Silver Bells

Week of December 21-27, 2015
"Christmas make you feel emotional, it may bring parties or thoughts devotional, whatever happens or what may be, here is what Christmas time means to me...." We have always enjoyed those wonderful words from a favorite Christmas Carol Silver Bells.

After experiencing a Christmas in the mission field with my wonderful wife those feelings and thoughts devotional are not about the busy streets or the blinking lights.  Those things are nice, but it is about the Savior and His gift to us.  Here in this wonderful country the people are so giving and happy.  In fact this past week marked the time when the live Christmas trees just began to show up on almost every corner.  Many people have their trees sitting on their balconies waiting to be decorated.  Here, in this and other Eastern European countries, the Christmas holiday is celebrated on January 6-7.  New Years, as we understand it, is big and so is their Christmas day in January.  So we get an additional Christmas time here in Odessa.

Dit Maros Vs Santa Clause this is part of the replacement of
Christmas Traditions that took place in the early 1900's

During the Soviet reign they wanted to remove religion from the country and in the early 1900's banned Christmas celebrations but they emphasize the new year and actually have a December 31-January 11 holiday time.  The Russian Orthodox church uses a different calendar and therefore they celebrate the birth of Christ on January 7th. Some religions in the area celebrate December 25th, ours included.  In Ukraine it is just a regular work day.  We did not let that deter us from our Holiday Celebrations. We have had a wonderful week as we have participated with the missionaries and Saints in our area making this a very special year.

Lunch time- Sister Dhesse is from France and the AP's- one
is from Belarus, and the other from Ukraine.  At English
practice on Saturday we had Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian,
French and English represented.

Our Zone a great bunch of missionaries.

 On Christmas eve we had the privilege of having a Zone meeting in our branch building.  We met with our zone and the AP's and had a wonderfully inspiring training session. After the meeting all 20 of us shared a quick lunch of Taco Soup and bread along with several different Holiday goodies.

Christmas Goodies- we had to teach one of the Elders how to
do sugar cookies so he could show his branch at a Christmas
activity- he'd only heard about them.  And what is Christmas
without peanut butter cups (in a pan) and peppermint
bark.  We searched the town for candy canes or any candy
made from peppermint.  We were so excited when Sister Dhesse
and Sister Legge said they had seen some at an American
outdoor market close by.  We found them- at 3 different stores, but
upon reading the list of ingredients, found they were ALL
strawberry or cherry :(  Luckily we had enough extract to
make it work. 

 The missionaries were very grateful for the luncheon and we loved being with them and admired their dedication.  On Christmas Eve we went out to stroll around the light covered streets and hand out a few Christmas pass along cards.  As we walked through the square there were our elders out sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all who would listen.

Our Elders out street contacting and
Sharing a Christmas message

Christmas lights among the architecture 

City Center tree

Christmas Eve dinner at local restaurant- chicken and
mushroom strudel and apple strudel for dessert.

Street decorations and photo opps.

They are so wonderful. Even though most of the missionaries in our mission now have been here less than three months they are out using their language to bless the lives of these people.
The blessing of having young missionaries continued on Christmas day.  We got up and had a few minutes together to open the a present our Elder Kudaibergan gave us.

Christmas Morning

He is such a wonderful young man and will be a great leader in his country of Kazakstan.
We prepared a few holiday goodies to place on the table then at about 3 PM the missionaries began to come over to enjoy the goodies and make their Skype calls home.

Center and Kodama Elders stopping by for treats

Center Sisters baking a cake only about half of the apartments
have ovens in them so they come by to cook sometimes 

Zone Leader Elder Christofferson
talking with his family 

Elder Tolman after 20 minutes of trying to get his family
on skype he is finally enjoying his conversation.

It was fun to host them and have an opportunity to see them and their families enjoying the time together.  We had that same opportunity at 5 PM when we were able to Skype with Jacob in Cancun Mexico.  We had arranged with the boys to be online at the same time in their different locations and we were able to hook up all five of us from around the world and enjoy a few minutes visiting.

The marvels of technology five groups from around the
world all meeting and enjoying the Christmas day.
Pretty scary picture but we had a great time!

 What a blessing family is.  It is wonderful to be anywhere in the world and still have the blessings of being able to communicate with our loved ones.  The miracle of technology has made being on a mission very comfortable.  We actually speak with our children more now than before we came on our mission.  All that is but Jacob.  We would only ask for one more improvement in the communication process and that would be the ability to hug all of them, including our grand baby. She is so cute and it is almost like we can reach out and touch her, but, not quite the same as being in person. She knows who we are (we think) and waves to us and is excited to babble at us.
Our branch put on a fun Christmas program where we were introduced to a new Ukrainian Christmas folktale.  It talks of how the Devil came and stole the stars from heaven and wouldn't give them back because the people were so selfish.

