Week 4

Dear everyone...

I have to start out this week by thanking everyone for their AMAZING letters/Dear Elder's...like whoa. The profound and uplifting messages you all write me are so needed and so appreciated. And I am so grateful you are all sharing in this experience with me...And a huge ginormous "thank you" with a million tons of love to Mrs. Valerie Foyston, from what I hear you are doing wonders connecting everyone, family and friends, to my mission. I so deeply appreciate what you're doing :) I have about an hour to write letters once a week, so it means a lot to me that my message can get out to everyone possible

This week has been full of a lot of Russian, and some Russian, oh, yeah, and then...some Russian. One of our district goals is to do a "language fast" once a day...umm and when they told me this a couple weeks ago I was not to thrilled to be skipping a meal once a day in order to learn Russian better...luckily I was informed before the day we started that a "language fast" means you speak your mission language during the whole meal. hmm. I actually would prefer the "real fast"..:) just kidding, but it has been quite hard to only speak Russian at dinner when there is so much to talk (gossip) about, but my Russian vocabulary is growing thanks to this...well, that is, my vocabulary of what typical 19 year old elders talk about...turtles and death. we mostly sit in silence with our dictionaries in front of our faces... but it's all good at least I'm learning.

I found out some more amazing things about Ukraine this week....so another reason why Kiev is the best mission ever is because it has enough members to be an organized "stake" if that makes sense, so I guess it's easier trying to organize things logistically because the organization is similar to places like the US where there are wards and stakes...so I guess it's the Kiev stake... with various wards throughout. I don't know about Russia, but the other two missions in Ukraine do not have enough people to have wards/stakes so they are organized by branches and the mission districts.

Also...we had a workshop yesterday on food in Russia/Ukraine.....and BEST NEWS EVER....it's understood over there that Americans cannot/will not eat the fish!! alleluia!! (for those of you who don't know, I hate fish and have not been looking forward to explaining that to Ukrainian investigators trying to feed me) it's because the water is extremely contaminated so the natives G.I. systems have adjusted to it, but it would make any foreigner sick....also fun thought on food/water situation...as I said the water is contaminated so you cannot drink out of the tap (I think this is why bottled gas water is so popular), but in all the apartments as long as you have a filter on your tap, you can drink it. The elder who was telling us this said, "Yeah, the filter is a pretty big piece of equipment that sits in your sink. and it's a pain to clean out. But it has got three chambers, or filtration systems...one filters out twigs and rocks and sand, the next filters out the microbes and anything else creepy and crawling in it, and the third filters out radiation." ehem. what? yeah....

and they did say that 99% of the time we'll be cooking our own food as missionaries and not eating with investigators/members which works for me.

The older districts who arrived on Dec 1 received their official travel plans this week and they are sooo stoked. Most of them fly through JFK onto Germany or France then Russia, but there are a couple flying through Korea to get to that side of Russia...pretty cool. They leave Monday/Tuesday... I'm excited for them but definitely wouldn't be prepared to go with them...and we'll see if I feel any different after 7 more weeks (probably not)

I finally have a little bit of routine these days so I'll let you know the big events of each day:

Monday- mostly classroom instruction, but we do have "workshops" for an hour before dinner where we attend a small class about a spiritual topic related specifically to people of Russia/Ukraine like the importance of prayer (especially comparing recited prayers of orthodox religions) or going to church (like the difference of walking into a historical cathedral for mass vs. a grocery store where some LDS meetings are held) and then a cultural topic mixed in (like this week we talked about food)

Tuesday-Preparation day. We go to the temple at 8 am,

then we usually go window shopping at the bookstore, then lunch, then change to do laundry, email, then change back to go to dinner, have a fireside, and then our district has a review of the fireside afterward

Wednesday-lots of class then our TRC task in the evening where we do a task in Russian and teach a lesson (tomorrow is our last time we'll teach in English...ah!)

Thursday-we do service for two hours in the morning (me and my comps usually are assigned to clean showers in another building) then lots of class

Friday-lots of class, but we have zone activities, like a scavenger hunt around the MTC or something (we have to find 2 converts, a sister wearing a blue skirt, find someone who's homesick and share a scripture with them, bear 6 testimonies, etc)

Saturday-class all day, but we do play some games

Sunday-busy..Relief Society, Sunday School with our district, lunch, Sacrament Meeting, walk up to the temple for a bit, come back, go to the devotional

Okay, and I have to share the funniest quote I overheard this week:

On the track among some new missionaries, "Dude, no way! I dated her too!"

I love you all!!!

Cectra Little