Baptism

The APs had a baptism into the 3rd Ward Saturday, so since we are attending there as well as 4th, they invited us. We were about four feet inside the door when the ward mission leader approached us and asked if we could play and conduct the music.  We said, "Of course," and he said, grinning, "I love Senior Couples!" The baptism, of an unrelated sister and brother, Jennifer and Elias, was sweet. It was pretty casual. People didn't dress up. Dad and I made a couple of procedural mistakes (I didn't know they planned to sing with me, so just started in playing; Dad stopped the interim music because he thought everyone was back, but Elias wasn't,) which were received with good humor. The Filipinos sing with gusto; that was fun. The talks they gave were spot on, and not five-minute jobbies but full-length talks. Then the RS pres. had brought egg salad sandwiches for afterwards, but also, a recent convert's family had brought birthday celebration food--a lot.  So, we had an extra meal at 3 o'clock! Maria, they brought Pancit (a thin rice noodle dish with some meats and veggies and a sauce, which we squeezed some tiny limes over--delicious!) and Pichi-Pichi, (a sweet dessert made by grating cassava root, then cooking it with sugar until it gels and rolling it in grated coconut-actually quite tasty), and another noodle dish I didn't get the name of, which was thick round noodles that had hard-boiled eggs and shrimp on top, and tasted as if dressed with bacon grease--not my favorite.) Anyway, there was a big turn-out of ward members for the baptism and it was really nice.

We had planned on shopping for apartment supplies after the baptism, so drove to Cash and Carry, our favorite mall.  It is cash only, has a nice supermarket, an Ace Hardware, a National Book, and a Japan Store, all of which we use frequently, plus a number of smaller stores, without being huge and overwhelming.

When finished, we drove toward home and stopped at the brand new Century Mall, where we had seen a new Japanese restaurant, Kimukatsu. We had their specialty, katsu, which is tender pork which has been shaved very thin, then rolled up with spices and seasonings and breaded with panko bread crumbs, and fried slowly.  It tasted like Lucy (breaded) pork chops, only better.  There were only chopsticks (we found out later we could have requested silverware), but we impressed ourselves by being able to manage them.  The katsu came with wonderful dipping sauces and rice, and was preceded by grated cabbage with three dressings, and miso soup.  For dessert we decided to throw caution to the wind, and Dad had Sea Salt and Sesame ice cream, and I had a black sesame pudding I can't recall the name of, a little white, gelled square with black sauce over it. All was delicious and we had a lovely evening.