Sorry, I've got Heavyweights on the brain. Elder Bell was just talking to me about his friend named Pat, Taco Bell, and twinkies all in one conversation, so I can't really be blamed.
I keep thinking each week here that the amount of miracles that we experience are so surprising but I guess it's getting to the point where I should just expect them. I mean, we're doing the Lord's work and we're being as obedient and consecrated as we can, so we're entitled to them. Allowing room for the will of the Lord to play a part, of course :)
So this last Thursday, we did that same thing where we plan to find a really specific person; name and all. We planned to find a woman named Irina for this coming Saturday. Last night, we had a while to teach and it randomly started blizzarding, but we decided that we needed to go to Tiimanni again. So we walked all the way there, all the way down that road, and then had to turn around because nobody was outside. Then on our way back, we stopped this lady who was walking her beagle and she was super nice. We ended up walking with her and teaching her a full first lesson. She said that she could meet on Saturday, and when we asked for her name, she told us it was Irina.
My first thought was, "Now this is just getting ridiculous." It's pretty rad to be able to receive such specific revelation. So maybe we got the day wrong that we would find her, but we did get it right in the sense that we'd be teaching her this upcoming Saturday!
And hey, you remember Daniel who we found last week? Well, he actually showed up to our meeting! That's only the second time on my mission that somebody has showed up to the meeting we've arranged after teaching them outside. Ahhh! The lesson itself was good because Ksenja helped us. He's a shy kid (19-yrs old) and it was a little awkward at first but then I accidentally said that we are God's parents. He just laughed and shook his head. Look at me, breakin' ice left and right with false doctrine and atrocious grammar.
And the cherry on top? He said he could meet tomorrow.
Yet another miracle was that Pavel Ivanov (the one that said we could meet) wasn't home when he said he could meet last Saturday. Well, that's not the miracle part, but I'm getting there. We decided this past Saturday night to drop by and invite him to church and check if his phone is actually working because it would never ring when we dialed it. (Quick side-note of no importance: people don't have voice mail here. Isn't that weird? It just rings and rings and rings and the only way you can leave a message is if you text them.) When we rang up to his apartment, he said that he didn't have a phone anymore but promised that he would come to church.
Now, I've heard this quite a few times from a lot of people and the follow through doesn't generally happen. So when he said it, it was hard not to be like, "Uh huh. Riiiiight." But I've been working on not having that attitude--I actually don't have any reason to think that way becausehave you read my letters lately? Full of miracles and blessings beyond the average--so I decided to believe him.
When we walked into church on Sunday and I saw the back of his head sitting next to Sister Ivanova, I just about cried. Haha there have been more times on my mission where my face feels like it's going to break from smiling so big than I've ever had in my life. He's the coolest. We were here at the church waiting for the elders to finish emailing today and Pavel came here for an interview with President Kaben. When I was talking with him, he was like, "Sister Gooch, I'm here to stay. It was really hard for me to come to church on Sunday but I know that this is where I'm supposed to be. I'm here for good and I'm going to start serving in the Church."
Ahh, so many good feelings in my heart right now.
Another best part of my week was English on Saturday. As you would probably guess, I love teaching an English class. I mostly love it because we teach the third level, which is just a conversational course. It's so fun to talk to Dmitri, who says things like, "Superhero movies is naive and only for the children." Picture that in a thick Russian accent and you've got yourself a knee-slapper. He often tries to make jokes in English but they never make any sense. Such a funny guy.
And actually, we had a new guy named Yevgeni come. That's another miraculous part of this week. We met Yevgeni that night that we had an hour to find three new investigators when he was walking his pug and we invited him to English. I'm naming really specific types of dogs today, aren't I? It makes me sound like I actually like them. Anyways, we just ended up inviting him to English and walking away. Then the next day we saw him at night with his wife and they were the cuuuutest couple ever. We walked away from that encounter like robots repeating, "Must. Be. Sealed. In. Temple." Does that make me sound weird? Probably. They're just the brightest people I've met here. And then two days after that, we saw him walking his dog with his sister! He saw us from like twenty feet away and we just hear his big, booming laugh. He always speaks with us in English, too, so he yelled, "Hello there!"
You just gotta picture this guy, too. He's tall with a super burly build. He's from Russia and he has dark hair and skin with really light blue eyes. His smile is huge, too. So he walked into English with his sweater and collared shirt and raised one hand, saying, "Hello, my name is John." I wish you could hear his accent and how funny it was.
He's quite the conversationalist, too. As soon as he sat down, he was like, "I have so many questions for you. First, what on earth brings you to Estonia?" That's like the golden question that every missionary wants to be asked. After we answered that, he said, "My other question is where to you get all of this--all of this color and bright? This energy?" When we asked him if he meant "light", he was like, "Yes! Where do you get your light? It just radiates from you. After you talked to me for the first time, I walked away and felt so pleasant. Then when my wife and I saw you, she had just finished with work and was tired but after talking with you, she smiled the whole way home. Every time that I see you it is so refreshing!" And if his first question wasn't golden enough, then his second takes the cake. We told him that, first of all, we're both naturally really happy people, but most of it has to do with the fact that we know who Jesus Christ is and who God is.
So yeah, he's going to be the next branch president. I'm callin' it.
Later that same night we decided to bring cookies to Zhenja but for some reason Sister Dalley prepared two bags. On the way there, we just started cracking up as soon as we made eye contact with Yevgeni. He was walking his dog again. We gave him one of the bags of cookies and told him we'd see him tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. The funny thing is that we've seen him in totally different parts of town every time.
Life is really good, as you can tell. The sun is finally shining for longer than 5 hours a day and it's warming up for sure. I love you all to the moon and back a few times.
Love,
Sister Gooch
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