Last Sunday, we had a visit from the Area 70. He's Armenian and speaks very good Russian. He talked for two hours before church, 45 minutes through Sacrament Meeting, then for the entire rest of the combined block. Sadly, we didn't understand much of it, but we know that his subject dealt with members and missionaries working more closely together and members fulfilling their callings. We do know that he spoke in a gentle voice and seemed to have great love for the people and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The missionaries had no time to get food, so we did a loaves and fishes miracle with our crockpot lunch we had set to cooking early in the morning. We had planned on feeding one set of missionaries, but almost miraculously, we stretched it to feed 15 missionaries between 2:30 and 5:00, along with two investigators. After eating, two sets of missionaries gave lessons in separate rooms in our apartment. It was great fun!!
We were busy all day Monday, then had 32 show up for FHE where we had a lesson on public symbols & Christmas symbols. They had no concept of the Biblical Christmas story and symbols of Christmas (e.g., star, shepherd's crook, sheep). None. We found that interesting and surprising; but after all, this has been a communistic and atheistic country for almost 100 years. We realized we should not have been surprised. We're excited to teach them more of the Christmas story over the next couple of weeks.
After the lesson, we let them frost their own sugar cookies, and I did a hands-on lesson on how to roll cookie dough and cut out cookies. None of them had ever frosted cookies. In fact, none of them had ever made--or seen made--sugar cookies or anything like them. It was a blast. They loved it. We love them!! They love us. It's great. What is very common to us in America is totally new and exciting to these young people. We get great joy from showing them new things.
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