Дорогая семья,
So there's that. Pictures may follow next week.
This week has been crazy though! First of all, we went to zone conference in Riga and I met Sister Clark on Wednesday night. Poor girl's luggage got lost so she didn't have anything to wear for a few days.
I got to see Sister Dalley, though! I was pretty pumped about that. She and Sister Roy are opening Imanta, Latvia back up for sisters. When I heard that, I almost died of happiness. Both of them are going to be awesome. I miss Sister Roy a lot, but I know she and Sister Dalley are probably having the time of their lives together.
Getting back to Daugavpils from Riga was quite the experience. We went to the train station and it was all taped off, so we had to wait until 6 for a bus. We got home super late but it was kind of a fun bus ride because I heard the people talking in English in front of us and got to know them a little bit. Their story was fascinating to me because there were 3 of them, all from different countries. The guy was from Budapest and the girls were from Germany and France. They were headed to Daugavpils for a mutual friend's wedding. I don't know how a person can have best friends in Budapest, Germany, and France, but I want that to be my life, haha.
We got into Daugavpils around 10 and pretty much crashed. I don't think I've ever been this consistently tired in my whole life, but things are good!
We got to garden again at Valentina's neighbor's, which was the highlight of my week, as always. Angelina is her name. I told her how we pray and she stopped me and asked, "Who taught you how to do that?" I told her that my parents did, but that it's how we pray in the Church. She put her hand over her heart and did that babushka grunt and said, "Oi, I need to come to your church on Sunday. You need to teach me how to do that." She's adorable. Sister Clark and I booked it right after she fed us tea and strawberries and left the elders to take all of the food that she would inevitably force them to take.
We went to Inna's our second day together to check up on her. Sadly, she's been experiencing a lot of opposition. The night after we did the quit smoking program, she was walking in the dark and she fell and cut her leg pretty bad. The elders gave her a blessing while we were in Riga and she was doing so well! She called us and said, "Sisters, I feel...Святой Дух." That might only be funny to me because of her mix of English and Russian, but that means "the Spirit". Unfortunately, though, her family went over the next day and she said they yelled at her and told her that her injury is God's way of punishing her for trying to change her religion. She also smoked again. Thankfully, we have talked a lot about opposition with her and how Satan knows that she's onto something good, so of course it's going to be hard. She picked up the gospel principles book and told us that she's read a lot of it. When I asked her how she felt about it, she said, "I believe it all." Ahhh! That was cool. It's awesome to see her faith building.
We have a lesson with her and we're taking Lidija with us today.
Sister Clark's first Sunday was pretty funny, in my opinion. I told her to get ready for Relief Society to be a bunch of babs yelling at each other, but it was more of a joke than anything. But then it actually happened, haha. Valentina can get feisty. Sister Clark didn't really know how to handle it, but the thing is that if you actually understand what they're saying, it's not as heated as you think. They're just Russian and opinionated...and hilarious.
Anna left Daugavpils as well, which is super sad. I already miss her, but I get to say goodbye today.
Training is the weirdest feeling in the world. It's brought back a lot of memories of my training, and I was reading from my 1st transfer journal today. My mind was blown because I sounded totally different and I feel like I was five years younger, at the least. It has been a much needed reminder, though, about how much I relied on the Spirit in the very beginning. I didn't recognize how much I've learned to lean on my own understanding of the people and the language, so it's been cool to refocus on the basics.
Sister Clark herself is awesome. She's really sweet and has a great attitude. I mean, she traveled all the way to the Baltics by herself and then lost her luggage and then got stuck with me, so she's a trooper. Like I said, she's from Vegas. She attended BYU before her mission and randomly chose Russian as her major even though she hadn't even received her mission call. She didn't have time to study it beforehand, but that's what she's going back to. She actually studied Hebrew and knew my roommate, Leah Derrington. Small world!
What's funny is that her first day here, we had to go to the store and she literally bought three blocks of cheese, a gallon of milk, and some meat. Her diet of meat and dairy could not be more opposite of how Sister Roy and I ate together, because we essentially ate all fruits and vegetables with oat milk or soy milk. It's going to be a fun transfer :)
I just want to say thank you again for the shirts that you sent me, by the way. They have been a life saver because the weather is getting pretty hot.
Something that I'm really grateful for this week especially has been the gift of prayer. I don't know how often I've taken the time to recognize how cool it is that, of all the titles God could give Himself, He chose for us to call him Father. I've tried to make a concerted effort on remembering who He is while I pray, and the consequential blessings have been an abiding peace and knowledge of my acceptance before the Lord. I don't know if you understand what that means to me as a missionary, or as a human being in general. That peace and knowledge of acceptance is certainly not only for missionaries, and it's something that I would want for you to do personally. Life seems a lot more beautiful when you're on the same page as the Creator of it all.
I love you. I feel like your prayers for me are what keep my world spinning at just the right rate.
С любовью,
Сестра Гуч
P.S. Mike and Nicole, you better document your trip to Chicago really well. And eat some good foods for me, alright? Aaand I want pictures of Riv with the dinosaurs.
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