Thanksgiving in the MTC

2010 November 30,

Hello everyone! This last week was awesome! First off they shut everything down here the day before Thanksgiving because of the "emergency snow storm" that never came. When the snow finally came it wasn't too bad because there are overhangs between all the buildings we have to walk to. You don't even need boots. It did get cold though. Sis Whiting 'forgets' to wear a coat some days because she doesn't like them even though it is really cold. Apparently cross country skiing is really big in Russia because they have a lot of flat areas. I might get to go ice skating there. One of our teachers told us this crazy story of when he got hurt ice skating in Russia. He even had to go to the hospital. Good thing everyone gets free medical there. We get to go to the temple every week, which is so awesome. We always do service in the laundry room afterwards which is also so fun. We get to talk to all the old ladies that work there. Ok so I need to talk about Thanksgiving. First off we didn't have any class. We went to a devotional after breakfast were Elder Holland talked to us. He had brought all his grandkids with him and they sang us a song. They were so cute! Elder Holland told us we shouldn't be homesick and pointed out some things we should be grateful for. He is always such a good speaker. That day we also did a service project cutting out bags for school supplies. All the missionaries together cut out over 30,000 bags. We also listened to several other speakers. One was the Brother over the welfare services for the Church. He told an amazing story about a town in Africa. Anyways, Thanksgiving dinner was also very good. We had everything you would normally have on thanksgiving. One of the Sisters in my room got a real sized turkey from her mom made of Rice crispies. So all the sisters in our Zone sat in a circle and ate it as we told each other what we were grateful for. Its been pretty lonely her at the MTC because missionaries left last week but we didn't get any new one because of the holiday. Tomorrow we are suppose to get about 16 new missionaries for our zone and the next week 8 native Eastern Europeans are suppose to come in. The church is true! I love you!