Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you're fasting earnestly to make room for the upcoming New Year's feast. (Just kidding, don't do that). This week was a blast, but along with the "blast-ness" came a lot of running around like chickens with our heads cut off. At the beginning of the week Sister Warnick and I had exchanges in Toliatti before our Christmas Zone Conference. We woke up nice and early on Tuesday morning, took a fast train to Samara, bought our bus tickets to Toliatti, and then finished our traveling adventure with a 2 hour bus ride. Great fun!
Some areas in the mission definitely struggle a lot more than others, Toliatti is one of those areas, so the duration of our 2 day stay in Toliatti consisted of contacting, contacting, and contacting. A few days prior to our arrival, there was about 2 feet of snow on the ground. When we finally got there, it had been raining nonstop for a couple of days and all of that snow melted. I thought that the super glue that I used to fix my boots had been working up to that point. After wading through 2-feet deep puddles for 2 days straight, it was evident that the super glue didn't glue squat. I had a really great time in Toliatti though. It was fun to switch roles and be the Sister that guides the younger missionaries instead of the one looking up at all of the old Sisters. Kinda strange now that I think about it.
Christmas Conference was so great! Over the past couple of weeks Sister Warnick and I have been trying to hunt down some Christmas Sweaters to wear to the Conference. After much searching, we finally found a couple that we fell in love with! Sister Warnick's has a picture of Santa Clause on it and there's a pom pom at the end of his hat, but her hair's always covering it so you can't really tell that it's there. My sweater has a reindeer on it that I named Voldemort because it doesn't have a nose. His little scarf isn't attached, so it just does it's thing. Our sweaters were a hit at the Conference! Everyone thought they were hilarious!
The Conference itself was amazing! I'm not going to go into detail about everything that was discussed because that would take until next Christmas to go over every topic. There was a part in the Conference where we talked about Sacrifice a little bit and I really liked this quote: "The Seals in the Navy, the Green Berets in the Army, the Blackbelts in Karate, etc. are seen as being elite because of the hard work that they put in and the sacrifices that they have made to get to where they are. All of the tribulations that we face and all of the sacrifices that we make give us more zeal and make us more elite in the eyes of God." Just store that in your little memory box and pull it out when you're going through a particularly hard time in your life.
Shout out to Sister Schwab. She is literally the best! Every year for Christmas Conference she takes it upon herself to make us all a home cooked Christmas Dinner. At every Christmas Conference prior to this one, she has prepared a Christmas ham with potatoes, carrots, rolls, etc. This year, however, due to the sanctions, there was not a Christmas ham to be found in all of Russia. Since Mexican food is a not typically a common thing to find in Russia unless you want a guarunteed stomach worm, Sister Schwab put together a Mexican food feast! She made chicken enchilladas, beef tacos, chips and salsa, the works! It was super good. It's been over a year since I've had any sort of Mexican food aside from a makeshift cheese quesadilla, so it was a great surprise. Sister Schwab was also determined that we have a great Christmas breakfast, so she gave everyone a baggie of pancake mix and ordered us all individual bottles of mapeline from Amazon so that we could make maple syrup! Sister Schwab is the sweetest!
I think the funniest part about Christmas conference was actually the bus ride back to Samara. Typically, the office will order a big chartered bus to take us all back to Samara, but I guess it was cheaper to order two small ones, so that's what they did. There were 15 seats in the bus and 16 bodies, so the Elders had to take turns sitting and standing so that no one would have to stand for the entire 2 hour ride. One Elder took it upon himself to carry every single Christmas package on his lap, so he basically volunteered himself to get smashed to death. And that's basically what happened. No pity.
Since we got all of our Christmas packages at Christmas Conference, Sister Warnick and I decided to open our gifts on the train ride back to Penza. We turned our little coupe into a little slice of the Polar Express. There was candy, wrapping paper, gift bags, presents, pajamas, and decorations literally all over everything! The conductor looked a little bit thrown off when she saw all of our stuff everywhere. Whatevs. Christmas cheer!
After we got back from Christmas Conference, we got to Skype our families! Always an adventure. Super weird that this was my last Skype before I go home. Time flies! Anyways, that night our Ward had a Christmas party and it was hilarious! The Primary acted out the Nativity and the kid who played Joseph was yelling at the 3 Wise Men to give him money... oh children. It turned out really well though and quite a few less actives showed up, so that was a plus!
Welp, that's all for this week folks! Have a great New Year Celebration! Eat some Mexican food and wear festive clothing!
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Sister Megan Wagstaff
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