Is there any legal/ethical way to stunt Ashton, Riv, and Yvey's growth until I get home? They're so big! And cute. Sister Roy said Riv's gonna be a lady killer.
We found out so many exciting things this week! I already told them to you but just in case it didn't sink in, Elder Bednar is coming to Latvia on June 1st! He was supposed to go to Ukraine but things are crazy there so we're sloppy seconds! I'm so grateful to be in Latvia because none of the missionaries in the other countries get to come to Riga and hear him speak to us for three hours. Woo hoo! Also, Elder Rasband will be there. He's a Seventy.
Another thing is that two sisters from a mission in Russia (we don't know which one) will be staying with us from the 17th to the 30th of May. So, starting this Saturday. Not exactly sure how Daugavpils is going to keep from exploding with 10 missionaries here (the elders are also getting two Russian elders), but I'll let you know how that goes.
We had an exchange with Sister McDiarmid and Sister Ixthluac (I don't know how to spell her name last week. It was so good to be back with S. McD! We laughed pretty much the whole time and it was fun to update each other on our lives. It's been about eight months since I've been able to talk to her.
Also, I love Sister Ixthluac to death. I know that expression doesn't really mean anything and it's vague but I have a lot of respect for her. She went to Harvard and she's the humblest, most positive person ever. Every exchange is great with her.
We met with Zita again this week. It was weird because I felt like I received a lot of revelation as to how the lesson needed to go and exactly what needed to be said, and the whole plan kind of seemed bullet-proof. As soon as we sat down at the table to teach her, though, both of us knew it wasn't right and that we shouldn't teach her the lesson we had planned. I was super confused because I was thinking, "is this just me chickening out or is this a prompting that I'm supposed to follow? And if it's a prompting, then what are we supposed to do, because we don't have any other lesson plans." We ended up sticking to the original plan and it didn't go very well. I was talking to Elder Dodge about it and he said something that I'm still thinking about: that sometimes Heavenly Father will test us to see if we will follow the Spirit in all circumstances. I had thought that by following through with the plan, I was showing confidence in the revelation that I received and therefore doing the right thing but I guess not. Still figuring that out.
You all mentioned that you wanted me to give more details in my letters that I don't feel like anyone would care about. Sooo get ready! It's gonna be random.
Number one infuriating thing about the Baltics might possibly be the fact that they don't have standardized staircases. They are always uneven and I fall up them all the time because I don't always look at where I'm putting my feet. Pretty sure they just eyeball it when they're building stuff, haha.
Story from last month that I'm still laughing about but wasn't totally confident in my ability to express it in an email: we were on a ghetto Dpils tramvai and we always stand on those things and leave the seats for the multitude of babs. So we were standing in the front of the tramvai and this gigantic bee (they're bigger here) flew over by these two babs and a guy who looked like he's lived with his mother his whole life. His mom just started going at it with her arm, trying to crush the bee against the window. So just envision a bab blindly whacking her arm against the window and yelling in Russian, saying the equivalent of "get away from my son!". Meanwhile, Sister Roy and I are becoming increasingly confident in the fact that the bee is starting to get murderously angry, and mama bear bab hits it over to innocent bystander bab, all the while yelling, "Get it! Get it!" So innocent bystander bab starts going at it with her arm, and Sister Roy was almost having a heart attack at the fact that the poor bee wasn't doing anything to anyone and was being savagely attacked. The next stop, they all got off and the cherry on top of this whole thing was that the whole time, the son of mama bear bab (somewhere in his late 30's-early 40's) who has been staring at us the whole time is going down the stairs, then last minute fights his way backwards and very gingerly places a candy in Sister Roy's palm. With a wink, he was gone.
Words can't really describe how awkward that last moment was and how hard we laughed afterwards.
Another thing was from when Sister Ixthluac and I were on our exchange. We stopped a guy and he was a little intimidating and the whole conversation was really awkward. It was one of those conversations that you have and nothing comes out like you want it to. Plus, Sister Ixthluac is only in her second transfer and as she was trying to ask him a question, he just started laughing because neither of us were speaking very understandably. We walked away being like, "Well, it doesn't get more awkward than that." But ohh, we spoke too soon. A few hundred feet down the road, we crossed the street and we heard footsteps running behind us. We both turned around to see him running toward us and so we stopped to talk to him again and he was like, "Sorry, I don't want to talk again, but that's my girlfriend," pointing to the girl standing right behind us.
Second time that's happened on my mission and it still hurts to think about.
I'm attaching a talk to this email because I love it and I've been studying it a lot. It's from the 70's, so excuse some of the weirdness that you'll find, haha. But he talks about how knowing who we are makes all the difference in the world in the way that we live our lives and make decisions. Knowing that we're children of God shouldn't just inspire us: it should define us. Inspiration isn't the last stop in our gospel learning. It's taking the things that we're learning and letting it become a part of us.
I'm tryin' real hard to practice what I preach. I feel like I've learned a ridiculous amount of things on my mission and I hope they've changed me for the better.
I love you all. Send me more pictures of yourselves. Selfies, if nothing else, haha.
Love,
Sister Gooch
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