thanks first off for all of your sweet emails. And it sounds like everyone is just up to the normal and having lots and lots of fun so i am glad about that! That is so fun joe!! good job at baseball! i love you! that is funny about this being an alien city. i wouldn't be surprised. don't have too much fun without me though, k?
well lets see what all happened in this yet another week. First off, this week has honestly felt like the longest week in my entire life. I can't believe it has only been a week, it feels like an eternity!! And i do assume there will be many many more months of those to come. So yes, my companion sis corbett is in kazakstan right now getting a new visa. and no, it takes her that long because she is a canadian, for americans it only takes like a day or two to get your new visa. So she will be there till monday i think. The sisters from lipistcks came down yesterday and we had district meeting and then they are here with me until friday night i think, and then i go to lipistcks with them until monday. So will be there on sunday for the holiday. Sunday is not mother's day here, but it is actually another huge holiday out here. It is victory day, where they celebrate WWII or something. So everyone around here is getting ready for that, and it should be pretty crazy i guess with lots of fireworks and beer, so we shall see.
and yes, i am planning on calling on sunday, but since i will be in lipistcks i guess i need to call you from the cell phone we have. But i can't use minutes. So i think what i can do is call you on the calling card from the cell phone, and then you just call me right back at the same number using the calling card so that it doesn't use the minutes on our cell phone. so yes, and i am not sure when i am going to call exactly. I have not talked to the sisters and it is hard to communicate, and I don't know if they are calling home or not because it is not mothers day for them. But we talked about it a little with the senior couple and if all works out like i would hope, i want to call about dinner time or 6 pm our time, which would be like 8 am in the morning for you on sunday. sound good? i forgot when you had church. oh well, just expect a call from me on sunday. and dad, good luck on that talk!! fun!! hey, at least it is in english and not russian. Now tryin to speak this hard language, i would give an english speech to anyone at anytime!!! haha
ok, so the week. oh yes our hot water is back. um lets see. So im still trying to get the hang of stuff here. I understand nothing and just follow my companion around like a little doggy on a leash. We have a few investigators right now. I don't know them all yet and actually don't know much about them either because i can never understand what they are saying. It is sad and quite annoying to me cause i would really love to talk to people and get to know them and help them in any way i can, but the language is a great barrier. It will slowly get better with time though. Two of our investigators came to church on sunday, Kacenya and Erina. So i was excited about that. It is very hard to get people to come to church here. they just don't see the importance. and if they don't come to church then we don't get baptisms. So we have taught a few times to investigators. and a big thing about the missionary work here is just trying to keep the members active, and then trying to reactivate the already inactive members. It is quite a feat!! So we meet with members and talk to them a lot about missionary work and try our hardest to get referrals from them because tracting and contacting are hard to get referrals with. And then we meet with inactive families and also with investigators. We obviously go tracting a lot too. It is scary because most of the time once the people find out who you are they get this disgusted look and like run away. its kinda funny. The russian orthodox church out here that mostly everyone is a member of (but they usually only go on like easter and christmas) tells the people that the mormons are a crazy sect and that we like brainwash people and stuff. So a lot of the time they want nothing to do with us, but every once in a while we get a contact number or something. Monday was the first day we got a contact since i had been here, and i was so very excited!! she actually seemed happy about it and gave us here number before we even asked. so yes, i get excited about very small things around here. haha. I wish that i could do more though when contacting and doing lessons. All i can really do is say hello and that we are missionaries, and when i ask a question i have to let my companion take it from there because i don't understand much. so many times i feel useless, but it will get better. the branch here is pretty large, i think they said about 50 usually come and are active. And sunday they had me and the other new elder bear our testimonies. Im sure they got a kick out of that!
The food here is yummy!! well, at least the kind i buy at the store. I love the milk, butter, BREAD (oh, they have the best bread ever, and so many kinds), yogurt and cottage cheese are divine too, the cheese, ice cream, chocolate, fruit and veggies, cereal, granola, juice,...it is all delicious and i could go on. So don't you be surprised when i come home 100 pounds heavier k?! haha. It has been soooooooo hot here lately!! i didn't think it would be this hot, and stupid me for thinkin i only needed 2 short sleeve shirts. But yes, it has been very hot. and then you always ride on these buses or mini van type things, unless you want to walk for an hour. And when it is hot these buses are like soooo hot. but its all good. it is funny though because people just cram on them like sardines. If people need to get on they don't care how many people are in it, they just cram until, well, basically they just keep cramin and never stop. So you get pretty hot and your personal space is invaded often. It's fun though. oh haha the other day i saw one of the buses go by that had so many people and was so hot that the windows all fogged up and condensation was dripping down the window like no other. i had to laugh and get myself excited to be riding one of those very often. I like voronezh a lot, it is just a lot different from home. The minute you walk out the door in always smells like smoke and dirt. and it never goes away. Bus drivers and people drive like crazy and always honk all over the place. And people know i am american just by looking at me. it is kinda funny. And as missionaries we look like so different in our style of clothing because we are always covered. Girls her are usually always walking around in mini skirts or mini shorts and high heels and tights. i don't understand how they don't kill themselves or break an ankle for walking so far in high heels all the time. but they do it, and they like it. so i guess thats cool. And the fashion for men is to cut their hair in a nasty mullet style...it is very humorous. But all the same it is what makes voronezh voronezh, and i like it. the members here are very sweet and humble. They don't have much and usually all live in these huge tall apt buildings. And then there apt. are extremely small, sometimes with just one front room and a tiny kitchen that really only one person can fit into at a time. I am excited for the time when my russian gets somewhat better, so that i can really love these people. because it is very hard to love people when you can't even talk to them. So i am tryin hard, and come home very tired at the end of the day.
Well family, as you know i love you very much and am so grateful for you. I am excited to be here and excited to get to work here. It is far from home, but all these people, no matter how crazy we may think they are, are children of our Heavenly Father and need the gospel. As much as i wish they were all just lining up to be baptized, they are not. But we just have to do it one step at a time. One conversation at a time, one hello at a time. The more people we talk to and invite, the better. Yes, we will get rejected most of the time, but the more we talk, the more people we will be able to find, even if is just that lone one person out of 200 or so. It is scary for me, especially when almost everywhere you turn you don't understand a single word and people don't want anything to do with you, but it is the best service we can give to our Heavenly Father. And as members of the church, whether serving a full time mission somewhere away from home, whether you are a dad or mom, a young child, or just an average kid going to school or working, we all need to spread the gospel to those we know. We need to set an example, and we need not be afraid to speak up. The more people we talk to, the more people we love...the more people we will be able to bring into the fold of God. So, i guess my challenge and thought for this week is to just smile and be happy and don't be afraid to be the person that you know you need to be so that when others see you and listen to you, they will want to come closer to Christ.
I love you all! have a great week! and ill talk to you Sunday!
ps...sorry for the extremely long email and what may be seemingly boring topics of discussion. We have been so busy with planning at night that I don't write in my journal anymore as often as i would like...so after reading through this it seems like this has become somewhat of a long journal entry. sorry!! i will try to write in my journal more often so that you don't get such long winded emails from me.
я люблю вас!!
Сестра Браун
(pss...when young adults here see and read my nametag they just laugh and giggle, and walk around saying sister brown hehe sis brown hehe, look, sister brown hehe. they don't have short simple last names like that at all here, so they like to laugh about it, haha.
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