A Birthday in Moscow

Having a birthday as a missionary is absolutely wonderful!  Thank you for all your loving and kind birthday wishes.  Three of the great treasures in life are family, friends, and missionaries  I am a rich woman because of all of you.  Thank you! 

                                                           October 18, 2010

Stephen gave me this fox Russian hat (I actually picked it out in August when it was 104 degrees here and the air was full of smoke) and I love it!  It is already cold here and I was grateful to be able to wear it today.  Now I feel like I'm really in Russia.  In addition to our coats, wearing hats, scarves, gloves, and boots are a huge part of our everyday attire.  We would freeze if we didn't wear them.  So, Sister Sorenson goes Russian.

President Sorenson arriving at the Mission Office today in his Russian cap.

Our two wonderful AP's, Elder Kasallis and Elder Callister, gave me beautiful red roses and a sweet birthday card. I love these two Elders!

We celebrated by buying pizza for lunch and enjoying it with our two AP's, two Office Elders (Elder Grover and Hansen) and our Office Couple (Elder & Sister Gronning).  Sister Gronning made me a delicious yellow cake (from an American cake mix which is super hard to find here) and it was a real treat. 

I even got to blow out birthday candles.

Our loyal and wonderful driver, Alexander, was able to join us as well.

On Sunday, October 10th, we met James D'Arc and his son Sam, at church.  They had just flown in from Salt Lake.  James is the film music archivist for BYU and was in town to assist the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in recording the music from the movies The Adventures of Don Juan and Arsenic and Old Lace.  The orchestra finished that recording ahead of schedule, and James invited us to visit a recording session of the music from the film The Battle of Neretva.  Here we are in the control booth with James.

In the recording booth with the conductor, William Stromberg, John Morgan, the restorer of the film scores, and Anna Bonn, wife of William, who works on the production of these recordings.  These three wonderful people are very well known for recording many classic film scores.  We did have pictures taken inside recording studio with the orchestra but that was on someone else's camera and I haven't received them yet.  I will post those when I get them.

Thank you to all for this wonderful birthday in Moscow!