Well, to start off the email this week i need to say... Happy Fathers Day dad!!!!!!!! i love you!!! i had to say that first or i would forget and be mad at myself for a week, but happy fathers day and i hope you and the family have a wonderful one. I wish that i could call you on father's day like they let us on mother's day and tell you all hello, oh well. Sounds like everyone has had a pretty eventful week...you definitely keep yourselves busy!! Noelle! Thank you for the email! It was great and Im glad you had fun at that party! I love you! You and Joe be nice to each other ok...remember, he is your best bud!!! Yeah Janae!!!!! I am so excited to hear about where she is going!!! let me know please. I never hear about anything out here unless you tell me. I think Kate sullivan was thinking about putting in her papers too, so if you can get a hold of her to see if she has gotten a call yet and let me know. Wow, i cannot believe that jordan and skyler and joshua had graduation!!! that is so crazy. every one there just seems to be growing all up and time seems to be really flying!, because time here right now seems to be going kinda slow. Man everyone growin up makes me feel so old. crazy crazy. well, onto the most important business of the week! ANGE!!!! Your going on a what?! a date?!!! ahhhhh....i won't let you go. Your not old enough to date in my book. (maybe its a good thing im serving a mission). wow, thats crazy. it seems like just yesterday i was 16, and i can't believe your 16 too. Weird. way weird.
So, onto missionary work. We are still working with Nastia. She seems to be moving along well, but she is going to school and studying alot, so it is hard to meet with her as often as i would like. But she seems to be moving along great and is very excited for her baptism which will now be for July 3rd. This sat. the elders have a baptism for one of their investigators, a sweet middle aged woman. I am very excited for her and excited for the elders too. Kacenya will not be baptized on the 19th either, we have to push back her date because she is having a hard time coming to church. She keeps all the other commitments we give her, but church is something that is quite difficult for her and her young child. I would love to say that she is ready to be baptized, but if you don't attend church before baptism, it is very unlikely that you will all the sudden start to attend and know the importance of the sabbath day after your baptism. So we are still working with her though, and tryin to get her to church and have people in the branch fellowship her. But it's hard, cause you don't want to push to hard, but you want to push hard enough. You know what i mean? I pray that the spirit can whisper to her the importance of what baptism is. It is not just something you do. A lifestyle of keeping covenants follows baptism. I wish that i could remember better my baptism. I was reading the other day about the covenants we make at baptism, and I believe that too often i do not remember them. But they are important, and we should live our lives by them.
oh, so after all the craziness that has been going on here i thought that it might settle down a little bit. But now we have some more changes coming. man they just never end!! President is having a sister from lipitscks (sis. zhumazonova, i was a comp. with her for a bit) come to voronezh and train a girl from kazakstan who would like to be a mini missionary. So they will get here on monday and will be living in our apt. with us for the whole transfer. Hopefully we can fit 4 girls and all of 4 girls "stuff" into our little apt. We are gonna make it work though. It should be fun! I just hope we don't get to distracted because with 4 sister missionaries in one apt. we might just want to party all the time. haha. We are gonna do our best to work hard though and stay focused!!
Dad, you had asked what we do with the members. We meet with them and we teach them a lesson like we would teach any other investigator, and we give them commitments to strengthen their faith and their families. We also do a lot of service for the members too. And yea, when we sing we just go to a park by a bench, bring our russian hymnbooks, and just start singing. it's pretty fun. We did a few songs in english too because a lot of the young people here study english and think english and americans are cool. i don't know why. But yea, it was actually kinda weird singing in english, cause for the past like 5 months i have done nothing really but sing in russian all the time. kinda fun. And yes, my new comp sis. gorgavenka is wonderful and i just love her. She is very sweet and caring. She will be 23 in september, and was baptized when she was 10 with her older sis. and mother. Her mother i believe had the missionaries come into their home and teach them, and so the 3 of them have been members since then. And yes, she does know a little bit of english. She studied some when she was in school. So she wants to learn english a lot better, so i help her a lot with her english, and she helps me with my russian. It's pretty fun i guess...however fun learning a difficult langauage can be!
