Week 5

Okay, I guess we are not really the older district, because there is no younger district to call us the older district yet (the new Russian speaking missionaries will come in next Wednesday-about 36, same amount as I came in with), but just about all of the older district left today or yesterday for their respective missions...wow!! So crazy!!

Day in and day out everyone feels like the MTC is all they will know for the rest of their lives, but lo and behold something miraculous happens where your time is up and you actually get to go to Russia!!! (Some elders in my district are convinced this 'Russia' doesn't exist and we'll never get out of here) but! There’s hope!! I plan on there being 'mission reunions' but what about all the awesome people you serve in the MTC with?...I hope I'll get to see them again before the millennium, if not, that will suffice I guess....actually I’m sure face book will be a big help for when we all get back :)

So my Valentine’s day was spent signing flags, journals, and singing "God be with you til we meet again" for all those leaving. I'm so excited for them!!

Well, this week we've stepped up our SYL time or "speak your language" our district sets aside about four hours a day to only speak Russian to each other...and we're actually talking!! It’s actually a lot of fun because we've realized we know a lot more than we thought!! Tomorrow is the first time we'll have to teach a 35 min lesson (lesson 1-the restoration) to a Russian speaking investigator...I’m actually not too nervous. We've been preparing for this since day 1 and we've been working on about 100 phrases that could possibly be said during lesson 1...I know about 40 of them, so not too bad...and I can testify which is the perfect fallback even in English, so I should be okay. I plan on using lots of scriptures and testifying of what they say. The only thing that could go wrong is if they talk back to me :) I don't think I’m going to pause long enough during any of my statements so they can ask any questions :) It’s so hard to listen to and actually understand what the Russian investigator is saying. Horror stories from the other district include ones where the elders asked how the investigator was doing and they responded that they were really sad because their sister just died in a car accident...the elders who understood none of this said, "That’s excellent!" in Russian....but luckily the MTC is a safe environment where it’s okay if something like that happens. We'll see how it goes...but like I said, speaking Russian is becoming pretty fun. Any of our practice Russian lessons, I keep my notes under my desk and just pull together sentences from the words I know. Okay, well that doesn't always work out :) last week some of the native were practicing a lesson on the plan of salvation with me and asked me what I thought the purpose of life was....the only words I knew at that time that fit that context were the verbs "to die" and "to eat." it took a couple days to live that down :)

On the subject of the natives-who all left today for their missions, if some of you have seen the video of the Kiev temple dedication/cultural celebration, a few of them are in those videos, only one native is from Ukraine, the other two that are in them travelled there from Russia to see the temple dedication. I think it’s so cool I could be among those pioneers. One of the natives parting testimonies to us was "you all are so blessed with big wards and beautiful churches and so many temples! You must help Russia to receive temples!! We need them! My branch back home has 16 people in it and here your wards are so big! You must help Russia receive the truth and give the gospel to enough people so we can have a temple too!!" Let’s get to work!!! It was so sincere and sweet and I feel so honored to be helping this part of the world receive the joy of the gospel!

So tomorrow I will get a new companion. One sister from the older district had to have knee surgery a couple weeks ago and is still recovering. She was supposed to leave for Novosibeirs yesterday, but her departure has been postponed two weeks...so it should be fun, she knows a lot more Russian than me and it'll be a fun change. Once she leaves I'll go back into my trio I’m in now. It will feel so crazy only having one companion. The other day I was on splits with just one other sister and I felt so alone...I was like "where are all my friends? Where’s my posse?" but two by two sufficeth for the Lord, so I should get used to it.

Okay, my MTC quote of the week...don't expect these every time, but when there's a good one I have to share :)

Since the beginning they've always stressed that you must be within "sight and sound" of your companions, so this week during class one elder stood up to walk across the room to get a tissue.. As he's about to blow his nose, his companion yells at him from across the room, "Elder!! Sight and sound!! Look at me when you blow your nose!!!" the elder just shook his head as we all left....okay… I’m getting pretty desperate for good comedy :)

Have a wonderful week everyone!! I love you all and am so grateful for your thoughts, letters and prayers!!

Cectpa Kylie Little