Christmas 2010 Medley of Events

There are 2 Christmas's in Moldova: Dec 25th and Jan 7th.

The December Christmas was on the white side - but beautiful.

Our apartment building entrance.

The garbage truck couldn't get up our hill. At least we had an excuse for the overflowing trash this time!

We receiveded TWO packages from home! 1 was from the Hatch family (yeah!!) and 1 big one was from our Fishers 2 ward family. The ward sent a stocking full of love notes from everyone. It made us cry to know that so many people love us and remembered us during this special Christmas. THANKS-WE LOVE YOU TOO!!!

The Chisinau Branch Christmas party. (shshshsh-Nella played Father Christmas)


Irina and Toni at the Branch Christmas party.

The Hincesti Pro-Women's Shelter. Marlene Lopez, next to me is the Peace Corp Volunteer.


We delivered to the Pro-Women's Shelter toys for the children, a clothes dryer, a refrigerator, a couple of high chairs, some Newborn Kits, goodie bags, and...

...some diapers! The young mothers and the center had no budget for diapers of any kind so the mothers were not using any diapers at all!! They just washed baby cloths alot-thus the need for a dryer. So we ordered g diapers from Babies R Us. They were were so excited!

Tom and I picked up KFC for lunch for 38 missionaries for zone conference. We also fixed a Christmas dinner for all of them. It was great!

Christmas Eve we went with all the Young Single Adults and the Kitchens to a wonderful concert. These 3 guys are triplets and sounded terrific. They wore suits at first and were super good looking.

The female vocalist was Moldovan and she was extraordinary!

Doina really got into the concert. It was almost as much fun watching her as the concert.

Christmas Day at President and Kesli Aikens home. The missionaries got to skype call their families from the Aikens. We had chili.

Sister Hansen and Sister Hansen made carmel apples for us. No, it is NOT a typo...both Sister missionaries have the same last name and they are NOT related.

Santa brought the Aikens a WEE game and here is Ryan loosing at bowling!

The Elders played a game of Risk while waiting their turn to Skype their families.

Just us.

Kesli and President Aiken chilling out after everyone else went home.


Then we went to Blind School #135 for their Christmas concert. We definately got our kid fix! It was so cute. The boy second on the right was a perfect little "Ralphie" from Christmas Story.

Father Christmas wears a robe in Moldova. He was fun to watch in the program. They played games, danced, and sang. Everyone new their part perfectly and most could see where to go!

Made us miss the grandkids... a lot!

Then Elena arrived from Orem Utah. She is the blonde. She grew up in a Moldovan orphanage with Alina and got adopted by an American family. They are members of the church. Elena came to Moldova to visit with friends and to give winter coats to orphans. She also brought 6 coats for a family were going to do Christmas for; Aurica and Vladimer's family.

Here's Aurica's family with their new coats. They also got new boots - even dad!

All the coats perfectly...except for the littlest girl. It will fit her next year and the year after!

We went to Aurica's home and shared Christmas gifts with them. They had never seen so many gifts at one time. Their Babuska watched as they happily opened gifts. Money for the gifts was donated by Elder Jentzsch's family and our contractor Alexander.

The biggest hits were the Barbie type dolls, the CD player, and the back packs. Notice the sleeping baby: she slept through all the noise and gift opening. She is sleeping on the bear we gave to her.

Then we had a big dinner to celebrate Senic (front right) coming home with honor from his mission to Ukraine. We had an American Thanksgiving meal complete with turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

We let Suren carve the turkey

Sona made me 2 hats, a scarf, and gloves for Christmas. She is such a doll!

Senic's mother, Hripseme, made me a green scarf. I love it!

Here are some of the bottles of wine that were given to us and to Katea's office. They say they get so many bottles each year that they could open a wine store. We told Dorina that part of her job as a translator for us was to get rid of the wine we kept getting.

It is Jan 2nd today and it still this beautiful outside.