Christmas #2

My second Christmas on my mission was in a larger city not far from the mission headquarters. It was a step up in creature comforts, since it had a real pizza place and a huge supermarket with actual shopping carts. Also, as I recall it was heated inside the shopping center. Christmas in Russia is nothing if not cold. But when you're a missionary, you know that service is the best way to warm you up!!


At Christmas, our district had two relatively new missionaries. One of them had a birthday near Christmas, so we (my companion and I) made him a Gingerbread house. This was a challenge, since we had no cream cheese frosting or method for making gingerbread. My mom's Christmas package saved the day, with Christmas candy! We also used sweetened condensed milk (a Russian favorite) as our glue to hold the house together, and shortbread-type cookies for walls.


We also decided to make Christmas trees out of painted cardboard for each district in our mission, and also composed a song about how awesome our mission was - I think it was to the tune of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was so fun to stay up late and think how excited everyone would be to receive our gifts!

The best part of Christmas was picking up Babushka B., our branch Babushka and helping her get to church. As some of you know, Russia is built and sustained by the faith and prayers of its Babushki (Grandmothers). Most congregations of the church have at least one. Our Babushka was always the first to Church, because it was her job to be "greeter" to everyone. She took this responsibility seriously. However, by Christmas she was suffering from heart problems and hadn't been able to take the tram to church in a long while. My companion was sweet enough to suggest that we pick up our Babushka by taxi and take her to church. With snow all around, we picked up our favorite babushka, and helped her walk very slowly down the stairs of her fourth floor walk-up apartment. I remember how happy she was just to attend one hour of Church. It made that Christmas so special to me to be able to give someone that gift!

So, as all my posts must preach something, this one teaches that Christmas = Service!