Oh my heck so Steven Marsh (Donna's son) just got home and he went to the post office and brought home all this mail for us. I got a Christmas card from the Nelsons, and Laura and Josh, and Grandma and Grandpa, and I got letters from two returned sister missionaries who served in Orange County, Sister Denney and Sister Cooper, and I am just so happy.
MOM AND DAD! MY HECK! Thanks for the camera!!! I already totally opened it. And the case! And the memory card! It is a sassy foxy red. I love it. I love all of you! Merry Christmas! I love taking pictures! Oh my heck!
So, we showed up at Puerto Rican Mommy's house yesterday and her pipes had froze. She was outside with her brother, cutting off the insulation. The water pipes are on the outside of the trailer house, and so we were pulling sopping wet insulation off and throwing it into the snow. The copper pipes had cracked in several places and leaked water when the water was on. They left to buy more pipe and my comp and I graciously accepted the assignment of cutting out the wet patches of insulation so they could preserve as much as they could, becuase new insulation in great amounts is hard to come by in a small island town like this. We called the elders quorum pres while Puerto Rican Mommy and Puerto Rican Brother of Mommy were gone, and the E.Q. President went and met them at the hardware store and bought the right pipe (not copper, cuz copper would just freeze and crack again, it was some plastic or something, pex or plex or I dunno, it's blue, this would freeze but NOT crack) and they all came back together and he had all the right tools and he put up the new pipe in about five miinutes and then took off and we just had to put insulation on it all over again. It was fun. We were glad we showed up when we did. Then we had to be at a dinner appt in a little bit so we wanted to read from the Book of Mormon with Puerto Rican Mommy but she um, haha, hates reading and so we said what about a MOVIE? And she said, I'll make the popcorn. We went out to our car and guess what we found, Mr. Kreuger's Christmas. So we watched that with her, and it was a great Christmas message.
Two caroling adventures---first was with the young womens. Pres Marsh (AKA Kirt) hooked up his skiff (that had snow and ice packed in it and had to be dug out from the side of the house) to his truck and the girls and the leaders and US piled inside the boat and he drove all around town and we caroled to certain awesome people and to anyone we saw walking on the street. SECOND, was Saturday night with our branch mission leader and a few other people, and we caroled to the MAYOR and people like THAT, and they mayor's wife gave us a Norwegian treat, called Krum kaka. It looks like an ice cream cone. You must remember Petersburg was like, founded by Norwegians and there's lots of heritage.
Julebaching.
Pronounced yule-a-bukking. The shopkeepers put out free food and drinks and the whole town mills around eating and greeting and being merry christmas and all that. Yesterday, we had the weirdest thing of all. Spika chik. It might be native, not Norwegian. Okay so we walked in and they had two great punch bowls of "moose milk" (it was just eggnog with nutmeg, WITH BOOZE and NO BOOZE...they gave us NO BOOZE, I told them they had BETTER cuz um excuse me WE ARE MISSIONARIES, they laughed, we have a good repoir in this town). And in front of the bowls of moose milk were um, two DEER legs. They had been cured with salt. Did I say that right? I dunno, packed with salt, and the salt is what cooked them. So, it looked like dark reddish fibrous meat still on the bone, oh my heck, we used a knife and cut us each out a piece and we were late to our 3pm dinner (the FIRST one we had on Sunday, we had a second one at 5 pm with nonmembers, we almost died of hugeness) and so we walked briskly through the 12 degrees frigidness back to our car chewing spik a chik and it was DISGUSTING it tasted like salty, bloody raw meat. Sister HATFIELD spat hers out, but I totes downed it and swallowed nearly all my moose milk. OM NOM NOM. Fun adventures. We also went julebaching at Lee's clothing (the spik a chik was at a pretty lil shop called wild celery) and got pickled herring and lefsa....norwegian stuff. Lefsa is this soft bready cinnamon thing.
I MUST GO I LOVE You! We gotta go carol to the old people with the Oxford Carolers!
LOVE SISTER ASHBROOK
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