Week 2

Well, life is here peachy as always....

Whoever said that Russia is cold was wrong. Really wrong. It's been soooo hot here the last couple of days, and Ufa is pretty far south in Russia, so it's hotter than other areas. I keep reminding myself that it's going to get realllllly cold pretty soon, so I need to count my blessings.

I think the most frustrating part of being a missionary is not being able to make a choice for someone else. Darn that free agency. I can't choose for them, but I can bug our investigators and coach them enough so that hopefully they'll make the right choice. Since Sister Galli and I are whitewashing this area, it's been super interesting because not only is the geographical area GIGANTIC (like I said last week, the biggest area in the whole mission), but the investigators here are....apparently not interested in investigating. The sisters before us had several progressing investigators, 3 of which had baptismal dates for the next two weeks. But, yep. They all either block our calls or don't come to their appointments-- it's a little frustrating for me because I literally haven't had a chance to practice my Russian in a lesson setting yet.

We met a lady on a bus last week who was really friendly, so we set up an appointment to meet with her. She's a really nice old lady in her 50s.Well, she lives a really far way away. We live in Ufa, and she lives past Dioma 25 min a city in our area that's 40-ish minutes away from Ufa by bus), so yeah. It takes a good hour/hour-and-a-half to get to her house. So anyway, we got to her house, which is a little tiny Russian shack in the country, and we began to teach her. She's really superstitious and has a lot of funny beliefs because of the Orthodox church. She agreed to come to church on Sunday, but then she couldn't come because she was sick. I mean, she was probably sick. We really have no way of knowing. We called her Sunday night to see if she was feeling better, and she said her landlord evicted her and she's homeless now. She asked if she could come stay with us....yeah.... kind of an awkward moment, you know? Hopefully we can see her sometime this week, but it's hard to fit her in since it's like a 4 hour time commitment and costs quite a bit of money to get over there. 

We're meeting again today with F. who seems like a really good progressing investigator. We haven't met with him since last week, but he read our reading assignment (Moroni 7) and he has questions about it. We're going to teach him the lesson on the Restoration tonight and bring up scriptures about how good things are from God. He seems somewhat religious, so we'll find out about that, and hopefully as we talk about the Restoration, things will just click for him. 

So about food:

We haven't been invited over for dinner anywhere, so I still haven't had "traditional" food other than that which I buy in grocery stores, but the food here is really good. For a zone meeting we had this week, we had a huge lunch, and I made homemade brownies for it. It was hard because every apartment in the mission is supposed to have basic cooking ingredients, but for some reason ours didn't. It's hard to make a recipe when you realize halfway through there's no cinnamon/vanilla/brown sugar/etc anywhere. But I made brownies that turned out alright, and everyone was glad to eat them since brownies don't exist in Russia.

I also made dad's pot roast recipe (is it really a recipe? haha) for dinner one time sans meat because apparently the meat is questionable sometimes, according to Sister Galli. But we'll see for the future.

I also went to McDonald's over here last week. It was so amazing! Apparently (in Russia at least), McDonald's is like a fancy place to eat and everyone wants to work there. The food was actually pretty expensive, but it was really good. Really good. I had potato wedges and a McFresh hamburger. It was delicious!

On Saturday, we had a branch service project and picnic. We went to the Botanicheski Garden park and picked up trash. There was a lot of trash, that's all I'm saying. Wow. But it was really fun and we also played games like volleyball, soccer, etc. and had a good time. The sisters in the branch brought a big picnic lunch and it was SO GOOD. Salami and cheese sandwiches, watermelon, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, and every kind of juice. I definitely stuffed myself, and it was great.

Language:

I understand the general gist of conversations for the most part. If people are talking about something that I have absolutely NO vocabulary for, then I'm totally and completely lost. Whenever we talk about the Gospel, I understand what people are saying, and if I don't understand completely, it's not hard to guess. It's a great feeling to recognize words that I know or just learned. I feel like a proud little 2 year old with my vocabulary. :) I'm anxious to keep learning more because I'm really just afraid of butchering their beautiful language, but I really do try. It's hard to contact people here because they just.don't.care. Their reply a lot is either "нет" or a variation of "I don't care". What we've found really helpful is to just beg people for directions somewhere and usually as they talk to us they hear our awful Russian and ask where we're from and why we're here. Perfect opportunity, right? :) Despite the fact that all of the investigators that were investigating before we came now are no longer interested, we have definitely made some progress to get new investigators on our own. We try really hard, and everyday I hobble home like an old lady. (My shoes aren't giving me blisters at all though Mom, so don't worry-- life is great!)

Gospel:

Well, I really like studying the Gospel. It's fun, and I have a lot of fun reading the scriptures and Preach My Gospel everyday. There's some really good stuff in there, whowoulda thunk? ;) I'm a firm believer in Preach My Gospel, and we've made some goals as a companionship to follow it more closely. It's like a formula: if you plug in the right things, you WILL get results. And we definitely need results. It's hard being in a foreign country, speaking to foreign people (in a foreign language), about things that are absolutely foreign to them-- it's hard. I'm not going to lie. And people here just don't care. People are content to continue to be miserable because they are too lazy to change-- even if changing means that they'll be SO HAPPY. But that's how life is, and that's what agency is. But I know that if I follow Preach My Gospel to the best that I can, that I will get results. It's a formula. Plan the lessons, talk to everyone, invite everyone, be open, be honest, be normal, be friendly, pray sincerely, ask everyone for referrals and guess what? You're going to find at least one person to teach, probably more. My testimony has grown so much just being out here and hearing about how the members of the branch have improved their lives so much by being members of the church. I know we'll find people, we just have to keep looking.  If a negative thought slips into my head, I just ignore it the best I can. I love being on a mission, even though it's hard sometimes. Ultimately, it's just really awesome. Everyday I'm amazed to wake up and find myself in Russia. I'm amazed when a word pops into my head that I totally forgot I knew. I'm amazed that I haven't collapsed from exhaustion yet either. :)

I love Russia. I love the Gospel. I love the Lord. I'm just having a lot of fun here because serving is fun. Mosiah 2:41

I love you! Have a great week!

Love, cecmpa Brown

p.s. once again the stupid pictures didn't upload. It's a complicated system they have at this internet cafe where I have to give them my SD card and they do it for me. But it won't work because "my photos are too big" (it's never been a problem before....). So maybe I'll just mail them if this continues? I don't know.