President Chetnikov plays the Devil
in the church christmas production
He is a very good actor.

The Devil being tamed by the mediator 

The good people of the world providing service to get the stars
back.  It was a great performance

 So the program showed how the people were willing to serve and as they served the Devil was required to return the star beams a little at a time until all the stars were returned to Heaven to light our way.
One of our new assignments is to work with the Young Single Adults. We were blessed last night to have 14 of them come to our home for dinner.  We have 40 so if we get many more we are going to have to host somewhere else.

YSA members join at our house for dinner

Janet and I had to eat dinner standing up, all the chairs were full and a couple of the chairs were being shared by more than one person.  They are a fun loving group and are very intense in their game playing.

There is nothing like a Ukrainian game of Uno!

They love to be together and had a great time. Svyeta, the group leader, even invited a non-member friend.  She is a great example to all of the others.  We will host FHE and and other dinners in the future and we are looking forward to it.
So in closing let me return to the lyrics of the song "In the air there's a feeling of Christmas, Children laughing, people passing meeting smile after smile...." yes there has been and continues to be a feeling of Christmas here in our new town of Odessa.  They may be a little like the people in Bethlehem that night many centuries ago when there was No ROOM in the INN,

Is there room at the INN in your life?

when they are all gathered together in an attitude of celebrating, not realizing that just a few feet away lay the Savior of the World.  It is all of our responsibility to proclaim that He is born, He lives, and He loves us.  May each of you in your own area of responsibility make sure you allow ROOM INN your hearts for the Savior of the World at this time and always. May you be blessed in this coming New Year and may you always save ROOM INN your hearts for Him that saved the World.
Love you all Elder and Sister Mikkelsen

Merry Christmas From Columbus Ohio
Jonathan, Kelsey, & Riley

All the way from Cancun Mexico

Logan Utah wishing you a Merry Christmas
Daniel and Sonina 

Merry Christmas from Salt Lake City Utah
Erik and Erika

Oddesa

Week of December 14-20, 2015

One full week in the new area!  We're old and slow so we don't quite have our feet under us yet but we've seen a lot, found our way to the necessities, and met some very wonderful people.  So, here we go!

Odessa!  Odessa is a major seaport.  In fact, there are two important ports here.  Here are some great shots.

These are the famous Potemkin Stairs (200 of them)leading down to the
port. Watch the movie "The Battleship Potemkin" to learn of the famous
battle that took place here.

While walking the steps we saw this-Ah, we could have had
a ride on the tram!

at the port

The Golden Child.  He represents the "Golden Age"
If you touch his toes, you will have a successful voyage!

So many cranes.  Sitting there they looked like scenes from
movies like Transformers or maybe Cars- it would be great fun
to go crane tipping!

This picture is dedicated to all our friends named Olga!
We love you all :)

It wouldn't be Ukraine if there were not a church within arms reach
and they are all beautiful!

This one looked like it came straight from
"Sahara"

Little Toot II.  Little Toot on the Black Sea. (not the Thames)

We have a statue sitting on a table in our apartment.  While walking
up from the port-  there it was, full size on the street

One evening a sweet sister from our branch care enough to take us on a walking tour of the historic sights right around our apartment.  Odessa, like all of Eastern Europe, has had a very tortured history.  We found out that we live in Katherine Square. (Wondered who the statue was.  Could read the name Katherine but didn't put two and two together till Julia added everything up for us).  During the reign of Katherine the Great, Russia took over this area and decided to build a port.  She renamed it Odessa, after the city in Greece- at least that is one of the stories.  A few years ago, while renovating the area behind the Opera house, they found, what is now a great archeological site showing the remains of ancient villages from the beginnings of the history of the area.  They think there was a huge Greek trade settlement here in the 6th century, so the name is really very appropriate.

Government building- used to be the Judicial center, with the
cool central tree.  It's made of draped fabric.

The statue of the first govenor.  He loved Odessa and
gave his all for the city.  Duc de Richelieu

Example of window decorations

This is the street just down from our apartment.

Saw them putting these lights up while at the port.  This is
looking down the steps

This is Primorsky Bulvar.  all the trees are lighted and it's
just beautiful

The walkway goes follows the shoreline and is surrounded
with monuments and famous buildings.  We'll introduce
you to them as we discover them.  She told us a great
love story about a man who built the palace and the walkway
for his dying wife, but I can't find record of it.  I'll
have her tell us again and we'll document it.

