Week 65

CRAZZY! here i go...diving into roughly five more weeks of all of this!!! i am a mixed drink of emotions...

 

this week we kept really busy. we met with our investigator who has a baptismal date in July, and she's moving right along. we taught her the word of wisdom, and she already knows smoking and coffee are bad, so its just that black and green tea we've got to get rid of...and the occasional vodka. we're working on it. its been neat to see her progress even from day one. if you've forgotten she's in her forties, a strong business woman and just feels in her heart that she needs to search for god and has found what she's looking for in our church- and is thus ready to change. our first meeting with her a couple weeks ago she contested from the beginning about how we pray, about how we say 'dear heavenly father'...she says she likes to say 'oh, bozhinka" when she starts her prays...which a say 'cutesy' form of saying god...i'd personally compare it to praying to baby Jesus in English but, the member that was there said it was okay. ...as she began her pray with her cutesy voice, 'oh, bozhinka..." and continued to pray, she began to speak slower, softer, more sincere, and eventually reduced to tears. her prayers are so sincere. and now, she's gotten into the habit of saying 'dear heavenly father' which i think is more appropriate....

 

so my companion informed me a couple weeks ago that i'm notorious in the mission for 'getting myself and my companions into random situations" ...thinking back on it...i guess that's right. like the bbq last week. and this week was no different. some random lady called us on wed night asking if we could do service for her-she knew who missionaries were and knew we were hard workers. i tried to ask who she was / if she was a member or not/etc, she just said she'll explain it when we come. well we found time the next day to do service...we show up and with thirty seconds she explains what she wants us to do, gives us the buckets and a ladder, and turns around and leaves to do whatever she was doing before....she wanted us to climb all up in her cherry tree and pick the cherries before they all went bad...okay....except we look up at the tree we have to climb and start freaking out...its gotta be like 30 ft with all these branches and random 2x4s and metal pipes running in between the branches so we could climb from branch to branch easier. she said the wood pieces were probably strong enough to hold us... the most dangerous service i've ever done. and about fifteen minutes into it, a 1/4 bucket full of cherries and 15 ft off the ground...i bump my bucket and my bucket drops with all my cherries to the ground. dang it!! i didn't pick half as many cherries as my companion did because i was too distracted by looking around, up and down, and just taking in what the heck i was doing...and i was busy eating the cherries too. we came back the next day with two elders and they worked in the tree while we pulled weeds in her garden. the lifestyle here is SOOO different...i can't even begin to describe. she gave us fresh goat milk from their goat in exchange for our service and fresh dill and green onions. ...mmmm goat milk, not so much. we made pancakes with it. she's not a member but missionaries helped her last year about this time ..so she just called us up...good/hard service. pretty cool

 

i can't believe its so close, but still far away right? the end?

next week we'll all be in Kiev for a mission conference with a couple general authorities. im excited to see everyone in the mission before i go home-this conference was pretty timely. we'll train up Sunday afternoon and come back Tuesday during the day...we'll see how that goes...i think overnight trains would have been better.....so i don't know when i'll email next week....

 

love you all!!!

sister little