Cleaning up Porkers, Chickens and Roads

Greetings everyone -- We certainly hope those of you who are readers in Utah are staying warm.  We have been following the weather and temperatures there.  BRRRRR!  We can't believe how cold it is.  And also how much snow you are getting.  The snow is nice, the cold temperatures, not so nice.  And we have been reading where the flu is going strong also.  We pray that you all will remain strong and healthy.  We have been so lucky so far -- knock on wood -- neither one of us has had any flu or even a cold.  Except, I guess we would have to count the time when Elder Read ended up going to the hospital for 4 or 5 days for his kidney stones.  Those darn stones are spoiling our record.  We want and hope to keep it going.  As any wife will attest, the worst patient to have is a sick husband.

Remember a few posts ago when we went to a new members house for Christmas Eve?  Well, sister Caryn had another party, a birthday party for a friend, and invited us to come.  She is so sweet and always thinks to invite us.  We love her.  Well, again this was on the menu:

Another poor little porker with an apple in his mouth.  And again, by the end of the evening, he was all eaten up.  Little pig, little pig won't you come in and we'll eat you all up, even your chinny chin chin.

Sis. Dorcas was at the party too.  She is the KK1 primary president and a missionary dynamo.  This is baby Jesus, not her baby, just a baby at the party.  Isn't he adorable?

On Thursday the elders needed to visit their landlord's home to get some money from him for some repairs they had made and he was going to pay them back.  He is a sweet Chinese man about 83 years old.  It took us longer that we expected to find his house and we kept calling to get directions.  Finally he said, I'll just stand out on the street and then you can find me.  I'll be wearing a white shirt.  Well, we turned around and went back about 50 feet and there he was, standing on the street.  He invited us in.  I was murmuring about having to go in because we were already late for another appointment we had, but we didn't want to be rude, so we went into his home.  A very nice home I might add.  Since they are Chinese, they are getting into the Chinese New Year celebration that is coming up.  Their home looked very festive.  They gave us a soft drink and we were looking at some of their Chinese figurines and art.  His wife makes vases and animal figures using a deck of playing cards.  Some of the cards she cuts and then intricately folds them, sort of like Japanese oragami.  The things she makes are just fantastic.

Here we are with them.  I didn't even get their names.  But the wife took a liking to me and couldn't have been sweeter.  She doesn't speak English and I definitely do not speak Chinese, but somehow we were able to communicate.  She just reminded me of a sweet little Chinese lady from the book "The Good Earth".  She had such a cute little, high-pitched fast tee hee hee laugh.  If you look to the left on the picture you will see a red, white and black object.  That is a vase she is making out of the playing cards.  It wasn't quite finished so she said I would have to come back next week and pick it up.  But she did give us this Chicken she had made and finished:

Eloise -- aren't you jealous of this chicken?  They also wrap mandarin oranges in red baggies and give out lots of oranges.  I hope we can bring it home in one piece so you can get an idea of the amount of time and work that goes into making these artifacts.

On Saturday we had our quarterly "Adopt a Road" clean up project.  We wanted to have more people involved than just the youth over 14.  We thought it would be a good time for families with younger children to come to the church and while those 14 and older were cleaning the road, the families could clean the church and the church grounds.  We had a good turnout of older youth, not too many families.  But we were able to clean the road and clean the church too.  So I think we did ok, don't you.

We gave them some ice cream to thank them for their support.  In the middle is bro. Chua.  When I brought out the ice cream, he asked me where the roti (bread) was.  I said we were having ice cream not roti.  He said you always eat roti with ice cream.  One of the elders had a peanut butter sandwich he had brought with him, so he gave bro. Chua his sandwich and bro. Chua opened it up and put several scoops of ice cream on the bread and had a peanut butter, jelly and ice cream sandwich.  He said it was really good.  If any of you want to try it and let me know how it tastes, I'll be waiting to hear from you and will just take your word for it.

Elders, sisters and members enjoying their ice cream -- without the roti.

Here's the whole crew with our crazy Ebon faces.  Ebon's are a tribe in Borneo famous for their head hunting skills.

As always -- we miss you so so much and wish we could see you but we are enjoying our work and loving the people.  KEEP SENDING US EMAILS.  We Love Getting Them.  E/S Read