Sunday, January 08, 2017

Dear Family,

I just wanted to take a minute to tell you thanks for all you did for Grandma’s funeral. Kelly, reading my message, Wendy and Stacy, working on the video and Brian, making sure we were a part of everything. We love you all so much and I knew that you all would take up the slack for me. Stacy asked how I was doing since Grandma died, in an email the other day and I told her that mostly Dad and I are okay. I spent the day after Grandma died being mad. I tried not to let it show but later that night Dad asked me if I was okay and I told him I had been mad all day. He just said, yea, I know. Anyway by the next day the anger was gone and the gratefulness was there. Heavenly Father gave Dad and I some peace and what a blessing it’s been.

This week was extremely quiet. The Ottesen’s have been gone; they were daring and took a train to Saratov. They had a compartment to themselves. The AP’s were traveling until Thursday. It is a holiday week for Russia so none of our Russian speakers were in the office. We didn’t have any deliveries either because of the holiday. In fact one day this week, I hadn’t slept well, so I didn’t go into the office until noon. Friday we had district meeting and so the office filled with voices again.

The Avrora Sisters had their assignment change a little so they are going to come to NovoK twice per month on Sunday and every Thursday. It will be nice to have some sisters. Tell Dani to keep practicing her hymns on the piano. If she goes out of the states they will be in desperate need of piano players, possibly in the states as well, depending on where she is located. I know our branch is always very grateful to have a Volunteer who plays. If we don’t have one, we sing acapella and sometimes that goes way wrong. We have a little CD player but that takes so long to set up they don’t usually use it for the songs just the prelude music.

Dad and I went for a walk on Saturday along the Volga. It was a relatively nice day. It wasn’t windy and it was about 25 degrees when we went out. It was snowing, small little tiny crystals. It’s been snowing for about three days straight but finally seems to have stopped. Looks like you guys had it worse than we did. Joel Facebooked a temperature in Brigham City that showed -18 plus tons of snow.

Today Dad got to bless the sacrament in Russian. He’s been working on blessing the bread. He got a thumbs up from President Krivov on his first try. This was a pretty wonderful experience for both of us. The Avrora sisters came today.

Sister Shumway is training one of our new sisters but she doesn’t need help with the language because she is a native Russian. They came to help Maria in Primary. Dad suggested that I go in with them instead so Sister Krivov could actually attend Sunday School and Relief Society. She was pretty excited about it. She has been in the nursery/Primary forever. There were just her three kids today. I definitely had a headache when it was time to go home. I played with the little boy for a bit. Then we all played Foo. One of the girls has a soft ball. She throws it to someone and says something and the person who got the ball either pretends to eat it (if it was something edible) or says Foo and throws it back to them. Mine was a chocolate book so I ate it.

After I write this letter I will start dinner. We are just having the AP’s over today. I’m making a chicken casserole. I can’t do anything in any sort of white sauce because Elder Buchanan has a phobia about that. He said one day he went in the kitchen where his Mom was cooking dinner. She was making an Alfredo sauce. He looked at and thought it looked disgusting and has not been able to make himself eat it again. So I always make something in a brown or red sauce for him.

I decided to make a pear cake using a cake mix I already had. It was a fruity cake. I mixed it up but I was finding these things that looked like balls of paper in the batter. I started pulling them out. I couldn’t figure where they all came from. Then it dawned on me that they were blueberries. I was happy it wasn’t balls of paper. Anyway after mixing the batter I sliced some canned pears and laid them on top. Then I put on a topping that is flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter. It sort of makes an apple crisp topping. You bake the whole thing. It tastes pretty good. This way I don’t have to frost it. I also made some homemade French bread.

I’m really ticked at the little market we always go to. They have been remodeling for months now. Slowly thing are disappearing from the store as the remodel expands. Saturday we went in and there wasn’t any butter, eggs or sour cream. Most of the produce was gone. Workers were inside and making what looked like new cases for the stuff. Mean while we can’t get the stuff we were used to getting. I hope they finish up soon.

Love,

Oma