whats up?!

Hello my dear family!!

Once again, another email from another week. Grandma and Grandpa Brown, i just got your letter in the mail yesterday. Thank you so much!! it was great to hear from you and hear how life is going. I love you so much and continue to pray for you always! Dallin! so good to hear from you finally! Loved your email, and yea, it was kinda a long one. but thats ok, it's just good to hear from ya! im glad you are enjoying life. But other than that, it sounds like you all are just partying it up over there in utah. Dang!! is there any work going on over there?! haha. all i hear is we did this fun thing and then we did this and we did this and this. jk. Im glad you are enjoying the summer. I love reading all your emails and hearing how everyone is doing. I don't know why but i still get a little homesick and teary eyed when i read your emails. i really need to work on that. I am such a big baby when it comes to stuff like that. I really wish i wasn't. It would rid me of lots of problems.

And Gma, yes, i do know elder johanssan. he is one of the office elders. Next time i see him I'll have to tell him. And that is funny, but yea i do know Nizhny Novgorov. It is actually the name of a city here, not a sister member. My companion sis. gorkavenka actually just served in that city. I heard it is really beautiful there. And to answer your question, that man that you talked to from russia is actually pretty right about the complaining thing. They do seem to complain alot here, and voice their opinion about everything that is wrong in life. Sometimes it really gets my spirits down, but i just pray that i can do my best to stay optimistic and not let all the complaining that i hear rub off on me. Yes dad, we do have a keyboard here in the apartment, but anytime we are home we are always busy with studying or planning or getting ready for bed. Other than that we are out of the house, so no, i don't really play the keyboard too much. And yea, i will try to get some pictures of our apt. for you. JANAE!!!!! wahoo!!!! i am so excited about your mission call! Washington! When do you leave? Write me and tell me everything!

So lets see....this week has been..well....another week! But let me tell you. oh my gosh it has been so hot here. It is so hot and soo not fun when you are walking around contacting and getting fried by the humidity and sun and heat!! who would have known that russia would be hot in the summer? not me. People told me it would be hot but i didn\t believe them. well it is hot!!!! My companion laughs at me because i thought it would always be cold here. Oh man especially when you a taking the public transportation in the buses and the marshrootkas (i don't know how to spell that in english). There are so many smelly sweaty bodies all packed together and there are like no windows to open. It is so hot at times i just can't think about how hot it is on those or i will pass out or something. It's bad too because the heat is like a sauna there and i like fall asleep everytime i am on public transportation. but oh well, at least im not freezing! (we'll have to wait for the winter for that part). So tonight we take another night train and get into moscow tomorrow morning for the mission zone conference. wow, i think these night trains will eventually become my best friends. and then we get back here at about 7 in the morning saturday just before Nastia's baptism.

So yea, Nastia's bapitism will be this saturday! I am kinda a little stressed about it though because this past week it has still been really hard to meet with her because of school and then she got sick too. But she is still really excited about her baptism on sat., so we are trying to work really hard with her brother and aunt and uncle and see if we can get her taught before tonight. Im still confused about it all because you think if someone wants to be baptized so bad that they would really make an effort and want to meet with you every second of every day, right? But from talking with some of the elder's they say it is not always that way, and even if people really want to be baptized there are always excuses or things that seem to get in the way. But we continue to pray for her, and pray that we can meet with her, and that if she really desires to be baptized on sat. that we will all be able to make that happen. We are not teaching Kaceyna anymore. The other sister missionaries here are doing that. Last i heard is that she is not progressing very much. She is still not coming to church. I believe that we have really been blessed though this past week to have 2 new investigators. One is a young girl about 20 years named Olga who was walking outside with her dad and they wanted to know what the building was so they came inside to see. She has been to church and seems to really enjoy it, so that is great! The other is a young girl from our english club. Her name is Anya and she is 15 years old i believe. At first we were teaching her just english and she really enjoyed being around us and coming and watching us play at sports nights and things. But now we have started teaching her the gospel so that has been fun. She actually wanted me to teach the first lesson in english to her, and if she didn't understand, she would say so and we would try to translate it out for her. So i did, and it was WEIRD!!!! so weird. Speaking in Russian is so hard, but i can't even explain how weird it was to try to talk about the gospel lessons in english. Well i mean it wasn't out of this world weird, but im definitely not used to it. The words in english came out of my mouth but they just seemed strange. it was kinda funny. This week my testimony of fasting has really been strengthened once again. Us four sisters in the apartment decided to fast on sunday for our investigators and things. And so we did, and even though I felt like i was going to die because it was extremely hot that day and so sunny and drinking no water was no fun, i still tried my best to fast with the spirit and to do it willingly. And i know that the Lord has really blessed us with some opportunities to teach some wonderful people. I pray that the spirit will touch their hearts and that they will be ready to accept the truthfulness of the gospel.

Well i guess that is it for this week, i don't know much of what else to say. I love you all! Until next week!

Sister Brown