This photo was taken in Russia and you can see that they had to cut a hole in the ice to baptize. Brrrrr! Granted it doesn't seem as life threatening as last week's picture from Papua New Guinea, but still quite eye opening as to what people are prepared to do in order to join the Church.
So this week there were only three Senior Couples including us in the MTC and today there is only Hermes and I. We had four days of office training condensed into two days because of it being Thanksgiving week. It was fine because we were all used to using computers. One of the couples, the Pedersons, are leaving on Monday to work under President Thomas (fellow North Stakers take note) in the Democratic Republic of Congo Lubumbashi. They are the couple on the left. We became very good friends with them.
They live in Utah so of course they left to spend Thanksgiving with their family. Hermes and I did received some Thanksgiving invitations but in the end we decided to stay at the MTC so we could go to the Devotional and participate in a scheduled service project. Also, we need time to pack!
The Devotional this morning was awesome because we had the Apostle Dallin H. Oaks come and speak to us. Also, he had a lot of his family there including his rather famous violin virtuoso daughter, Jenny Oaks Baker and she and several other family members played for us as part of the Devotional. She is a tremendous talent! I was reading about her afterwards on-line and it turns out she has a Master's from Julliard and played at some very famous venues. Some of the family members that she played with were her children and they were all wonderful. Their rendition of Amazing Grace sent shivers up my spine. Here's a You Tube Video of her:
What I can also identify about being at that Devotional and many other times being at the MTC is the tremendous peace that has accompanied these experiences. The Spirit of God fills this place and in turn fills my heart. I really have treasured these few weeks here.
Our Thanksgiving dinner came at lunch and it was yummy. It's amazing how they can make such a great turkey dinner for 1500 people. Then later in the afternoon we joined up with a service project. A Christian charity called Feeding Children Everywhere teamed up with LDS Humanitarian Services to do this project. What they do is they fill small plastic bags with about a tablespoon of Himalayan Salt, what I think is about 1/3 cup of dehydrated vegetables, a cup of rice and maybe a bigger cup of Lentils. This apparently can make a nutritious meal for six people. They put up long tables all through the cafeteria and we all worked in teams. I was the rice girl at first but the Hermes and I switched places after a while and I became the Dehydrated Vegetable scooper. There was this large cone and one person would hold a plastic bag underneath it and then each of us in turn would scoop in our quanity of food. Then the bag would go down the line for sealing and then boxed. Whenever a box was completed, the table that had completed it would give out a cheer. You can imagine how noisy that got. We kept hearing some Elders, we think from New Zealand or the Pacific Isles let out what sounded like a Maori chant whenever they completed a box. I would love to show you some pictures of the event but we were told we couldn't bring cameras because Church News and Deseret News have exclusivity on photographing the event. So the best we could do was go back to our room and do this selfie in our red hair nets:
Just one half of all the missionaries were in that first round and the other half were watching a film. Then at 5:45, the two groups switched places so we went to watch the film. I thought that we were going to see a documentary on the Church's Humanitarian Services but it turned out to be the feature movie, 17 Miracles. I've previously watched that movie, twice in fact, on Netflix but Hermes had never seen it. It was certainly worth viewing a third time. If you've never seen it, I would recommend it highly. Here's a thing on You Tube about it in case you want to check it out.
Finally tonight the Christmas lights were turned on at the MTC. I had originally hoped to see the ones at Temple Square but it turns out they don't get turned on until tomorrow night. But these MTC ones were beautiful and a consolation until the day comes when I will see the Temple Square Christmas display.
My love for the gospel has grown over these last few weeks. It has been great to be here but I am very much looking forward to beginning our life and service in Rome. So once again, Arrivederci!
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