Week ending November 26

What a wonderful week this has been.  It was my week to make pumpkin pies.  I started with a whole pumpkin.  On Saturday I scooped out the guts, cut it up and baked it in the oven.  Then I had to steam it in a big pot because it wasn’t soft enough.  Tuesday I made the pies.  I put all the ingredients in the blender for the filling and the blender did the work of making the pumpkin smooth. It took about 4 hours to bake 10 pies.

At 8 p.m. on Tuesday we went with the Assistants to the President to visit a newly baptized member.  We were able to share our testimonies about the importance of serving in the church.  Then we invited the A.P.’ back to the apartment to sample one of the pies.  They were kind enough to take seven of the pies in to the Mission Home for us that night.

The last two pies we took to work on Thanksgiving Day to share with those we work with in the Archives.  None of them had ever tasted pumpkin pie, and their reactions varied from loving it to uncertain. 

We only worked for half a day on Thanksgiving.  We came home and I made dressing for the dinner and wrote in the blog “If you grew up in Grays Lake”.  I’ve been working on this for about a week, sharing my memories of growing up in Wayan. 

We had Thanksgiving Dinner Thursday evening at the Mission home with about 38 missionaries including senior couples from all over Scotland, elders and sisters from Edinburgh area, and President and Sister Griffiths.  What a wonderful dinner and evening it was.  The food was wonderful.  We had turkey, ham, potatoes, dressing, yams, several salads and of course, pumpkin pie.

On Saturday we visited the Georgian House, in the "New Town" area of Edinburgh [new meaning late 1800's).

The building you see is actually the exterior of several town houses all built together to give the impression of elegance.  The inside rooms were very nice,

but when you go downstairs to the servants area you begin to understand the hard life they lived to try and keep the wealthy happy and full.

Girls were forced into servitude at the age of 11 and had to work 18 hour days.  Servants learned to respond to the sound of the bell to take care of their masters needs.  It was an interesting presentation.