As we all know missions involve sacrifice.  One of the things Sherry has sacrificed is Mexican Food.  Not anymore!  She found some peppers at the renok the other day and they are HOT!  She cut them up and cleaned out the seeds and her fingers burned for two days.  She also found pinto beans and avocados.  So, today she made cabbage and lemon and pepper salsa, guacamole, frijoles (soaked the beans, slow cooked them for hours and hours, added some olive oil and salt - perfect!) and enchilada casserole.  She made enchilada sauce with tomato paste, hamburger and onions and garlic, peppers and we found chili powder the other day.  The sauce simmered and simmered and turned out wonderfully.  

Just in case you think we are just laying around and cooking all the time we also read our scriptures and study the language everyday and today we worked on our CES paperwork.  In an hour we have District Council meeting in our apartment.  Last night we had the sister missionaries over teaching a lesson to a new member of the church and the day before that we had institute class and the day before that we had FHE.  Next week we start Wednesday night Scripture Study Night.  We'll see if there is any interest in that from the members. We're starting to get busier and that makes life more enjoyable.  It's why we are here.  Fun to start to get to know the students.

We found out from our boss (CES supervisor Kosmygin) that we will be doing some traveling in November - an overnight trip to Balakova and a visit to Engels and dinner at his home in Engels, an early morring visit to a local seminary class and an overnight trip to Samara to attend institute and assist with teacher training.

We found out today that we will take our first visa trip around December 11th.  Currently we have to leave the country every three months to have our visas renewed.  That means we leave at 3:30 a.m., fly to Moscow and then to Kiev, Ukraine.  We get off the plane, go through customs and turn around and get back on the plane and fly back home.  We usually get back about 1:30 the next morning.  Not a fun trip.  The good news is that the law changed and new missionaries now have a three year visa.  They still have to leave the country but only every six months and only to get their immigration card renewed.  Still the same quick trip but much easier paperwork and less often.  The church is still trying to figure out how the law will apply to those of us on the current ninety-day visas.  Hopefully the law will apply to us as well and we can make less frequent trips as well.  We fly to Moscow in January for some training...we've been assigned to chair a couple of conferences to be held in Moscow next August for the youth and for the YSA.  We'll get some training for that in January.  We also fly to Turkey for a CES conference the first part of February.  

I suspect we'll have a few more trips with our boss as well.  Still a few towns we haven't visited!  Our boss is retiring and going on a mission the middle of next year so we will have a new boss then - and our mission president will be replaced about the same time.  With these changes and the two conferences we're in charge of it ought to be a busy and exciting year.  Plus, of course, our regular day to day work.  Life goes on...