New Years Meals/Fireworks and Ice Shoes

Hello family and friends!

So this week was pretty slow on account of the biggest holiday of the year being this week, but we still got some things done.

Almost all of the members wouldn't meet with us until after New Years but we got to go to a family's home that lives in a village. It took an hour to get there and it was expensive because we took a taxi instead of a bus (all the buses were full) It was fun though, they have around 8 children so we taught our lesson and the Reeds(the senior couple who came with us) taught theirs and then they fed us(it was a really interesting meal) and then we played a game. It was New Years eve so we needed to be in at 6 pm.

Insert of Meal Description from DeLisa in a subsequent communication she discovered that the meal consisted of the following:
cold soup, cold fish, sala (bacon fat), fish casserole, coleslaw, sausage, bread, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers.
We are grateful that this very large family generously shared their New Years Meal with Chris and the others.


After returning home, we had some dinner, made some brownies, watched the testaments, I made my Lego and my ice shoes, and Elder Beck cut his hair. At midnight, we looked out our window and saw people shooting up fireworks everywhere. The whole city had fireworks going off the rest of the night.
The next day it sounded like a war zone because fireworks were just going off every l0 minutes or so.

One day we were walking this week and contacting, and we talked with someone who actually took a book from Elder Beck's hands and gave us his contact information before we finished talking. We're excited about this contact.

We went to buy some wire so that I could make ice shoes and we got to the hardware store and couldn't find any. But they had a little hook that used the wire I wanted so we asked if they sold more of that there. They thought that we wanted the hook, neither of us knew the word for wire and began to explain they just made it. We eventually explained it and they showed us where it was. We took around 3.4 meters but they sold it by the kilo and what we had was probably 50 grams. So they said "Happy New Years Presents" in English and gave it to us for free.

I got my passport back this week from registration and it said that I was registered to a city near Donetsk. My Zone leaders thought that meant that I was going to be transferred there, but I'm not. I'm staying here in Kharkov where it's awesome!

Love you All!
Elder Russell