First week of mission

We had a wonderful 9 days in Utah prior to flying to Moscow to begin our mission there. We stayed with dear friends Glen & Sherie Gray in Springville, Utah the weekend prior to entering the MTC. They were gracious host who fed us well.
Glen and Sherie at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant.
Loretta Hoagland, Jack's Sister in law, and Pat Parkin, wife of cousin Hal at cousin party. We had 21 in attendance thanks to the efforts of cousins Kent Michie and Kay Parkin. Gary and Loretta came from Florence, Or., and we were happy the cousin Don Parkin was here from Sydney, Australia.
We visited and had lunch with Judy's cousin Bob, who is now suffering from Alzheimers.
We stayed the weekend the MTC at Jack's cousin, Kent Michie. They too were most gracious hosts, who looked to our every need. Sunday morning Kent and Barbara took us to the Choir broadcast on temple square. We were early enough to hear the program twice.
The temple grounds have these beautiful Sister Missionaries from all over the world helping people and giving them private tours. We purposely sought out a Russian Sister. She is from our mission.
Judy, Barbara, and Kent waiting for the program to begin.
Our first look and the chapel in Lipetsk, the city we have been assigned to work. There are about 600,000 who live in that city. We have about 15 who attend church.
We are blessed with 4 sweet young Ladies in the branch. They have just latched on to Sister Hoagland.
The Elder on the left works in the mission office in Moscow and he filled my ipad with church media. Wow! Elder Turner is from Atlanta Georgia and a most amazing Elder. He has told us of miracle after miracle that has resulted in Baptisms. He was the first Elder in a city in Kazakhstan and had 30 baptisms. I will try to have him write down his experiences for they are exceptional. His companion is from Ukraine and he is the branch president here. He worked for hours trying to get our computer wi-fi up and running.
Above is our Russian Language tutor, Tyson Ecersley. We had three months of skype lessons with him and 6 hours at the MTC. We are standing ourtside a room where we had just concluded a testimony meeting where everyone bore testimony in the language of the country they were to serve. Wonderful!
This is our small study group where we learned how to teach the first two lessons of "Preach my Gospel," and how to teach a lesson to a less active. They had volunteers play the people we taught. There were rooms made up like living rooms and we knocked on the door and roll played the whole experience.
Front row: Cousin Ray Baxter's (deceased) wife Lois, Cousins Diane Baxter Serdar.
Back row: Judy, Cousin Kent Michie, Linda Baxter.
It was a great time at the cousin party. The mothers of all these cousins were very close and we cousins new each other pretty well. Glad to see them all again.

Had a great morning and afternoon with granddaughters Amy and Amanda Hoagland Saturday before we entered the MTC.
A classic missionary pose at the MTC in front of the world map. We had 36 couples from all over the country going to places all over the world. To Africa, Samoa, Eastern and western Europe, south and Central America, and even temple square.