Hey Happy Easter!!! :)
Easter here isn't until May I think but we celebrated a bit anyway by making a nice chicken dinner (with the least sketchiest chicken we could find) and I made sugar cookies. We didn't have any frosting though so I mixed sugar with beets to make them pink which worked really well. It's SOO nice to be in the kitchen again!!!! :) Not necessarily the best use of the Lord's time but we gave some cookies to Tatyana, a member who's been trekking around the city with us for hours, so I suppose it was a good thing. I really cannot express how awesome the members are. Especially the four women who help us out a lot, like every day, teaching lessons. And we've been teaching quite a bit. Ahhh how we have been blessed this week!! It started out pretty normal but then on saturday it became miraculous. Saturday was a weird day. We didn't have any lessons planned so we decided to hit the streets. We wandered off to a section of our area that I'd never seen before, which was cool to explore but no one really wanted to talk to us. This continued for about 90 minutes. Then as we're walking I notice that stuck in the mud is a bill. So I pick it up and see that it's 5000 rubles. I had no idea how much it was so I handed it to Sister Clyde. She said, "where did you get that?! that's a ton of money!" It's only about 130/140 bucks... but imagine finding a benjamin in the mud. There's no one standing around us who might have dropped it so we call our district leader who then calls the zone leaders. While we are waiting for them to call back and are thinking about all the super snickers we're going to buy (amplified, way tastier, Russian version of a snickers), this taxi driver gets out of his cab walks over to us and says, "hey did you find money?" "uhhhh yeah" "Oh that's mine." Then I hand it to him and that was that. Then we walk away. It was just one of those moments were you think you have something and then you don't. And then it was like why did that happen? and move on with life. Anyway, that's not the miracle, it just kind of how the day went, weird stuff was happening. We keep contacting and we have like a half hour left of contacting before we were to go to a Relief Society activity. Then we meet Olga, a cute tall twenty year old who likes us and wants to know more about why we're in Russia. We get her phone number and an appointment. Our goal was two so we just need one more to reach that. Then we walk to the park and all of the sudden every one wants to talk to us. One of the ladies even said she wasn't interested then ran back to us a few minutes later while we were talking to someone else and invited us over for tea to talk. We couldn't, I wish so bad that we could and I'm really curious what would have happened but oh well, we got her number, we called her later and she still wants to meet with us so that's good. We ended up with 5 phone numbers and appointments. I almost wish we didn't have P-day today so taht we could teach instead. We're basically booked for the rest of the week now which is awesome. It just goes to show how many friendly, curious people there are with so many questions and searching for answers. We met with Olga and Sofia yesterday, two of the women we met on saturday. They're so great, and like I said, full of questions. At one point of our lesson with Olga she said, "I just don't know why we're here on earth. If we lived with God and are going to return to Him, why are we here?" Sister Clyde and I looked at each other, trying not to grin. It was like she was quoting Preach My Gospel. At the end I bore my testimony and gave her the Book of Mormon. Then afterwards she asked us when we could meet again. Then an hour or so later we had a lesson with Sofia who is so sweet but talks suppppperrrrr fast. I could only get a few words out of the whole lesson and Sister Clyde said that she couldn't even really understand anything either so it's really good that we had Tatyana with us!! But even when we didn't understand we still could give the "how to begin teaching points" in Preach My Gospel and they worked very well. Those points are GOLDEN for first lessons. Sofia also had a lot of questions and a lot of things to say in her super fast voice and I could tell she was thirsty for more. Another little part I understood was how she described meeting us in the park. She said we walked directly up to her with huge smiles. She was thinking that we wanted help and was then surprised to hear us ask her if she needed help and that we had a message of Jesus Christ. Then she told us that the time we set up for her when we called later fit perfectly into her schedule when she didn't think it would work out. She found that to be a little miracle and didn't think it was a coincidence that we met her and were able to meet with her, which is sooo cool to hear. :) We gave her a Book of Mormon too and she hugged it tight to her a big huge with a grin on her face. :) I love it.
Well that's our miracle this week--a flood of new potentials and a coulple of awesome new investigators. Missionary work is pretty hard--Russian is hard, being exactly obediant can be hard (like waking up), talking to people and teaching can be hard--but there is so much joy in it. Honestly, for me the mornings are the hardest because I have so much time to think, to think about how hard it is and how incompitent I am but when I get out there with the people in this city, this beautiful city, talking about the things I love most, life couldn't be better. Plus, I have to say, Russia is pretty cool. Here are some typical things about Russia I've been jotting down:
-Big furry shopkas. There's everywhere!! I thought that was just some traditional outdated thing but people actually wear them and they're stinkin cool.
-Fur in general, there's lots of fur hats and collars and even full on fur coats.
-Gold (& silver) teeth. If you're over 30 there's a good chance you've got one or two of those. I've even seen full sets. Pretty classy.
-Blunt bangs for girls, army cuts for men are super common.
-babooshkas. They exist too and they're so cool! There's two of them on the corner we pass everyday that sell seeds on the sidewalk and we chat with them every once and a while.
-The sidewalks are like a huge farmers' market. There's little tables set up everywhere with goods old babooshkas have either made or grown.
-Marshmallow kids. Samara has the cutest kids I've ever seen and that's not a fib. And they're all in these puffy snow suits that remind me of the 90's. :)
-Every one has the same name. There's like 10 names you hear over and over so it's hard to keep on Sveta straight from the other. There's Sveta, Olga, Tatyana, Natasha, Sasha, Lena...etc.
-Domes. I've only been in one residence that most American's would consider a house and it was hardly such. (well, I've never lived in a city so that's probably why this is a different concept for me.) Most live in a big complex called a dome. Domes are always an adventure and I love knocking because of it. There's always two consecutive doors to get into a stair well then there's a stairwell and a sketchy elevator that (snugly) holds three. Then there's usually 4-6 doors to knock on each floor. The doors and doorbells are all different and I've seen/heard some really cool ones. Domes are old and eclectic with bad lighting and I always feel like I'm either in a haunted house or a piece of modern art when I step into one.
I still can't believe I'm here, some ultra ordinary girl from a small town some how landed in the coolest place ever doing the best work. There's a flaw somewhere and I know I'm super lucky. That or I'm blessed by a Heavenly Father that loves me a heck of a lot. You know... either one. ;)
I love you guys so much!!! and I'm sad I haven't heard more from you!!! I can now email anyone I want that's not in my mission so any one who's reading this can feel free to email me at johnson.kimberly@myldsmail.net
I also get an hour and a half to write instead of just an hour. :)
сестра джонсон
No comments:
Post a Comment