Dear family and friends,
I'm going to repeat some of the things I wrote to Eddie this week. Hope you don't mind, Eddie.
With the horrible tsunami in Japan this week, our thoughts have been with the missionaries and members there who have been so tragically uprooted from their normal everyday lives. I've tried to put myself in their situation and can't (or don't want to) do it. I just can't imagine trying to pick up the pieces of that much damage and destruction and not be permanently affected with the enormous loss of life. Japan is such a tiny little country with so many people living there (127 million) and over 10,000 were killed in the tsunami. Russia is 100 times as big with 141 million people living here. We are all spread out over a huge amount of area, I just can't imagine all that destruction in such a small amount of space. Look on a map and compare the size of the two, it's amazing. I've heard that all the missionaries are accounted for and are safe. Is it any wonder how the Lord watches out for his servants. It's not that missionaries don't die, but I very seldom hear of them dying in natural disasters. I'm sure if we're listening to the promptings and guidance from the Holy Ghost that we as missionaries will continue to be protected from that kind of harm. I pray that will be the case - we have a very important work to do and we need lots of faith, prayers and protection to get it done. We talked in our district meeting this week about excuses people use for not attending Sacrament Meeting. We talked about the people here in Russia but I'm sure this can apply to people everywhere. Work, family who don't support them, don't want to lose their only free day, don't know anyone or feel comfortable among strangers, don't have a desire to learn more about the Gospel, and Church isn't fun. I think we all have experienced one or more of those feelings at one time or another, but we missed the very most important reason why people need to go to church. The Sacrament! That's really the only reason to go. We can have Gospel discussions, make friends and have fun any time, but Sacrament Meeting is the only place where we can partake of the Sacrament. When people don't understand their commitment to the Savior through baptismal covenants and then don't renew those covenants each week, they are basically saying, it's not important and I don't care about my sins or my promises to obey. I'm not really committed to the Savior and I'm just going to keep doing what I want and hope for the best. We have a struggle getting people to understand that principle at home in Utah, so you can imagine how hard it is here. BUT. . .we're not giving up! We have a mission goal of 31 baptisms by the 31st of March. We're only half way there and are feeling a little discouraged, but we're going to keep plugging away a little at a time. We have a mission zone conference next week in Moscow and we're hoping that will spark some more enthusiasm and energy into everyone. The weather is getting so nice now, it was 37 degrees today and it was beautiful! More people are out walking the streets when the weather gets nicer and there should be much more success with contacting.
Norm and I are going to Ukraine this week for our first Visa renewal trip. We will be gone for a week for training on the Church Employment Program. They have had tremendous success with the program in Ukraine so we are going to try and implement the program here and help so many people who are out of work. When we get back from Ukraine (we will get to take a quick trip to the Kiev Temple, which will be wonderful) we have our Zone Conference in Moscow and then we'll stay there for 2 more days for more training and work on the wheelchairs project. It will be a long time away from here, but there's so much to learn and to do. This is a big year for changes in the Welfare Program in Russia and we're the guinea pigs who get to experiment with it. Hopefully we can do a job well enough that we can leave something concrete for the next group of couples coming here to serve.
We love it here. We're making so many great friends. One cute girl from the Branch just left today for her mission on Temple Square. She has been waiting for 6 months for her visa to come through so she is so excited to finally be going. We'll miss her here, she does a lot of translating for us at church, but she will be a wonderful missionary on Temple Square. She's beautiful, smart, has a great testimony, and is so excited. They will be lucky to have her.
Well, one last happy birthday wish my cute Kaia who is turning 8 next week. I'm so sad that we will miss your baptism, but I hope you will learn as much as you can about baptism and understand how important the Sacrament is. It's just like getting baptized again every Sunday. If you try hard to be good, you can be forgiven of the little things each week. I love you Kaia!
I love all of you. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have such a wonderful family and friends. You mean so much to me and all your letters and words of love and encouragement have helped me so much. Take care everyone. Pray for the missionaries - especially the ones in Japan right now. And BE a missionary everyday by your words and your actions.
Love,
The Frosts
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