Six months out

Hey everyone,
Well, I have made it 6 months on a mission. Crazy how fast it has gone though. I have 18 months left to learn the language, and become a real missionary. I have a feeling that 18 months will be just long enough for me to lose all my hair! Ha, I'm not sure if it's the water here or if it's finally just happening but I think I'm losing my hair, if you know any tips for me or anything that can help, let me know. I asked my mission presidents wife, she said there is some sort of medication you can get in America, but I didn't think that was necessary. After I hung up the phone she called me back just to tell me that men lose their hair because they have a lot of testosterone, so I guess it's a win lose situation ha. It still looks fine if I comb it but the second I can tell that it is getting real bad, I'm cutting my hair like Jason, I'm not sure I can pull off mica's haircut yet, maybe someday but I wouldn't feel too bad about having Jason's haircut. If I pull on my hair, I can sometimes pull out like 9 hairs or something. That seems like a lot. Just pray that I can pull off the bald look!
Well this week has been a lot more productive than any week so far here in Veronezh. We will end the week with something around 17-19 lessons if all goes as planned. That is really good, except all of them but a couple have been with members. We still don't have any real progressing investigators. We need to spend more time finding people to teach but my companion thinks it's more important to have a lot of lessons than spend a lot of time searching for new people to teach. I think he kind of just doesn't want to spend time searching. The other thing is, we lost our area book somehow when we moved apartments. I was pretty upset and he didn't seem to care so we kind of got into an argument. Luckily, we had most of the progress reports we needed out of the book so we still have those. I just can't help but think we could have found someone from way back if we hadn't lost the book. My companion and I got in one more argument about missionary work. He told me he's tired and he's served his time (even though he's still got 5 months left) and I wasn't going to stand for that. I didn't really hold any of my opinion back so we kind of were mad at each other for a while but we got over it and now we will have the most lessons either of us have ever gotten on our missions. Hopefully he kind of woke up and remembered where he is and what we need to be doing. I will be pushing for more searching time this week so hopefully we can find an investigator.
Our Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. There were 18 people there, in an apartment in Russia. I'm still not exactly sure how it worked but it did. We just brought a veggie tray and some ranch. There was some Borsh, some Russian pancakes (pretty much exactly like swedish pancakes) turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and desserts. I ate a ton and we got to go home with a bag of mashed potatoes, some turkey and about 20 bleeny (the pancakes) which was a lifesaver because we had some weird situations with our money... as in we had absolutely none. We had to pay for the apartment and some other stuff and the bank had some problems so we didn't get our money when we should have. Anyway, the leftovers saved our lives and we used my gravy mix to eat the potatoes the next day. The dinner was a lot of fun because all of us missionaries brought a non member. It was a lot of fun to get to know people and find out that, just like us, the thing they are most thankful for is family. Thanksgiving wasn't too hard for me, I enjoyed myself so I wasn't missing home too much. Hopefully I am able to make it through Christmas with the same luck. I'm sure we will be riding a train to Moscow around the 23rd, that's crazy about the train. How does a train just explode? You should probably start getting your plans finalized for who is going to be where for Christmas so we can do the whole phone call thing as efficiently as possible. I'm excited to call you guys in a few weeks. We have zone conference on Saturday here in Veronezh. Since we will all be going to Moscow for Christmas, they decided to have 3 zone conferences, one in Moscow for all the close cities, one in our city and another in a different city that is far away. It will be 10 missionaries including the ap's and the senior couple, and the president and his wife. It won't be as much fun as when we have one big conference but it will be good. Hopefully we will find out the details on this Christmas so I can let you know next week what I can do, then the next week we can finalize everything then the next week will be time to call! It should be fun.
Well I'm glad Thanksgiving was fun for you all, even though it was a bit different. Thanks for everything. I love you guys!
Love, Elder Geddes
p.s. I probably won't be sending anything home this christmas... I don't really know how all that works yet. I will figure out what kind of stuff I can send safely and how much it costs and maybe send something home later. Let me know if there is anything specific anybody wants.