Welcome Home Elder Russell!

We've been having a semi-eventful week with the return of my brother, Sam. He is now an RM. I don't know if it's scarier that he's an RM, or the fact that RM is synonymous with "on the prowl for a wife." As I mentioned, I'm ready for the RM thing, but the sister-in-law possibility is frightening. Now, don't get me wrong, Sam is neither engaged nor has a girlfriend at the moment, but it's a little scary. So, in celebration of this whole returning deal, on Friday, we watched a Soviet movie. Not just any Soviet movie. It's some sort of Russian-cult movie. Sam says that it's a bit like "An Affair to Remember." It's horrible, but everyone's seen it and claims to like. It was called "The Irony of Fate." I'm glad that my brother speaks fluent Russian now, because he had to translate the movie for us the whole way through. And it was painfully long. Then on Saturday for lunch, he cooked us pelmeni for lunch. They are very similar to wontons. And along with the terrible Russian movie, Sam brought home some bizarre other stuff. Such as the 7th Harry Potter book in Russian (he got permission from his mission president to read it on the plane, so he can now say that he has never read the 7th book in English--just Russian), Star Wars in Russian (don't even ask), some other Russian movie, and a collection of the 200 most popular songs in Russia for either 2007 or 2008. Don't remember which. They sound just like American pop songs, except that they're singing in Russian.

He also has a large collection of ties. Apparently, ties in Russia cost approximately $5 a piece or less, so the missionaries have a tendency to just stock up. They're thicker than American ties, but they're okay, I guess. He also bought two Russian suits. He says that the quality of Russian suits is better than American suits, they cost about $100-$200 (significantly less than an American suit), the only downside being that they are mass produced and bought off the rack. You don't have them fitted. But usually, it's apparently not a problem.

He told us a lot of fun stories about Russia, and we've been having a grand time just catching up with one another.

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