Gma! So you had said that you feel like the Russian mission was made for me. I thought it was kinda funny that you said that, because the other day i was just kinda thinking about that. As slow as the adjusting seems to come here, every week i feel just a little bit more that this mission is a good thing for me. One because I think Heavenly Father knows that I will really grow to love this wonderful place, and two, because i think He knows that it will also push me in ways that i never thought i would be pushed. Some things i really love here, but other things here are very difficult i often question what the Lord was thinking. But i know that He knew it would push me in those ways. And i know that there are things here in Russia that i need to learn that I honestly don't think I could have learned anywhere else, doing anything else. So yes, I have a great testimony that Heavenly Father really really knows us. That He knows our strengths and our weaknesses. And that He knows how to make those weaknesses become strengths, whether we asked for it or not. Sometimes I find it very hard to admit my own weaknesses and admit that i am human and not "perfect". I think i grew up my whole life somewhat recognizing my weaknesses, but trying to push them away to the back corner, thinking that if I ignored them and left them alone that i wouldn't have to worry about them and that they would get better. I don't know why i ever thought that. Cause now I realize that the only way to become a stronger person and to become the person who the Lord needs you to be, is by recognizing your weaknesses, desiring to change them, and then facing them. You can't overcome your weaknesses until you face them. And you can't become stronger until, with the Lord's help, you are pulled and tugged and stretched in ways that you never thought possible. But, i promise that with the Lord on your side, this is possible. And like in Ether 12:27...we can overcome our weaknesses. And not only can we overcome them, but eventually they can become strengths to us. And this happens as we are humble, and seek the Lord in all we do. I think the Lord knows that I am somewhat lazy in this aspect, and that I needed a little push, or maybe a really big one, ( a mission), to get going in the right direction. Cause if it were up to me, I would always love to choose the "easiest" way. And sometimes the best way is not always the easiest or the fastest way.
ok, so i just have one quick funny story for the week. It just happened last night and i was just thinking about it so i thought i would write it real quick. I don't know if it is too funny, but I had quite a laugh inside myself. So last night we had a little party a members home for their birthday, and every one was playing charades. And i had to take a little visit to the bathroom. So the bathrooms here, the shower and the sink are always in a little room about the size of a closet, and then the toilet is in another closet size room just right next to it. And for some reason the lights to the bathroom are always outside in the hallway right before you go in. I don't know why, it never really made sense to me. but anyways, so i was in the bathroom, and then all of the sudden the woman whose apt it was came by and turned off the light thinking no one was in there. So here i am in this tiny little unfamiliar bathroom, and i don't know how to say in russian "hey! im in here, turn the light back on!" So I just chill there in the pitch black, and try to fill around for the toilet paper. It could have been anywhere because like no one here has toilet paper holders. But eventually i found it, tryin my best to stay clear of the kitty litter box that i knew was in there somewhere, and safely made my way out of the bathroom. haha. yea i know, not very funny. but i told my companion and we had a good laugh. Oh!! and i forgot to tell you that a few weeks ago i finally used my first public bathroom that just had the holes in the floor and no stalls and you just squat. It was a fun experience and I had to tell you!! Before you walk in the door there is a roll of toilet paper and you just grab a few squares and walk into the bathroom. Oh my gosh it smelt so bad i honestly thought i would have died. it smelt like cows were living in there. But none the less it was fun and a great thing to experience.
Anyways, i think i am done for the week!!! i know i just keep goin on and on. sorry! I love you all! I pray for you always!! I hope everyone is doing well and getting along! Have a wonderful week and until next week!! Loves!!
ps...im sending some pics.(some are with investigators, the yellow building is our church here, the one of me is in moscow by a river, the car is a typical car you will see here...)
Sister Brown
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