HELLO!!

Dear Fam!!!

First off i loved those pictures!! I was happy to see a picture of mom and dad finally! haven't seen ya in like 5 months...looking good!!! but as always, you do the fun stuff without me huh? wait until acacia's gone and then we will party! Im glad yall had a great week together. And ange, what the heck, I thought you said you were gonna wait for me and we would go horseback riding when i got back...man you little stinker. The pics were very enjoyable to look at and yes, that one of joe is my fav! And ange, your sooo lucky that i didn't send my email just yet, because your email just came in!! Weird, your on the computer at the same time as me, but halfway across the world. and there its 11 at night (what are you thinking!!) And here it is 9 in the morning. just thought you would enjoy those interesting facts. But thank you for all the wonderful details of your fun and extravagant life, and i am glad the date was fun! even though that is so weird for me. Never go on a date again please. haha

So, off to work. The baptism saturday that the elders had for ludmilla was wonderful. I very much enjoyed it, and there we quite a few members there to support her. so that was good. And then afterwards we had a ward picnic, which was pretty fun. We all took a bus out somewhere and had a good ol' russian picnic. It was pretty fun, and the weather was nice and sunny. Everyone was pretty hungry though when the food got there about 3 hours later. i guess that is not very surprising for the picnics around here. and since we couldn't swim in the little pond thing us missionaries tried to keep busy with playin soccer and throwin some footballs. It was nice though to have people there to support ludmilla though, and many again were there on sunday when she was able to be confirmed in sacrament. Oh, at the baptism I got to play the piano and sister lowry and sister gorgavenka played the flute with me for a musical number at the baptism. i enjoyed it. Lets see, monday we had one of the ap's come down and work with me and sis gorgavenka. So that was good to get some help and ideas on how to be a better missionary. hmm...other than that, nothing too eventful...well i mean just nothing really out of the ordinary of missionary work. Oh, yea, the sister from lipitcks came down with the sis. from kazakstan. And yes dad, with an air mattress we were able to get enough beds in the apt.

Nastia is still doing really well. She has had a lot of school lately and a lot of exams and things so she has been very busy, but still doing well. Her baptismal date is still set for the 3rd of July. So i am very happy for her. We are still meeting with Kaceyna too, but things are not moving along as we would hope that they would. We continue to pray for her, and hope that as she relies on the Lord things can work out for her and her family. With the new sisters in the area now, the zone leader said that the new sisters might take Kacenya in as an investigator and be the ones to work with her. I would be sad to not be working with her anymore, but we will see what happens. I guess whoever continues to teach her, that she will still continue to progress.

This week has been a difficult one for me as far as the language of russian goes. Man, why can't we all just speak english or something. no, i love russian. But it's hard, but that makes it all the more worth it. Just a little progress is very exciting and a big deal. I continue to stop people on the streets and they continue to tell me that they have no idea what i am saying, even though my native companion tells me i say everything correctly. they just have a hard time wanting to pay attention and really listen to people that have a strong accent. I wonder what kind of accent an american trying to speak russian has? I wonder what it sounds like to them? WEIRD! huh?

Oh dad, you asked about our church building. Yea, the church does actually own it. I think it is the first and only building in russia right now that the church owns. or maybe just in our mission, i don't remember. But I know it was just recently renovated and dedicated and was a big deal just right as we were coming into the mission field. I remember going on the lds website before my mission and looking up stuff about russia, and that was a big thing on the news there too. But yes, it is very pretty and we really try to keep it up nice and have some wonderful people in the ward who help out. We get a few investigators too, that are just people walking outside and see the beautiful building and want to know what it is so they come on inside. Not many buildings here in voronezh are that nice or clean. Oh, and yes i would really LOVE to read the conference talks from april, but we still have not gotten them yet here. I have asked the office, but i don't know. The members have not gotten them in russian yet, and it might take quite a while too for us missionaries to get them here in english. But, we shall see. Hopefully by next year we will have them. In the mean time i am still reading the conference talks from last october.

Ok, so i have to tell you the weekly funny story. On monday night we had FHE for the young single adults at the branch. As missionaries we come support and bring our investigators. So after the lesson we played a few games. And we were playing some game that is kinda like musical chairs, but it is some russian version or something and there is no music. Anyways, so we were all running around trying to get in our seats, and i sat in an empty seat in the back. No one was around me. And it's not like i was fighting anyone for the seat. So i sat down, and then all of the sudden the next thing i know is that my feet fly up in the air and I am on the ground.(it was even worse cause i was in my awesome sister missionary skirt!!) I don't think anyone would have noticed, but i was laughing so hard they all turned around and then we just all started laughing. But thats not really even the funny part. That was kinda funny, but at the time this happened Elder Lowry had come up and was taking video footage of our game, and he got there just in time to get me falling on camera. During district meeting on tues. we all had some good laughs watching it together. Everyone is just playin, and then all the sudden in the background you see sister brown's feet fly up in the air. You have to see the video to understand. It's funny, trust me. I can just see dallin getting a really good laugh out of this! Speaking of dallin, again, where is my email!!!! (ps...i sent you something special in the mail. hopefully it gets there)

Well, time is out! It was great to hear from you all, and as always, thank you for the love and the support. Your GREAT!! Have a wonderful week. Until next week!

Love, Sister Brown