Still Christmas Here....

Dear family and friends, We just got home from church and have about an hour before we leave for the airport to go to Moscow. So this will be a short letter and probably no pictures - sorry! All week long I have heart burn just thinking about putting pictures on here. It's like taking a final exam every week. I have to re-teach myself how to do it and it takes hours. Hopefully someday I'll understand it all (but probably not). Anyway, this has been an eventful week. I'll start off with a little sad news first. One of the senior couples here who are serving as the country directors in Turkey, Elder Nicholaisen, died on Thursday of a heart attack. It was sudden and very sad. They had been serving here in Russia has a regular couple and just got changed to be the country directors three weeks ago. Another one of the senior couples will take his wife back home and then turn around and come back. It brings back sad days of when Ron died while serving his mission. It's always so surprising when missionaries die because I sometimes think that shouldn't happen when we are in full-time service to the Lord. But we all know that is not the case. We go when our time comes no matter where we are. Last Sunday we were supposed to fly to Moscow for some humanitarian training, but there was a severe ice storm that closed the Moscow airports so our plane couldn't leave Voronezh. We ended up taking the overnight train and got there Monday morning at 5:00. (I took some fun pictures of the train, I'll try to get those on sometime this week.) We were picked up by one of the humanitarian drivers and taken to our hotel. We got another hour of sleep before he came back to take us to the Service Center. There we had three days of training with Elder and Sister Holmes. Cheryl, they used to live in your ward (John and Frances Holmes) and know you, The Batemans, the McHenry's and everyone else in your neighborhood. That was a very fun coincidence. They we so much fun to be with and very helpful with the training. Unfortunately, they leave to go back home in six more weeks, so we won't have much time to work with them. The airports were still closed on Wednesday so we took the midnight train back home. It is COLD COLD COLD in Moscow. My face froze, head hurt and muscles hurt from being so tense. We have to concentrate so hard on not falling on the icy sidewalks that my body hurts when we finally get inside. It's about 10 degrees warmer in Voronezh, so we were glad to be back. We did ride the subway in Moscow and went to an incredibly beautiful Mall there. I haven't seen one like it in the US. It was amazing. The pictures I took don't do it justice, but it was all decorated for Christmas and so beautiful. We, of course, got lost on the subway AND the bus back to our hotel but we eventually made it and we're just fine. Thursday we got home at about 7:00 in the morning and had our District meeting here at 11:00 with lunch after. We didn't have much food in the house after being gone for 4 days, but we managed to scrounge up enough for everyone. We had two extra Elders here from Lipetsk. One of them, Elder Guinn, is going to replace Elder Tanner who is being transferred. Elder Tanner is the Elder who is from Carlsbad and has been here for 9 months. Needless to say, we are all going to miss him. He is the life of the party where ever he is. Very fun! The other three Elders are staying and the sister missionaries will be here next Tuesday. We'll have a full house with everyone here. Friday was New Years Eve. We went to the store to stock up on food thinking that we could just call our taxi driver to come pick us up. But nope! He was busy with other jobs so we walked back to the bus with our tons of heavy bags of groceries and then got on the wrong bus. We ended up getting totally lost and couldn't even tell the missionaries where we were and which bus to get on to take us back home. So we sat at a bus stop for over an hour, in the freezing cold, and waited for Zhenya, our taxi driver to find us and come pick us up. That was NOT fun! We had the Elders over for dinner, games and movies. Norm and I had a little harder time staying awake than the Elders did, but we stayed up to watch a pretty good fireworks show right in our playground at the apartment complex. That was a fun surprise. Saturday was New Years Day and the entire city was shut down. We had spent the last three days moving into the upstairs apartment and needed to get some things so we caught the bus for the store. We wondered why is was so easy to get on the bus - every store was closed. So we came back and finished working here at home. (It doesn't quite feel like home yet, but we're working on it). The missionaries had to stay in and clean their apartments so we had apartment checks (with treats) and then they came over again for dinner and more games. It's a lot of partying for one week, but there's really nothing else to do these next few weeks because Russia takes these two weeks off to celebrate New Years and their Christmas, which is next week. Today, Sunday, we started at 8:30 with meetings, had Church at 10:00 and then choir practice right after (I'm playing the piano for Choir). So we got home at 3:00, had a quick lunch and now we're off to Moscow. The mission president is having a mission Christmas party tomorrow and ALL the missionaries will take the train into Moscow from wherever they live for the day and then take the train back home tomorrow night. It's a long couple of days for some of the missionaries, but there is no place to put them up for the night so they have to come and go the same day. It's a two day train ride for some of the missionaries, that would be hard. For us it's a one hour plane ride - I hope the plane makes it this time. Well, that's it for our week. We're busy, exhausted, have sore legs from walking up and down the stairs a thousand times, and living in a little bit of chaos right now, but things are good. We really do love the people in our Branch. They are so friendly with lots of smiles and hugs. The people on the streets are not as friendly but we've made it a rule to smile and say hello (zdrastvuitye) to everyone anyway. This morning on the way to church we got three smiles and hello's back. That's a good day! We sure love you all and hope that this will be a wonderful New Year for everyone. We can feel your prayers for us and want you to know we're sending them right back your way. We are so grateful for this opportunity to serve and do our part in building the Church throughout the world. Thank you for all your love and support. Love, Elder and Sister Frost