Mikkelsen Muzings: 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