it.  The girls were unfamiliar with the flavor, but liked it.

It is humble time.  I am getting so tired of not being able to even understand a 4 year old child.  I recognize the words, but I cannot keep their meaning in my head.  I have been working on D & C chapter 4 for two weeks.  I think I have the first two verses memorized and am ready to move on.  I know the meaning of them.  I have them memorized in English, but the words start falling out of my head.  When I read things and have the vocabulary words I feel pretty good.  I guess I just am not a linguist.  But I am not giving up.  Part of the problem is no one speaks with Hoch Deutsch.  Everyone has thick dialects.  You know—instead of zwei for two I suddenly am hearing zwoe and wondering what it is until I make the connection that there are two minutes to the next bus and Norm has just said, zwoe minuten.  And they talk so fast I cannot even separate the words.  Oh, yes and ee for ich.  The list goes on.  Oh yes, and they train us in using Sie, not the Du sprache.  So all the verb endings are different, and they often drop the endings anyway.  I keep listen and trying to discern what they are saying.  About I consistently recognize is the verbs and “genau!”  However, if they are talking about a subject I am familiar with, I can often follow the jist of the conversation.  So Norm does the talking for both of us.

Last night the elders came home to an apartment that had been burglarized.  The drawers had been dumped and everything strewn around.  They only found two watches stolen. Elder Rosenvall had about a $10 Walmart watch that doesn’t even keep time very good, but Elder Graff who will be going home in two weeks lost a very nice watch given to him by his father, so he Is a bit bummed over that.  I guess someone was burglarized in the same apartment building about a week ago.  They say that they are basically cat burglars.  They go in dump everything out looking for quick cash, or something they can sell quickly for cash.

They all have the buzzer at the entrance and are pretty secure that way, but if someone just lets them in we are all vulnerable.  Our building is divided into units of 6 floors.  The bottom is strorage and washing, bike storage and garbage.  It looks like there is about 20 apartments.  So they really should be pretty secure.

Love Mom and Dad.