Dear Family and Friends,

We are having our first Visa trip (every three months we have to leave Russia, go into another country and renew our visa). This time we combined our visa renewal with some humanitarian training, so we have met with two other couples to be trained on the Church's Employment Program. We will be responsible for implementing the Employment program into all of Russia. The other two couples, one in Kharkov, Ukraine the other in Armenia have great faith in us that we can get this program started in Russia. Even though Russia is 500 times bigger than either of their two areas, they are sure we can do it. Our heads are swimming with all the information and the enormity of the job, but we're excited to get back there and at least try. The more people we can get excited about the program, the better and easier our job will be, so we'll start with one place at a time and go from their.

Unfortunately, the weather has been very cold, snowy and rainy and we didn't bring our warmest clothes, so we have been cold and tired with all the miles we have walked the last few days, BUT this place is amazingly beautiful. It's nothing like Voronezh. It's cleaner, more modern, a very large number of people here speak English, it has a subway system and their undergrounds are beautiful. Ours in Voronezh kinda reminds me of the dirty subways in New York. A little grungy and a little creepy. But here, they are beautiful. The have big beautiful stores that you would see walking down the street, only they are under the streets. It's quite amazing. The old Churches are so fun and beautiful to look at. There is so much art work and architecture put into the buildings, but of course there's not the same spirit when you walk inside as we have when we walk into our Temples. Our cute returned missionary from Ukraine tour guide yesterday kept telling us it was the "great and abominable" Church. Still, it's wonderful history to learn about. We went through a very sad and depressing museum of when the Communists under Stalins rule starved over 2 million Ukranian people by taking all their grain and crops away from them. The museum was filled with pictures, video clips of actual footage from 1932-33 and a lot of memorabilia from that time. I didn't know anything about it before now, and it's heartbreaking to see the pictures and know how much they suffered during that time.

Next we went to the Kiev War Museum, which was incredible. The sidewalks were lined with giant oversized statues of soldiers fighting and women and children saying goodbye to their loved ones as they go off to war. The entire museum is "guarded over" by a giant statue of a woman who represents the "Mother Land". Inside the museum were three floors of pictures, and artifacts of things during the time of the war, 1941 -1943. There were so many people who died during that war that it's amazing that Russia was actually able to pull themselves out after losing 23 million during the war and then another 30 million civillians who were killed while Stalin was trying to keep control of the land. The US lost 416,000 and Germany lost about 10-12 million. What a horrible time for these people here and such a horrible waste of life. The war museums and other museums are filled with names of as many people they could identify for the people to search through to find their loved ones. It's a perfect place to go for genealogy records. Such a sad heritage, but the people are picking themselves up and are fighting their way back to a healthy lifestyle. It's slow, but it's coming.

Our trip to the Temple in Kiev was a highlight. We made it to the last session at 5:00 and the snow had just started to fall as we went in. We filled up the room with local members and the seven of us (Kostic, our tour guide went with us). We wore head sets so we could listen to the session in English, but I have to admit that for part of the time I turned my to the Russian version and listened to that for a while. I don't understand everything, but it was fun to listen to it in Russian for as much as I did understand. The other thing I noticed was that everyone was practically sitting on the edge of their seats listening and paying attention to what was being said. No one was sleeping. The Temple is so new here (just four months) and everyone is so excited to be able to be here. It's quite a refreshing feeling. The only ones making mistakes were the Americans who hadn't been to the temple for a while. We found a little humor in that. After our session we were able to visit with the Temple President and his wife. I can't remember their names right now, but they are from Rexburg Idaho, but have been on three missions in the last nine years. First they were a senior couple in Kharkov, Ukraine. Then they were called to be the Mission President in Siberia. After that they went to China to teach English at the University there and during that time were called back to be the Kiev Temple President. So, they have been gone for most of the last ten years serving missions. WOW! They have 10 children and 60 grandchildren. Maybe that's why they're gone so much. (just kidding). That is an enormous sacrifice, but they are the favorite people around here. Everyone here loves them and hopes they will stay forever.
When we walked out of the Temple is was lightly snowing so some of the pictures have beautiful snowflakes in them. It was too cold to stand around and take too many pictures, but I think we got some good ones that you will enjoy. Just look at my facebook, I posted them there. Some day I'll learn how to put them on the blog, but for now, Lanae will do that for me.

We have early morning meetings tomorrow, so we are headed to bed, but know that we think about you every day and love you all so much. It's so fun to hear from so many of you every week. Thanks for writing back. I love it. Enjoy your week, share the gospel with someone this week and we thank all of you who have made contributions to the welfare/humanitarian funds. You just can't imagine what kink of help that brings the people here. We love you, they love you, and the Lord loves you. Pray for the missionaries all over the world and be a missionary.

Love,
The Frosts

Copy and paste link in your browser to view Kiev trip pictures;
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150123409052856&id=783412855&aid=301869