The Browns: Letter #10

Sunday, October 26, 2008 – Dad – We had our presidency meeting at our apartment at 8:30am. We began services at 10am. But, to arrange for the service we are always in a room which needs the furniture moved to the side, chairs set up, the sacrament table and chairs set up, a desk which acts as a podium with three chairs behind for the presidency. I bring the elements for the sacrament every week and prepare the sacrament. Today I was in charge so I called a couple to do the prayers, assigned the talks with scriptures two weeks in advance and made sure the music was ready. The hymn numbers, hymnals out and the keyboard in place from where it is normally stored. It takes about twenty minutes to prepare. For the sacrament we have one bread tray and one water tray. Normally we put in 25 paper cups on the water tray. Today we had three left over meaning our body count was 22 in attendance. The talks were very special and the sacrament is always a delight. Our 16-year old priest spoke 20 minutes on the scriptures (he is adopted into a white family and he is from Haiti) and did a fantastic job. The other was Sister Elva Orton and she spoke on faith. These meetings seem to be more special and spiritual over here than back home. I went home teaching across the hall, arranged for our home teachers to visit us on Tuesday for lunch (both are young men, one an American and the other from Ghana) for they both need a good meal. The only primary age boy, Curtis, age 11 baked fresh homemade bread for a requirement in “Faith in God” and gave us a whole loaf – so, I gave him a large snickers candy bar and told him thank you. That is the only candy we recognize over here.
Monday, October 27, 2008 – Mom – We had a nice day off. We just needed to put the finishing touches on our lesson for the week. We are going to touch on Halloween just a little, give them some vocabulary words and explain how the Americans celebrate it. Then we will give them each a piece of candy. After our cleaning lady left, we got a taxi and went to the Muslim market and bought us both a North Face coat and each a t-shirt that says Beijing Olympics. Then we bought some souvenirs and tasted some good Muslim scones and also a sweet potato scone with some kind of a sweet and nutty filling. Yum! Then on to Metro for our weekly supply of snack foods. We had KFC for dinner. On Saturday evening, our little branch had a cottage meeting for members to bring friends to. There were 11 non-LDS who attended. We were told it was a very enjoyable evening. They were all invited to attend church and invited to our branch Halloween party on Friday. We were told that it was like the United Nations there because there were people from Ghana, Tahiti, Nepal, Nigeria, Venezuela (The branch president is from Canada and then the American teachers). It is so awesome to see the way the Lord’s gospel will roll forth. Three of the visitors attended church the next morning.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 – Dad – Home teachers came and we picked up down-filled coats.

While we were getting our $30 down coats we saw the “doctor” on the street. This time he was pulling something out of the persons face, on the side. Two ladies were holding him, he was in considerable pain, and the doctor seemed to be working on his left ear or close to it. Yes, he did have his long pliers out – I don’t think anything was sterilized.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 – Mom – We have shared a little about our Halloween celebration in America and had some fun with telling the students about costumes and trick or treating. We show them a picture of our grandchildren dressed up in Halloween costumes. (Brynn, Kennedy, Payton, Londyn, Luke, Brock and Keldon). The students loved it and then I asked them what costume they would wear for Halloween. As they answered, I gave them a piece of candy. We have a 20 minute break between the two classes and I usually go to the teacher’s lounge and am asked a “question” every day. The questions are usually referring to English usage. The Chinese teachers (who are teaching English) told me that they follow the textbook, but sometimes the sentence examples do not make sense to them. A man teacher asked me what “financial crunch” meant. Another asked about how to diagram “looks like and sounds like” when it is in a sentence, for example – “It looks like you have been to China.” I had to look that up when I got home. The answer is – it is a preposition that in formal English should be “as if.” We received a phone call from our waiban asking if we would like to help do an advertisement for milk. Dad took the call and said “I don’t even drink the milk here.” They don’t care; they just want “American.” So tomorrow, Dad, Steve and Elva Orton will have their photo shoot which will appear in a newspaper sometime.
Thursday, October 30, 2008 – Dad – Well, your Dad is a movie star. While mom stayed home and did a lot of odd jobs, the Orton’s (our neighbors) and I were driven to a corporate headquarters, taken to the board room, placed around the large table and were photographed discussing or talking about and with their product (milk) to some of their executives. Even though we didn’t know what they were saying and they didn’t know what we were saying, it was all for show (no sound). After being there for three hours, we were then driven to their production plant, put in white robes, and photographed separately and in different circumstances. I was in the lab, Steve Orton was on the assembly line and Elva Orton was in the administrative area. This will air on a TV commercial sometime. We probably will never see it on TV. But, they are going to give a copy to each of us. We earned 1000 yuan or $150 each. We were complaining how long it was taking until we got paid.
Friday, October 31, 2008 – Mom – Happy Halloween!!! Neither of my two classes today had ever heard of Halloween. They caught on quick to the idea of Trick of Treat. Dad only had one class, so after he got home, he got his clothes from the cleaners and then tried to buy a cake at our grocery store. While trying to communicate to them what he wanted, they started to fill out a piece of paper, so he figured you had to order the cake ahead of time and left empty handed. He was trying to buy the cake for our branch Halloween party later. After I arrived home, we decided we had better buy some cookies to take to the party and met up with another teacher from America and she was with two Chinese students who spoke very good English. We asked them the process of buying a cake here. They took us to a little bakery across the street from our bank. With their help, we chose a cake from pictures and chose a size from a chart of numbers and ended up with a beautiful big cake for $15. Evidently they have a supply of baked but undecorated cakes in the back room. We watched them decorate the cake; package it up for us which included little plates, forks, a serving spatula and birthday candles. We wrote out “Happy Halloween” for them to copy and write on the cake. They had some great decorating tricks. We kept saying, “Janell would love this.” We and Elva Orton shared a taxi to go to the branch president’s house for the Halloween party. So, between the three of us, we are transporting a huge cake in a box, a big pot of chili, a plate heaping with “gorilla poops” (our family name for uncooked oatmeal cookies), and our costumes. We are very grateful for the conveniences that all of us share in America – be grateful!!

The party was quite fun and the chili tasted especially good. Six people from the cottage meeting were there. We arrived home about 9:30pm.

This picture is of our Branch President and his family -- the Brittons. They were the family featured in the Church News in September.

Saturday, November 1, 2008 – Dad – At 8am all of the foreign teachers (approx 25) piled on to the bus for a trip to the old city wall. Today was an annual celebration on top of the old wall with several choices to run all the way around the wall (23k) or a 5k run/walk.

As we prepared to run it was obvious that all the foreigners were up front for the cameras and the Chinese were behind us. They had bands, dancers, acrobats and magicians performing all over the place. All the foreign teachers but one walked the 5k. We all came in dead last. Mom stopped about half way around to protect her ankle. I finished and got a red ribbon. I presented it to Mom. We then got back on the bus, drove to a restaurant and had a nice Chinese lunch. During the lunch there were two wedding receptions – one on our right and the other on our left. The newlyweds would go from table to table being toasted. At first they were both in their white wedding dresses and before the toasting the brides changed to a traditional red dress for the remaining activities. A nice day.

An old man streatching out before the race.