Finally Slept with Kathy in Russia Feb 16

Kathy and I moved into our new apartment yesterday, Saturday, February 15^th and were able to configure our beds into one large queen-sized bed. We took the frames of our two single beds and taped them together. Then we put the single mattresses on the frames and bought a 180 cm by 200cm memory foam pad to put over the top of the two single bed frames. We bought some sheets that fit this size pad and we had a large queen bed! Hurray!  I can’t tell you how nice it was to have Kathy actually sleep next to me in the same bed. I have always loved having Kathy close to me when I close my eyes.  The last month has been difficult sleeping in separate single beds that weren’t much bigger than my sleeping bag, but we didn’t complain.

Our new apartment room is nice with a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen area. It is probably a total of 800 sq. feet. Our other apartment was just a single room studio with a bathroom.  We had to delay our move into the new apartment, because we had to buy some cabinets from IKEA to hold our clothes. Ikea is nice, but it took me 4 hours to assemble the closet and I am no slouch at assembly J.

We had a very busy and productive week. We were teaching almost every night with people who aren’t members of our church and also were able to have the missionaries over for dinner.  I surprised Kathy for Valentine’s and got her a new coat. When she woke up on Valentine’s, I had it laying on the bed and she was so excited. They have really cute coats in Russia that are light weight and form fitting. I must say she does look pretty good in the coat. We also got each other a good pair of walking shoes, as we have to walk everywhere and the good grocery store is about 4-hour round trip with shopping in the store.  

We had another baptism in the mission on Saturday and have several more scheduled over the next 3 weeks. The missionaries we have here are amazing and it is fun going teaching. I did my first solo mass transit teaching opportunity with a lady that spoke a little English. The missionaries came over after I started the discussion to help. After we got off the subway we spoke with her for about 15 minutes and invited her to another discussion this week on Thursday. She was a very nice lady and I hope she comes.

Our ward (the group of people who attend our church in this area) had a party on Saturday night celebrating marriage and couples. It was a lot of fun and all the women brought a bouquet of flowers which they used for a fun game, there was dancing, games, dinner, and I even sung a Karaoke song to “Moon River”. Needless to say the talent was hurting since they asked me to sing. 

Kathy and I ran over to the doctor’s, about a 50-minute round trip run for a follow-up visit for her sinus infection. He said she “looked great” and so she thanked him and then asked him how her sinuses looked. Haha.  We have zone conferences this week, so it will be crazy with all the missionaries. It will be great to see them and especially the ones we haven’t seen yet. Some of the mission areas are 13 hours by train or bus, but most are within 4 hours by train or bus.  Our studies this week have been centered on Russian Language and on chapter 9 of the Preach My Gospel manual. This is a missionary training tool and this section teaches us how to pray to meet those who have been prepared by the Lord. It is fun to be walking or standing and feel that you need to talk to someone, or we get a call from the young missionaries and they want us to meet one of their investigators.  The gospel is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and Thomas S. Monson carries that mantle today. We are blessed to have the Book of Mormon as a second testament of Christ to help guide us in our lives. Thanks for all your prayers and e-mails and know that we love all of you. We got our Vonage phone hooked up now so we can call and receive calls from the US at no extra cost to either side. That will be great and if there is ever a need to reach out, just call our home phone number and it will call us in Russia.  Love Elder and Sister Carter