Lucia

Hey Everybody!

  So, I suppose first off, I can follow up a bit to last week's email. One week ago, I mentioned that there was quite a bit of snow on the ground (and there was a few inches). I thought that it was probably here to stay and that it would probably be nice and white for a few months. But I proved to be very wrong, and no more than two days later (likely less), the snow was completely melted. So, now everything is back to normal, which I think is kind of too bad, and it's just been raining a lot instead. 

  In other news, this week there were a number of holiday festivities! First, on Friday we celebrated Lucia, which I guess is a holiday about some Italian saint (?). I'm not entirely sure why it's a large part of Swedish culture, but stores sold a lot of Luciabullar (which are sort of like rolls with saffron and raisins), and on Thursday and Friday the state churches had a few choral productions, where they would sing traditional Lucia songs. Unfortunately, we weren't able to figure out where to get tickets before they were sold out of tickets, so we weren't able to go to that, but instead we found a Lucia production that required no tickets in a park in the city. As it turns out, it was a preschool that was doing their own Lucia show, so the choir wasn't quite as good, but the kids were still pretty dang cute. It was a bit unexpected, but still pretty fun.

  The following day, Friday, we had a branch Christmas party, a Julbord (lots of traditional food in sort of a buffet style). The party ended up being sort of a large pot-luck, but everything tasted pretty good. There were a lot of more traditional foods, such as ham, sausage, Christmas bread, and Julmust (Christmas soda?), as well as a few other interesting options, including curry rice and some hummus dishes (mostly from S's family, so middle eastern dishes). The four missionary's also sung a musical number (Nu Tandas Tusen Juleljus and Silent night-in Swedish) , and the Stake President played guitar and read a poem. Our investigator Marie came also. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and there was plenty of food left over, which the branch ate after church the next day and then we inherited after that). 

  Aside from that, the week has been pretty good, but fairly ordinary. We've been out doing the usual thing (finding, teaching, etc.). It's been a good week, I'd say.

  Hope everything is well with you guys!

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                        Traditional St. Lucia girl