Hello family and friends!

More information was requested on my companion. I'll do that first:

Elder McKnight is from a small town called Canton in New York. He sais it's where St. Lawrence is, but only like 4,000 students go there, which doubles his town's population. This is his last transfer. He's a lot different from me, but a lot of fun and a great companion. He's smart and knows very good Russian. Our cultural backgrounds are pretty much night and day though. For instance, on Christmas his family dresses up like Jews and sit on the floor and eat jewish food to have "a night in Bethlehem." I guess that's all I can say about that. He's served in the harder cities on the mission the whole time, including a winter in Sergut (I think that's how you spell it in english...). Sergut is the way north city. It got down to -55 while he was there. He has pictures and it's so cold that you can't even really see because the air is just cloudy. It looks insane, and I know I'll be serving there in the winter given my luck. Luckily though I really hit the MTC at the perfect time because it knocked out the coldest part of winter, meaning I really will only have one and a half winters to go through.

Speaking of the weather, it won't make up its mind. It got really warm, I believe it was about 65 degrees on Saturday, but the high Sunday was about 10 degrees. It's been very cold for the past couple of days as well. Right now it's about 20. I wish it would warm up already. It's April 16th!

April 16th means I've been out for three months already! It's flying by.

Score on my taxes, Pop. Even in the Motherland I get that money.

Speaking of money here, I haven't noticed it being THAT different, to be honest. Gas costs the same in America, about $3.50/gal. Most groceries cost about the same, but bread is a good amount cheaper. It's like 40 cents for a loaf of bread, and it's much more tasty here. They have this little sweet bread things called priyanniki (sorry about translating the spelling, there's no word in english) that are SO GOOD and cheap. There are also these things that are kind of like ravioli but they have spiced meat inside that are tasty. I've been eating that, priyanniki, and TONS of eggs. Eggs every morning for breakfast. Cheap and tasty. We usually will eat one other meal at some point during the day, and snack at night. My companion is good at creating things, so at other times we eat rice, pasta, vegetables, and meat. He's NOT a meat fan at all though. He only likes sausage, so it's sausage with everything. I'm convincing him to buy more ground beef though. I need to make me a big ol' hamburger. I eat yogurt too a lot, it's pretty good here. Mueslix and oatmeal too. I'm fine on food, honestly. It's not as good as home and it's not as good as the MTC, but I eat. Oh, the milk is good too. It's really fatty though. Really fatty.

Thanks for the thought on the taco seasoning. I'll be looking forward to that. I was trying to think of other stuff I might want. I heard root beer extract is a popular missionary commodity. There are apparently certain kinds that you can buy in America that will make a liter with just a cap-ful, so it'll last a long time. If you can find that, a bottle would be excellent.

Mom, you asked about my birthday. I seriously have no idea. I've been trying to think of things I could get a lot of mileage out of, and nothing much comes to mind. I am going to need one or two more short-sleeved white shirts. I'll try and send you a letter with the mission address written in Russian the next time I'm in Yekaterinburg for transfers. That's when I can use the pouch. Otherwise it'll take 3 months to send the letter.

I can't remember if I explained camera rules or not here. We're not allowed to take cameras around without permission. We can get permission from our zone leaders though, but then we usually need a Russian to take pictures outside. It's a bummer because there's a lot of stuff I want to take pictures of. I'll see what I can do, but for now there won't be many pictures. I can only take them from my balcony. I have some more and some pictures of the apartment for you this week.

Hm, what else....I'm not entirely sure actually. Things are going well. I'm starting to hear Russian words even if I can't understand them, if that makes sense. It's definitely progress in the language. I can talk a little bit more clearly too. I'm understood at least.

We haven't had much to do with investigators still, but I'm hoping we can improve that. We're going out contacting tonight, so hopefully we'll find someone new. We just can't get a hold of the investigators we have now! There is a baptism for May 3rd though that the sisters set up. That'll be cool. But mostly it's just trying to strengthen the members. It's working, I can see them improving. It's tough work though. Definitely harder than I ever imagined. It's coming along though.

Okay, quick story before I go. We were walking through Lenin's square here a couple days ago, just a big open square with a Lenin statue. There were two 10-year old boys on bikes. They were riding toward us, and just wouldn't move. One finally swerved out of the way but the other one just ran straight into my companion and crashed off of his bike. He was okay and seemed really shocked. My companion was fine, and was laughing his head off. It looked like he had purposely done it, though I know that he didn't. So funny. The kid just bit it. But he rode straight into my comp!

Okay, well I guess that's all for now. If I think of anything else I'll write it down. Thanks for everything! I'm praying for you all!

Love,
Cole