Trip to Toliatti

Last weekend we took a trip to Toliatti which is an hour north of Samara and seven hours from Saratov by car.  It's only a couple hundred miles but the roads are not conducive to driving very fast...mostly two lane and much of the time the roads are full of potholes and very bumpy.  It's hard on our bodies!

We stayed in a wonderful hotel - The Park Hotel - and held a fireside Saturday night.  Elder Childers was assigned to give a spiritual thought and be did a little object lesson and then showed the attached picture of a redwood tree and talked about how their roots support each other...can't help but remember the talk given by Elder Winkel - our friend and former stake president -  in conference.  No one here has ever seen a redwood tree and this is the first picture we've found that begins to capture the size and beauty.  We projected in on the wall and started at the bottom and scrolled slowly up the tree...we kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.  It seemed to work!

The other two pictures are us outside our hotel and standing in front of the frozen Volga River...and one of Elder Childers and our CES coordinator.

Went to church Sunday morning and hit the road home.  We're exhausted but really love traveling with our boss and meeting the great church members throughout the mission.

Sunday

So, today we went to Zavodskoy branch for the blessing of Andre Evgenyvitch Markelov and I got asked to stand in the circle.  Awesome.  And then we planned a birthday party Dec 14th for Zhenya - he is bringing shashlik chicken (which is like Costco rotisserie chicken only flat and different) and we are making a pork roast and mashed potatoes...this is a GUYS birthday!  A RUSSIAM MAN'S birthday!  Our branch president and his wife - who are also Zhenya and Lena's best friends - are coming, too.  It will be fun.

Mom went home after Zavodskoy and I stayed for Volzhski branch because I'm Elder's Quorum President and had the lesson today...my own, personal life history!  I got to talk for 40 minutes about myself.  It was like the best lesson ever!

Plus I got asked to speak in sacrament meeting next Sunday.  Sweet.

And mom is making pizza for lunch tomorrow for the missionaries because transfers are coming next weekend and a bunch of our missionaries are leaving and it's our ZL's birthday today.  I made a kilo of homemade Italian sausage (refer back to the Russian Man) and we bought a whole pepperoni and had it sliced up.

Mom got some olives and fungi and yucky stuff like that, too.

Life is good.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us that means we can decorate for Christmas!  And listen to Christmas music.  And watch Little Lord Fauntleroy, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, and The Santa Clause (except we can't find it).

Christmas is celebrated January 7th in Russia.  During Soviet times New Year's was the celebrated holiday and gift giving for New Year's was the norm...and still is.  The way I look at it is we can celebrate December 25th and then on New Year's and then January 7th.  It's all good! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we fed twenty-two missionaries a nice dinner.  It can be a tough time of the year - particularly for those away from home for the first time.  We made turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy...the missionaries brought dessert and drinks.  The desserts were pretty good!

It takes a long time to feed people here...time to travel to the grocery store, time to cook everything because our oven is really small and time to take the food from our house to the activity center and then set up the tables...etc., etc. The missionaries were very grateful and we told them how grateful we are to them for allowing us to have Thanksgiving as well.  Otherwise we would be home alone and that's no fun.

We played Thanksgving Pictionary...we had each missionary write down something unique that they are grateful for.  Then I picked a few and had them draw a picture on the blackboard.  A few of the unique things they are grateful for include: the applause when an Aeroflot airplane lands, the rolling hills of Oklahoma, crayons, feet, cold weather, yarn, fuzzy kittens and mom...you get the idea.  We then had them write down something they have received that they are grateful for and the the name of the person who gave it to them and what they did to thank that person. They all shared those things with the group.

To top off the day the mission driver left the mission home at 02:30 this morning to drive here with packages so everyone who had one could get it today.  We got a package with lots of fun stuff we asked Hannah to send us...card games to play with students, 200 book rings for scripture mastery cards, socks and knee high nylons and lots of other stuff.  

We are so grateful to be here doing what we're doing.  Tomorrow we get a nice turkey sandwich with homemade cranberry sauce on fresh hot-out-of-the-oven bread.  The new store - that opened here makes the best bread...just like baking it yourself and it's 19 rubles a loaf...like 59 cents or so.  Tomorrow is game night so we'll play our new games...Spoons, Yathzee and Skipbo!