Week 28: January 6, 2014

Well, I have never laughed at myself as much as I have this past week. I guess that happens when you and your companion have roughly the same language capabilities and are more prone to laughing than crying. This week we taught Anja, (the 14 year old that y'all met!) and we based the whole lesson on writing in your journal. We brought ours (neither of us have missed a day in at least a year) and bought her one of her own. She was so pumped about it. Sister Dalley is really awesome with youth so suddenly Anja wants to meet with us every day, haha. But she's doing a lot better--we made a deal with her where she has to complete a Personal Progress experience before we can have another lesson with her. But the reason that I'm telling you this is because I wanted to tell you another greeeeat Russian mistake that I made. Inside of Anja's journal, we wrote notes and there was a sentence that I wrote that said, "I promise that if you write in your journal every day, you will be able to see the blessings that God has given you." Here's what I actually wrote: "I promise that if you pee in your journal every day..." 

Sad, huh? Anja got a real kick out of that.

Sister Dalley and I have been doing great in a bunch of other aspects, as well. She taught me the proper way to eat kiwis, which is weird. Apparently you're supposed to scrub the hair off and then cut off the ends and eat the skin and all! It's a whole new world.

We've actually had a lot of miracles though. First of all, I realized that I haven't really updated you on how our investigators are doing.

Starting with Sasha: he's so, so, so good. I love his guts. We've only met with him once since Sister Dalley has been here but it's been awesome to see how Heavenly Father is making me a lot more capable than I thought I would be. It was a really powerful lesson with Sister Valling helping (every lesson that she helps on is powerful, basically) and he brought a friend, too! The whole time I was sitting there thinking about how crazy it is that I can now understand what's going on without asking my companion what happened later. Anyway, he actually wasn't in Narva this weekend, but he was in Tallinn visiting a friend. And here's how rad he is: he went to the Tallinn branch! It was the perfect Sunday for that to happen because Elder Bennett of the Seventy spoke and President Boswell was there, too! He met both of them and I could just die I'm so happy. I talked to him last night on the phone and he said it was an awesome experience. So, so, good.

Sadly, we haven't been able to teach Zhenja since Sister Dalley has been here, but we have a lesson with him tomorrow so I'll give you an update next week!

Yesterday, at the end of church, an 18ish year old girl walked in and turns out that she's an internet referral! I don't think you realize how insaaaane that is. We pretty much never get internet referrals here! Anyway, her name is Diana and she's from Riga, but has lived in Narva for the past two years. We had a lesson with her right after church and she's the most prepared person I've ever met, I swear. We'll meet with her again on Saturday. She's so rad.

Yesterday night, we also had a lesson with Nina, an investigator that the elders are passing to us. She is the sweetest, and every time we come to a lesson with her she has a list of questions that she wants us to answer. We've started a system where we take her list of questions home and study them, then give her scripture verses to answer them. It's pretty difficult because it's not like either of us are scriptorians, but it's been cool. We're trying to get her to think about it and study it out by herself instead of a couple of 19 year olds answering her questions in broken Russian.

Another great thing! I bore my testimony during sacrament meeting and it was a really cool moment for me because I remember exactly what I said in my first testimony when I got to Narva, and my Russian has improved a toooooon. I can express more complex ideas than, "God loves you...I love you...I know the Book of Mormon is true...etc", so that was a lovely realization.

It's also been awesome to feel the support of the members. They realize that we need a lot of help on lessons so they've been more willing than usual to help us out. 

Sadly, Sister Janis has been sick for a week. We've called her a few times to see if she needs anything and we dropped by with some chocolates and every time she blesses me in the name of Иисус that I will marry a righteous man and have lots of babies. So...the future's looking pretty bright.

New Years was insane. Seriously, I've never seen more fireworks in my life. Sister Dalley and I took a video of the sky outside our apartment window--we did a panoramic view and it shows like fifteen gigantic fireworks going off at different locations all around us. And it was only 10:00! 

I laid in bed for a while thinking about how, last year on New Years, the last thing I thought I'd be doing is going to sleep at 10:30 on the bottom bunk of an apartment room in Narva, Estonia. I really love it, though. Best New Years yet. The next day, pretty much every man we talked to was still terribly drunk. Lots of entertaining conversations, that's for sure.

I feel like this transfer is going to be one of my happiest to look back on purely because of our situation. We're doing things we never thought we'd do--I figured out my first apartment contract in Russian! That was funny and painful all at once.

Honestly though, I've been praying a lot that I'll be able to grow through stretching. It's overwhelming and I've never felt more...I don't know, like my age before. I'm definitely realizing a lot of my inadequacies, but I feel like Heavenly Father is also giving me little glimpses of the person that I was designed to be.

So yeah, it's all good in the hood. Sorry my letters keep getting shorter--I don't know what's wrong with me. Haha I love you all and hope you have a lovely week.

Love,

Sister Goochka