August 12, 2013

RT: In Russian, the difference between the words 'man' and 'car' are an 'ooo' and an 'ahh.'
(Well, they're a bit different when correctly pronounced, but when you say man it sounds roughly like 'moosheena' and car is 'mahsheena')

Every week is a strange week. Monday, Sister Moffatt rolled her ankle (again, this time worse), so we stayed in for much of this week doing work out of the area book. Let's just say the next missionaries that come into this area are going to love us. Everything's gettin all organized and potentials getting called. I actually set up more meetings in a couple hours of area book work than I usually do tracting, which is surprising. I also even started on a project that I call "member profiles." I hung our map on the wall and found all the active member's addresses and pinned them, then wrote down all the information we know about them. Now when someone comes in, it won't take them an entire 3 months to get to know the members like it took me. I'm really bad with names here. I used to be soooo good at remembering names but sadly, that gift has disappeared. Working on that though.
We also had our first zone conference with the new president on Thursday. Their bodies are still adjusting to the whole being on the other side of the world thing but their spirits are all here and powerful as ever. There is no doubt in my mind that President Schwab is meant to be here right now and is our new, inspired leader. The zone conference was exactly what I needed to progress as a missionary (& as a person, cause I'm one of those too...). It is clear to me that our mission is living far below our privileges, unused potential as it were, that we can unlock if we follow the President's guidance.
One of the things that I've been following through with after zone conference is monitoring my thoughts. Fear and doubt are a poison that destroy our faith. They are thoughts generated by your own mind. They are not fact. They are not truth and they should be cast out just as if they were an immoral or disgusting thing and replaced with thoughts turned to our Savior and the good things that are in our lives because of Him. Exercising self control over my thoughts has allowed me to just be happy. :) and freer to reach out with boldness, do the things I need to do, and enjoy doing it.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had come to truly love Russia. Lately, I have come to the realization of how much I love missionary work. There's nothing like it and nothing that brings the purest joy.
Bertho has been away playing in his band at a church camp for kids so we haven't met with him this week. But we did get to meet with Sasha finally! She's one of our progressing investigators we've had for a long time but she's been sick and stuff so it's been like a month since we've seen her. Yesterday was kinda crazy with lessons because we had a lesson scheduled for after church but Sasha didn't make it to the church until after it was over, so Sasha went in on the lesson with us (which was like 30 min away). The lesson she came with us to was Oksana's. Oksana is a pass off from the zone leaders. She called them a couple weeks ago and said "hey, I was taught by the missionaries 5 years ago and I decided I want to get baptized." The thing is she doesn't really understand what it means to be a member of the church and keep the commandments. So here we are talking to Oksana who just wants to get baptized and not follow the commandments with Sasha, who follows all the commandments but doesn't want to get baptized. I don't get it. I wanted to say, all right, you two just go have a chat, learn from each other what you need to understand and then you can both get baptized. haha :) I love em anyway, and hopefully someday they will both get it.
Hopefully I'll still be around in a few weeks, transfers are coming up!! Sister Moffatt's been here a cycle longer than me though so chances are that if we split I'll be the one to stay. :)

Love you!
Sister Johnson