OCTOBER 31, 2008 FRIDAY

Prayer at 7:00 and the day began. We are trying to get prepared with the new member lessons for the couple that was going to be baptized tomorrow. We found out later today that something happened and they will not be baptized.
We were all excited about being able to teach a lesson and now we won’t have that opportunity, at least not yet.

The AP’s called this morning and wanted to come over to make final plans for our activity tomorrow. They and the DL’s arrived at 11:30 and we had our planning session. It seems everything is prepared and we should have a good time. We won’t be getting the corn syrup until Saturday morning, but it won’t be any problem getting the caramel made now because of the baptism we aren’t going to anymore. We’ll meet the Elders tonight at the church to organize where all the booths/activities will be so there won’t be any confusion tomorrow when everyone gets there. However, before going to the church they were going to go get some Kababs for dinner. We’ve heard the missionaries talk about how good Kababs are, but we haven’t seen or tried one so we’re going to go with them. I don’t remember there being any such thing when I was here on my first mission in 1963-65. After, we’ll go decorate and organize.

While the Elders were here, we gave them each a caramel apple for them to try. They liked them and also took some home with them. We set some chocolate out for them also and they ate most of it as well as some caramel pretzel sticks and some oranges. We don’t know how they stay so skinny.

There were still a few things we needed to get so we went out this afternoon to find them. We stopped at the church to see if they had a longer wooden spoon we could use to stir the caramel so I didn’t have to get my hand burned off stirring with the steam coming off the batch. There was a bigger spoon there and also a oven mitt I’ll be able to use. On the way back home we attempted to find one more less-active member to invite, but the address was not where we thought and there was no way to get to it in the amount of time we had. So we’ll find him another day, maybe tomorrow.

Well, the Kababs were good, but not dissimilar to the Subway sandwiches you can get at home. The difference is that here they are $9.50 for the cheap ones. We bought the Kababs and went back to the church to eat them because we didn’t want to stay in the shop. Too much smoke and we didn’t want to pick up that smell in our clothes. One more experience in this great country. Did we tell you it is cold here right now. Still a bit of snow on the ground and overcast all the time. We wish you folks at home could have a little of this rain/snow because we know you need it.

We spent a couple of hours decorating and it all came together pretty well. I don’t know if we told you of all the things/activities that will be going on so we’ll just list them here. Trunk or treat, bobbing for apples, musical chairs, eating donuts off a string (no hands), mummy wrap, eating contest (probably how many crackers you can eat in a minute with no water), darts game, guess how many candy pieces in a bottle (winner gets to keep the candy), melt the witch (throwing wet sponges at a chalk drawing to melt the witch), pin the wart on the witch, bean bag toss, caricature drawing (an Elder is a good artist and will draw caricature portraits of the kids), and last but not least, little kids put their hand in chalk (or something) and put their hand on black paper, turn it upside down and draw a face on their “ghost.” Thank goodness there are going to be 14 Elders there to man the different activities. Tomorrow morning we go to the church at (9:00 to make the caramel apples and finish decorating the cultural hall. There was a program going on in the chapel tonight so we couldn’t finish. We have heard that there will be a lot of non-members attending which is the point of this and almost every other activity. Everything is geared to missionary work. We need a CD player to play Halloween music/noise and We thought we had one in our little storage room. When we got home we looked for it and found it. It works great so we’ll use it tomorrow. Diana is now able to listen to German language CD’s and spent an hour tonight doing just that. Well, so much for today. Good Night.