Merry Chrismilk!‏

Zdrastvuitye!

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL!!! Unless you live in Russia, in which case your Christmas isn't until January 7th. Sorry. For the first time in a long time, Sister Warnick and I have finally had a normal week on the mission. No traveling, no exchanges, no unnecessary stress. That all ends tomorrow. We will be getting up at 4 in the morning tomorrow to catch a train to Samara and from there we'll take a bus to Toliatti (about 2 hours) for exchanges. On Thursday we'll have Christmas Conference in Toliatti, ride the bus back to Samara, and then take a train back to Penza on Christmas Day. Phew! Should be a fun one. 

On to this week's activities! First of all, Sister Warnick and I had an unfortunate run-in with not one, but two consecutive bottles of sour milk. On Monday, we had been looking forward to ending the night with some cookies and milk, as you do, since we had spent a majority of the day literally hiking through the snow. Every once in a while our milk will start to separate as it sits in our fridge, but normally it's not that big of a deal. As we eagerly poured ourselves some mugs of milk at the end of the day, we noticed that the proportion of cream to milk was at a pretty disturbing ratio. Determined to enjoy my evening snack, I dunked my cookie into the mug and pulled out a cream-soaked pile of mush. Trying not to phase myself out by the slimy chunks of cream dripping off of my cookie, I took the tiniest nibble to test out the waters. Let's just say, this was a cookie that not even the Cookie Monster would want. Flushed that down the sink real quick. Thankfully we had another bottle of milk waiting in the fridge, so we whipped that guy out. A little hesitant to have a replay of the event that had just transpired, I poured the smallest amount of milk into my mug and tested the waters once again. Aside from actual vomit, I've never tasted anything so closely reminiscent of throw-up than this tiny sample of milk. Needless to say, we didn't get to enjoy our cookies and milk that night.

On the flip side, since I missed my baby Sister's Sweet 16 on the 19th, I decided to open up one of the presents that my family sent me (probably meant to be saved for Christmas) to celebrate her birthday! Upon tearing open the wrapping paper and seeing a box of Keebler Jif cookies inside, my companion and I immediately commenced in consuming the entire package. So good! Those cookies were literally sent from above. That definitely made up for the rancid milk and cookies incident. Hands down. 

Oh man, my winter boots are struggling. For the past month or so my boots have been trying so hard to rip apart at the seams, but I refuse to buy more boots since I only have a little over 2 months left on my mission. I have tested out many methods to keep them from getting any worse, and at this point not much is working. A couple of days ago I bought a small container of super glue and emptied the entire thing along the seams of my boots. Seems to be working... kinda. My feet are a little moist at the moment, but nothing I can't endure for the next couple of months. I would much rather have to reapply a layer of superglue to my feet every other week or so, than buy a pair of boots that I probs wouldn't even take home. But who knows. Maybe I'll cave. 

Aight, enough of that. So, one of the less actives that Sister Thomas (the younger) and I had started to meet with fairly regularly finally moved. She refused to meet with us for about a month because she was too busy getting all of her stuff together. Thankfully she gave us her new address and she still lives in our area, but we absolutely cannot find her house! I don't think the address that she gave us was fake, because you can find the street on the map, but we have been hardcore struggling to find her apartment building. On our first quest to find her place of residence, it was full on blizzarding outside. Guess how long we trekked through the snow trying to track her down? Yep... 3 and a half hours. Guess who still doesn't know where she lives? Us. I have never been so physically exhausted after a day of tracting in my entire life. A few days later, Sister Warnick and I decided that we would use another chunk of open time during the day to man-hunt her. 2 hours later, and still no luck. We will find her! Hide your kids, hide your wife! Once the missionaries know where you live, there's no running.

Sister Warnick and I saw an amazing, unexpected miracle this week! There is less active couple that lives in our area that all of my previous companions and I have tried stopping by, but they were never home! Sister Warnick and I felt prompted that we should drop by with a Christmas Liahona to see if they were around for once. As we approached their building, a couple of old people opened the front door and we distantly followed behind them as we made our way up the staircase to their apartment. It wasn't until we were physically in front of the apartment door that we realized we had been following the couple that we were looking for! That was a little bit awkward because the wife kept turning around to look at us as we trekked up the stairs. Whatever. Had we showed up even 30 seconds later than we had, they wouldn't have answered their door (they never do), and had we showed up 30 seconds earlier, they wouldn't have been home. We ended up having a good lesson with them... well... kinda good. The husband, Vladimir, occupies his free time with reading books about how you can heal your body with a positive attitude, so he spent the first 40 minutes of the lesson reading snippets from the books to us. Good times. After that, we talked about the importance of prayer, scripture study, and coming to church, all of which they do minus coming to church. They committed to come to church on Sunday, but they never showed up. Bummer. They will come eventually. I know it!

Welp, that's all for this week folks! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Celebration! Check your milk before you dunk and superglue your feet!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff