January 16th 2013

Sooo this letter will be kind of random because I've been jotting things down that I forgot to tell you last week.
First off, thanks for sending me Katie and Justin's emails. My whole district is jealous of all the Dear Elders I get...I've gotten like 15 this last week. But could you also send me Brian's (Elder Peterson's)? Just copy and paste them from his blog, I'd love to hear about what's going on in Samara :) A little more about my companion Cectpa Lund... She's from American Fork, was into band and was a drum major, went to BYU studying music education, and lately has started to remind me of Ashley Parsons. Random. But um since she's from Utah and went to BYU she knows like everyone. We see one of her friends at least twice a day, usually more. Which is fun. Oh and I saw Teddi last week right after she got here. I wrote a blog post about it so I won't bother further illustration other than it was awesome. I've seen here a couple times since then.. a lot on sunday and I got a picture of her and me and Sister Chamberlain. I sent a picture. Which reminds me, last week the picture I sent of the large group in front of the temple is the group of us here going to Samara. I'll be sending a picture of my district at some point. And if you don't know what a district is here at the MTC (I didn't) it's who I spend every hour of my time here with. We're in the same class and have the same schedule and us girls are in the same room. So we're with each other every second, but I love them. Which is good because it would be terrible here if I didn't. I honestly never anticipated loving them so much but they've become a second family to me, like the branch kind of did. I wish I could tell you everything about all of them but I don't have a lot of time. Maybe I'll write you it.
Mom, you were worried (a bit) that I would gain weight here--not so. I literally eat as much as I can every meal and I still have been loosing. Maybe it's the stress, maybe it's because we work out everyday, maybe it's because we don't eat as often but it's weird. I've started to encorporate dessert into my diet. It helps hold me over to the next meal. I haven't gotten to the point where I hate the food yet, which is good but I've got plenty of time to get there. We're the last twelve weekers. (I'm not sure if I've told you that) The next group coming in will be here in a week or so and will leave the same time as us. We'll just have a bit more of a head start with the language. We're doing really well with Russian but it doesn't really feel like it because we have so much more to learn and we have to know it now so that we can teach. We finished teaching Roman. He committed to baptism (woo hoo)! and guess what! he's our teacher!! Did not see that coming. His real name is Brother Seitz. He's from Utah and went to the Baltics on his mission. He's an awesome teacher but at first Cectpa Lund and I were really weirded out. Roman was teaching us and he wasn't Roman anymore, he was someone else... we realized how much we had grown to love Roman because of how much we missed him!
I'm a slow typer and I don't have any more time but one more thing-- last night Elder Holland spoke at devotional!!! They never tell us who's speaking at devotional so it was a surprise. Best surprise ever though, it was amazing. He spoke about a lot of the same things he did when he came on thanksgiving. So if you can in any way get a hold of the MTC devotional entitled "For Such a Time as This" WATCH IT and show your seminary kids mom.
Love you guys!! thanks for the letters and late happy birthday mom!

Cectpa Johnson

PS. On the curb right when I got here the first day I met an Elder Ashton going to Samara! haha I thought that was an interesting coincidence. He's in the other district though so I don't see him often.