This Sunday I got a calling, after seven and a half months in the ward. Elisa was pretty happy. He always gets off easy. I’ll be the Sunday school president. I have to admit, that’s a pretty fun calling. You just have to make sure the classes are covered (which I haven’t done yet for this Sunday) and do some teacher workshops. I am really excited for Chad because I know he loves this calling. I would really like to be able to teach some of the classes myself. That’s extra incentive for me to study my German.

On Sunday evening we had the Baumanns over for dinner. It was a terrible day. Elisa promised to make banana creme pie. It was more for me than for anyone else. The pre-made crust burnt though. We didn’t have shortening for making a proper homemade crust. Tears were shed. The butter crust refused to roll out and then it just didn’t cook well. On top of that, Swiss ingredients make cooking some of my favorite recipes more challenging. The cream of chicken that we were going to use is usually condensed in a can. But here we buy dehydrated packages. It was so thin, and we knew it wasn’t going to work out. We did all sorts of mathematical computations about how much water we should be adding, or how much corn starch, or how much rice, etc. It just got more stressful all the time. I finally had to take a time out. Chad hates when I do that. But I didn’t want to take it out on him. I don’t like leaving the kitchen while Elisa is stressed out. But when I did, dinner seemed to start going a lot better. I just took my frustrations out on the kitchen. And the result was a very delicious dinner. The banana creme pudding came out fine, crust-free.

Baumann’s have two kids. Elisa told their oldest that the chicken curry dinner was yellow for the sunshine that day. She wanted to get him excited about the bright yellow color so he wasn’t afraid to eat the curry. She’s such a psychologist. Apparently during the meal (which he ate) he said to his mom in Swiss-German, “This really is sunshiny!” I like Milo–he’s awesome.