We found that our opera house is one of the 10 most famous Opera houses in all of Europe.  She showed us what was playing right now.  The Nutcracker, Carmen and Giselle. We checked- all three, sold out.  So disappointing, but, walking home from shopping on Thursday we could see people lining up to go into the theater.  Ned decided to run over to see if there were any empty seats.  He was so excited when he called to say that he had purchased tickets.  It was 2 minutes to showtime.  I ran over, couldn't find him, finally got seated- the show had been going about 15 minutes, and we realized that the theater was filled with children and their parents or school teachers.  We realized too, that the Nutcracker was also being performed by very talented children.  It was St. Nicholas Day, so we are assuming that this was a special performance for children by children, but it was still very enjoyable and well worth the price of admission just to see the inside of the theater.  We only saw a little bit so, I guess we'll have to go back another day!

mural on the ceiling

the finale.

carriage rides on St Nicholas Day

Odessa is a very multicultural city.  I guess most port cities are.  There is cool stuff from everywhere. The only picture we have this week is of a cute little french pastry shop shown us by our sister from France.

Ukrainians still love America.  Lots of signs are written in either
Russian or Ukrainian and English.  Nice!

One day we found the famous Olio's Restaurant.  Great food, but the
salmon in my salad would have made great sushi!  Ned, babushka-
like, hid it in a napkin and brought it home, fried and enjoyed it.

Just a cool building we saw on the way to inspect the sister's
apartment.  That's one of our jobs.  I though it would be a
terrible job, but its been fun to see where everyone lives.
we have the best missionaries here and they are clean to boot!

You can't tell in this picture, but, this is a huge, very
beautiful apartment building.  At the base of most
buildings, there are store.  This is supposed to be the
best place to buy meat- so, we bought meat.

After inspections they showed us how to find their branch building.
we also get to visit all the branches regularly.  There are 4.

This is one of those little things we are thankful for.  Found a
waffle iron while unpacking.  Ned made breakfast while I
typed the blog.  Yum!  Thanks ;)

Christmas is just getting started here.  They are still putting up lights around town.  Christmas music is playing- mostly American and all the windows of shops are decorated.  Some of the Catholic churches celebrate Christmas on the 25th the biggest celebrations happen on New Years.  Thats when they open presents and is everyones favorite.  Christmas is celebrated on the 6th and 7th of January.  We get to celebrate all three!  Not sure how yet, but- we'll do something.  An amazing past sister from our mission posted a message on Facebook today.  We've quoted her before.  She is very profound.  I hope she doesn't mind but I'd like to share her thoughts about Christmas.  Far away from home, they echo our own thoughts.  She said, "What is Christmas? The world says its snow, red & white, decorations, Christmas music, gift giving and receiving, lights. I've experienced next to none of that this month, and honestly I haven't missed it. Religion says Christmas is about celebrating the birth of the Savior. Honestly, just as we all get sick of Christmas once it's over, I've even gotten sick of talking about the same "true meaning of Christmas" message over and over. Not sure why, maybe it's just the repetition of it all. Or perhaps it's because I know in my heart it's not enough to talk about and celebrate his birth; it's what He DID in His life that had the most meaning and significance for us. Last night at English we didn't talk about Christmas. We talked about Christ's teachings and why He is our perfect example, all with non members, and I felt so much joy. That's where this natural joy comes from. The joy I've felt over the past 18 months. The joy didn't come from 'me wishing and trying to feel the Christmas spirit'. Because what IS the Christmas spirit? It's the Spirit of Christ. It's His example, His life, His teachings, all of which lead back to his love for each of us. I think everyone expects to feel a special joy around the holidays. But the true joy I felt last night made me realize we are silly to think our 'special joy' should be limited to one month of the year. True joy comes from serving others, and the best way we can serve them is by sharing with them the Gospel message. The restoration, the plan of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is the GOOD NEWS! "And how great shall be your joy if you bring but one soul unto me."  Well said.  
I was reading a talk by D. Todd Christofferson the other day (you all should read it!  Heres the link just copy and paste in your URL link.  https://www.lds.org/liahona/2015/12/be-at-peace?cid=HP_WE_12-16-2015_dPFD_fLHNA_xLIDyL1-C_&lang=eng
which I think has given us how we will celebrate this Christmas.  He suggests, "
I hope you will take time this Christmas season to sit for a few quiet moments and let the Savior’s Spirit warm you and reassure you of the worthiness of your service, of your offering, of your life. Sit quietly with that little baby and come away spiritually strengthened and better prepared for all that is going to come later. Let that moment be one of rest and refreshing and reassurance and renewal.
From far away, we are missing you all.  We love you and wish you a happy, restful, relaxing Christmas filled with the spirit of our Father in Heaven and His Son Jesus Christ. They who truly love us, no matter what, and who want nothing more than for us to have the perfect happiness they have.  Their plan to get us back to them IS the good news, if we will only remember.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas Elder And Sister Mikkelsen

This little Elf would like to say Merry Christmas!!!!

Wishing Gram a Merry Christmas

Reading the Christmas Books

Our little student nurse just finished another
semester of nursing school way to go girl!