December 23, 2003

Dec. 21, 2003
Dear Family and Friends,
It has turned really cold here. In fact, yesterday it snowed on and off all day (between sun and clouds). Of course it didn’t snow enough so that it stayed on the ground but it was unusual for Japan. Some of the children in the ward, who came with their mothers to church, made several small snowmen (about 10 inches high) and put them on the railing outside the church building. They were really cute.
We told you about them asking Shirley to help with the food for our Ward Christmas party, last evening. Mom never could find out exactly what they had in mind (I don’t think they knew themselves). But anyway Mom came up with a recipe called ‘hay-stacks’ and they asked her to oversee it as the main course. Hay-stacks are cut-up chicken in a gravy sauce on rice, with cut up onions, pineapple chunks, tomatoes, mushrooms ect. on top, with grated cheese on top of that. One of the Relief Society ladies said she had tried the recipe a few nights before because she couldn’t imagine pineapple in it but she really liked it. And Mom made several pans of desert –a nut crust with a layer of chocolate pudding and a layer of regular pudding and cream cheese whip cream on top. Then we heard that they were asking members to bring potluck.
Anyway the party was widely advertised so as to get as many investigators there as possible. We really encouraged all our English class members to come and many of them did. After the program (which included a Christmas story from Mom); they started to set-up food all over the room and the hallway. They brought in some tarps to set some tables to put the food on but there was no place to sit! So everyone started moving chairs around the room to sit on. It looked so terribly disorganized to us, but everyone started eating. One of our English class ladies said she had looked all over but couldn’t find the