Week 13  Christmas Week

This week went by in a blur and it felt like I skyped my family like 3 months ago.....my concept of time is out the window. This week started out great with Christmas Eve. We met with all the missionaries at the Donovan’s (senior missionaries) for a late breakfast. We did a secret Santa exchange. For Pday we basically hung out with all of the missionaries. Then it was Christmas. We went to an American family’s (affiliated with the Embassy) home for dinner, and let me tell you the food was AMAZING. Then we left to skype our families. Skype, the website, didn't work so we had to use another video chat app called Google Hangout. It was great to hear from my family and actually go into more detail about things. Amy cried a lot in the call which was sad. Love you Amy! Bore my testimony, which I realized later I used the wrong tense for "to have"......so I said the church had his gospel...probably...oops. Sorry teachers! And just like that it was over. I'm surprised I didn't cry, but then again I haven't felt too homesick – no offense fam. That might change in the next 5 months, but we will have to see. Wednesday rolled around and this was my favorite day of the week! We went to an old folk’s home in another city with all the missionaries. The old people were very sweet although no one had really any idea what they were saying because they didn't really have any teeth or some only spoke Russian. Some played the piano and others the accordion for us. IT WAS SOOOOO COOL! I took videos of course, love looking back on them. Then the workers fed us like grits with cheese on them, which we ate with our hands....it was very weird and still haven't decided if I like it or not. The worker lady really liked me for some reason. On my way out she hugged me then she whispered something in my ear and gave me huge smile. I just said thank you and moved on but luckily another sister heard and translated for me. [Parent interjection: Rachel...what did she say?] We went caroling a lot this week. Christmas in Georgia isn't until the 7th of January so we get an extra Christmas and longer holiday season. On one of our finding days I stopped a lady with a husky....mainly to pet her dog because the dog looked super clean. I went up asked her to pet it and we ended up talking to her and she wanted us to come over. We went over another day which the whole set up was weird cause she wanted to meet on the street. We met up with her and she walked us to her apartment. Her apartment was super nice like almost American looking. Very rich lady. She talked a lot about her son who is about our age. I think she wants to set us up with her son.....so that's awkward. Her son by the way was very weird. He came home while we were there with his friend changed his shirt multiple times. At one point came in to the kitchen trying to cover his chest because he was shirtless and to get a drink. Threw a tantrum about a certain shirt to his mom before finally sitting down...interesting guy. We have another meeting with them because we ran out of time to go full into a lesson. Don't know when we will meet again but next visit will be very interesting. Today was super fun and I will go more into detail next email. I will have a lot of really cool pictures of New Years. Georgia goes insane over New Year so I am super excited about that. 

And that was basically my week. It was fun doing service for others and seeing them so happy over it. That's the part of I love about missionary work is meeting people, sometimes very interesting people, and serving and helping them. [Parent note: what happened to our introverted daughter?]

Well until next week!

-და ჯენსენი

P.S. We got Wendy's for Christmas Eve dinner!!