email received Dec. 30, 2012

Hello family!

I hope you all are enjoying the rest of the Christmas season and happy new years!! Tonight we have to be in by 6 and we can stay up til 12. We realized though that a 2nd story apartment is a little rough to see fireworks but we'll make food and eat candy or something:) Speaking of eating, last night, we were visiting a less active teenager and her mom fed us as soon as we came in. She heated up leftovers and then brought out sala, which I learned is literally pieces of fat that Russian eat, cold. So she cut it like you would cheese, and she gave us spicy mustardy sauce and then you just chew and try to swallow. I mean i guess bacon is sometimes basically the same concept but at least that is fat with meat and not meat with fat. Think about that while eating your leftover Christmas cookies with delicious frosting! 

This week has been super busy. Tuesday was Christmas where we were at the Church eating chicken, which was cut with a spoon since our Church is sadly lacking utensils, and funeral potatoes and cookies. We made wassail too which is like cider. We watched the First Presidency Christmas devotional and then had a district meeting. That night we made cookies for our neighbors! Some didn't open their doors and said it wasn't needed, I don't think they understood what we were doing. But we did meet some super awesome people so it was fun and Christmasy. Then Wednesday I got to talk to all of you!!!!  That night we had a meeting with a former who has had 2 previous baptismal dates and taught lesson 3 and at the end I extended the baptismal committment! Definitely was as scary as a thought it would be. She said she wanted too but not right now. The member we had with us was super awesome and testifed but then we starting talking about church etc so we never could really bring it back to setting a date to prepare for but in all we were happy with her questions and participation and sincerity. 

Thursday we got up at 5:30 to catch a flight to Vlad. I ate my first Russian pizza in the airport, meaning ketchup and mayo instead of tomato sauce but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Then after waiting in vlad for a while everyone for ussurisk came which meant sister Christensen!! We rode back, just me and her while everyone else went to Korea. It was definitely a tender mercy to see her again. We had the whole ride back, like 90 minutes  with our mission driver, to talk and while of course I would be super happy if she was fluent and had 10 new members, it was at least reassuring to know we were in the same boat. So it was funnyy to see how similar our experiences have been so far. The biggest difference though is my trainer has been here a year and hers is on her 4th or 5th transfer. So i feel super blessed to have Sister Huber both for her missionary skills and her Russian:) In ussurisk, we passed out a bunch of English Club cards then, helped a new member write a talk, which basically means bring True to the Faith in Russian and then provide moral support and she wrote her talk. The next morning after studying, we took a bus back to Vlad and then waited in the airport a while til our missionaries landed and we went our separate ways. Really we didn't do anything too exciting and it was only like 24 hours together but it was definitely needed. 

Then Saturday, the Brintons were here with their daughter and son-in-law and we had a 3 hour training. We had pizza (with tomato sauce) for lunch and after we finished eating, the elders let us know one of them was cow tongue. I hadn't tried that one just because, but I think Sister Brinton was shocked.. for training we focused on finding and teaching, and the biggest things I think we need to take from it is how to make English Club more effective as well as finding through less actives. Sunday we heard from the Brintons, our APs were there too, and Sis Brinton played an awesome piano number!! It was a little overwhelming having them talk us up about how awesome they want us to be, the branch to be etc. Which makes me sound like a baby haha but we're excited for the new year to get the work going. The field is white!! Literally! Love you all and happy new year!!

Sister Allison