Astana!!! finally, now the adventure begins

Hey everyone,

Well it sounds like everyone is really excited to welcome a couple of new babies into the family, myself included. The pictures looked pretty good, they look healthy and cute. I can't wait to see them in a few months. I hope they get to go home soon, or maybe they are already home, anyway, I hope they are healthy and happy and that Liz makes a good quick recovery as well. My big news for the week... we finally made it to Astana!! After barely making it onto our train, we enjoyed a nice 20 hour trip from Almaty to Astana. I actually really do enjoy the overnight trains, they're fun.

Anyway, I'll start from last week. After writing home, we went to the mountains and went sledding and played some football. Sledding was crazy, it was fun, but a little scary. One sister wrapped herself around a tree going about a hundred miles an hour, she jumped right up after that though. We all though she was a gonner! I had a good time, even though I didn't feel way good. The next day we had zone conference. I was just feeling terrible the whole time. I had a headache and my whole body was achy and stuff. I think I had a flu or something. The worst possible day to get sick, after not eating hardly anything the whole week before due to a lack of food, I ate very little at Sister Moore's dinner due to lack of appetite! I was pretty bummed. She made some kind of shredded pork or beef sandwiches. I did eat some and it was really good but I just couldn't eat too much. I slept through a good portion of zone conference, nobody bothered to wake me up because they all knew I wasn't feeling too great. All day Saturday I wasn't feeling too good either, but by Sunday I was feeling better, which was a miracle. President Woolley was with us at church and after church he gathered the four of us who are going to be here in Astana and told us some news about when we would be able to go. He said, I want two elders to go Tuesday night. He wanted my companion and me to go but he thought I was sick so he was going to send someone else. He asked me how I was feeling and I said, I'm feeling great, I'm ready to go. So that was that. The other two elders didn't come with us because one of them has to go back to Russia and get a 6 month visa for Kazakhstan, which means his companion had to stay in Almaty to wait for him there, rather than have an awkward threesome here in Astana. We were happy to go, they were bummed to stay of course. They should be here next week or so. Well Tuesday was the 8th of March, a big holiday in Russia and Kazakhstan. It's Womens Day, the equivilent to our Mothers Day in America, I think. Anyway, there was a big branch activity and we missionaries prepared a number. We watched and studied a clip of the Temptations performance of My Girl. We practiced for a combined total of probably 2-3 hours, and we pulled it off. The dance was a way big hit, I got it on film and will show you all someday. It was a lot of fun. Anyway, after the activity, we needed to get home to finish packing and cleaning up our apartment. We had someone from the branch coming to pick us up at 7. We scrambled to get everything ready, we each had one suitcase and then there was one more suitcase full of supplies for Astana. We jumped in the car and headed out. Our train left at 7:53 or so, so I was keeping an eye on the clock the whole time. At about 7:30, the driver started asking us some questions about our train and stuff. We told her what train it was and she said "guys, that train leaves from the different station!" We said, ya we know, where are you taking us? So she got us on the right course and we started cruising to the other station. We jumped out of the car at about 7:40 or so and started running, asking people where we needed to go. We got on the right track and started heading out but two young guys stopped us and we had to weigh our bags. I guess you are only allowed to take 35 kilograms per ticket, I'm not sure why, but that is their rule I guess. Well both Hasbiullin and I had about 37 or 38 kilos, plus another suitcase that weighed about 36 kilos! We said, our train leaves in about 5 minutes. They said, okay, 2000 tenge. Luckily I'm with a Russian, he bargained them down to 1000 and I threw them the money and they let us through. It has been interesting living in countries where everything is taken care of by under the table deals like that. Anyway, we ran through, found our train and headed for the wagon. I forgot to mention that the suitcase full of Astana supplies is about the most worthless sorry suitcase you've ever seen. The entire handle that usually comes out to drag it with has been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole, so you have to drag it just using the top handle thing, and both of the wheels are messed up so you are just dragging it on its bottom, ha, it's a joke of a suitcase. It's Elder Player's suitcase, and he is taking it home with him, I can't wait to see his parents faces when they see it. The inside supporter things along the walls of the suitcase are broken so now it naturally sits flat as a pancake, ha, its funny. Anyway, some older guy had grabbed it out of our hands to help us take it to the train, of course for money, but we just let him take it. As we were jumping on the train, we grabbed whatever coins we had and gave him a grand total of 170 tenge, around a dollar. He wasn't too happy since he had just ran a good distance, including a couple staircases, hauling our 70 pound piece of junk, ha. Oh well. After that, things went pretty smooth. We had a pretty restful 20 hour ride. I fell asleep probably around 11 o'clock and woke up at 8:30. Not that I was trying to be disobedient, but we were in a train until 4:30 anyway, I didn't feel like waking up at 6:30 just to sit there until 4:30. It felt good.

We got here yesterday, Elder Maxwell met us at the station. He is originally from Canada, but lived in America since he was 14 years old. He and his wife lived in California the past 20 something years. His wife is from Tahiti, I'm guessing they met on his mission since that's where he served. They are way nice. They themselves have only been here about 2 weeks, so we are all just going to figure this out together. They had been living in one of the apartments that the elders will be living in while the other senior couple has been showing them around. The other couple left so they have just moved into their apartment. Sister Maxwell fed us dinner, some bean soup that tasted a lot like a soup that mom makes, it was pretty tasty. After that we went to see our apartment. Elder Maxwell gave us the keys and we said goodbye. Elder Hasbiullin and I just walked around a bit, crossed the river (still completely frozen solid) and took a look around. We got back to our place and unpacked a bit, although we don't really have a chance to unpack everything yet because we have no hangers and no place to hang hangers. Today we will hopefully get a rod to hang our stuff on. Also, we will need to get a cell phone, an iron, an ironing board, food, and whatever else we come across that we need.

We are starting a big adventure, along with Liz and Dallin! It will be really interesting for us all to see what the next few months will bring. I am just now realizing how close it is, and how fast time will fly. I just finished my last transfer, moved into my last apartment, am serving with my last companion probably, it's all pretty crazy to me. There is a lot to do here in Astana, next week I'll have stories about how the people react to the first missionaries in their city. We are excited to get going. I'm glad to know that everything is going good back home. Thanks for everything, have a good week. Love you guys.

Elder Geddes