Loving Russia!

Hi everyone,

We had a great week! The weather is the coldest it's been, everyday below zero, but everyone's out and about and life marches on. We, of course, love our P-days here. It's always a day of fun, games, food, laughs, good times, and ends with FHE at the Branch with the investigators and new members. Norm and I don't usually, in fact never, get up early on Monday mornings to go play ball with the missionaries, but today was an exception. They keep telling us that we're lazy and don't follow the rules (senior missionaries don't have to get up as early as the young ones do) so we took them up on their challenge and surprised them this morning. Unfortunate for us! We now both need lots of pain medicine and possibly a doctor. We played kick ball and on Norms first kick he sprinted to the other side of the gym and pulled his calf muscle. He sat out the rest of the game and limped around trying to stretch out his muscle. I didn't pull any muscles, but I found out I have a few more than I realized. It's been a long (long) time since I've run sprints up and down the court and I am feeling it. Oh the sacrifices we make to be good missionaries. At least we managed to save face (a little).

We had a fun FHE with a woman in our branch who is divorced, has two kids and her mother who lives with them. We took stories and games and had the Elders translate for us. Her kids are both deaf but have had cochlear implants and they both can hear now. They are darling and we love them. The mother, Yulia, speaks pretty good English, is the choir director in the branch and very talented. She works hard to support her family and is always happy and smiling. Both she and her mother are divorced so they had a lot of questions for us about divorce, temple sealings, and how all that works. The saddest part about being Mormon here is that there are so few members to choose a spouse from. There are so many single people in our branch who are between the ages of 25 and 45, and there's no one for them to marry. Sister Woolley is trying hard to coordinate a huge older single adult conference in St. Petersburg for people to meet each other. We're hoping it works, but that's a lot of travel and expense for most people.

We continue to be busy with teaching, Branch activities, and humanitarian work. We love our friends here more and more every day and the sunny beautiful days give us hope for spring. We love you all. Thank you always for your letters, notes and love. Have a wonderful week.

Love,
The Frosts