January 29, 2013

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY.  Geneil Olivia  was born on January 21, 2013 at 6:09 AM.  She is a beautiful little girl and  has been welcomed by her Mom and Dad Raenie and Charlie, brother Dallin age 7, sister Kenzie age 5 1/2, and sister Alayna age 2 years and 2 days!!  It is reported that she is a very good baby.  She looks a lot like her sister Kenzie as a baby.  We think she is very sweet and look forward to seeing her in person. 
We took our Christmas decorations down last week.  Our living room sure looks bare.  We had a lot of positive comments about our Chrismas decorations. We just had a small tree, some candles and a few lights along the top width of both windows. If they could see my house in Utah at Christmas they wouldn't think this was that much.  I love Christmas and the decorations remind me of the season and spirit that should prevail. I loved reading the scriptures under the light of the tree and other lights. 
  Russia is still cold but not nearly as cold as this time last year.  The reported trend this week is for slight warming with no new snow expected until later in the week.  It will still be below 0 Celcius but not that much.  We still have snow on the ground, but unlike last year the sidewalks are kept much cleaner and safer to walk on.
  We have recently had our friends, Anactacia and Ludmilla here for dinner.  We love them and enjoyed visiting with them.  They are members of our branch here in NN. We also had dinner with new friends Nciah and AK who are from Ghana and are here studying to be dentists.  We applaud them for their pluck in coming to cold Russia from such a warm climate to study.  They are brave souls and we have loved getting to know them.
Last evening we had our friend Dasha come to dinner.  We met her a year ago and since then she has been baptized and we have enjoyed seeing her grow in her faith.  She is a wonderful person and we hope the best for her. 
We still teach the Gospel Principles class to English speakers on Sundays.  It is fun to be so engaged, and we find that many people that are beginners in learning Russian find more for them in the English class than they do in the Russian classes.  We are glad to be of service.
   Elder Foutz is sharpening his culinary skills right up lately.  He has taken to baking bread, cookies, making many meals, but breakfast is still his favorite.  The missionaries are surprised to know that he is so good in the kitchen.  Whenever they come over he usually has some little treat or other for them.   We both do a lot of cooking as there is some meeting or other where we bring treats on a regular basis.