Week 6

Hello family and friends!

Opening statement of this email is the exciting news that I got to leave the MTC this week and enter into "Babylon" as it is called here. It really wasn't all that exciting, but I've earned bragging rights since not many people get to leave the MTC campus. I just accompanied my companion to her PT appt....like I said, not exciting, but kind of interesting. I just worked out at the PT place while she did her thing, but it was interesting to be out in the world wearing a nametag with the Lords name on it. It was like I couldn't be "kylie" and do what I wanted to do, I just felt it would be wasting the Lords time if I did...okay the only "Kylie" thing I wanted to do while I was out was like sit on the foyer couches and not talk to anyone, you know, mind my own business, but again...kind of a waste of time while I’m wearing the tag. It was like I felt this sacred duty to make conversation with each person I had an encounter with. To be honest, there wasn't much opportunity, I talked with an older sister about how her knees being shattered a few times, and she was of course Mormon, but I did talk with someone in the waiting room who seemed confused when I referred to my "companion" so I talked with him a little bit about our situation...fun. And quite a luxury to be doing it in English :)

So this past week as I mentioned last week, me and my companions taught our first lesson in Russian to a Russian speaking investigator. (Even though I just have one for now, I taught as a threesome last week since we had prepared a lesson together) Wanna guess how that went?? It was quite the perfect example of how not to teach....It was the most contentious lesson I've ever taught/been in on...It was pretty much a war of words. I didn't even think I knew enough Russian to argue with an investigator, but I did. Our investigator just seemed to disagree with everything we said. We first were describing how God blesses families and wants them to be happy; he disagreed because not everyone has a happy family. We finally got him to agree that the gospel of Jesus Christ can help families become happy...and then he just got super confused by us using the words 'doctrine' and 'truth' he kept asking "what is truth?!" "What is the doctrine of Christ." okay....if you would just listen to what we are teaching you, that is truth! It was frustrating. By the end of the lesson, though, I felt the spirit was pulled back into the room as I found the words to testify that truth is knowing that there is a prophet on the earth today, that God loves us as much today as he did in times of old to give us a prophet. I told him we could sit and teach all day, but the only way for him to know truth, the truth of what we speak of, is to read the Book of Mormon, which is evidence that Joseph Smith had the power of god and translated this scripture, and to pray to know truth for himself. He seemed satisfied with that answer, but probably only because we were out of time.

So this experience was definitely one to learn from. Our whole discussion was in Russian, so it was really a testimony to me that I have come a long way with Russian...I can explain things in more than one way and I can (kinda) understand people’s concerns and issues with what were are teaching. But preparing for this next lesson tomorrow, which I am teaching with my new companion who is quite seasoned in teaching in Russian, we are taking a different approach...we have scriptures picked out for each principle, we are going to preface them with explanation or an introspective question, then after they read it maybe ask another question and testify of the principle. I am feeling much better about this approach. Why didn't we teach this way in English? Looking back in those lessons we threw so much info at the investigator and didn't ask enough questions to help them apply the principles in their own lives.

I do know I love testifying in Russian. Yesterday we did a contacting activity where we were "shopping" and all the Russian teachers were the salesmen (kinda a flea market setting) and we had to practice buying something and talking about religion with them. I jumped right in and was so excited to contact with them..(I wish I could type this in Russian but imagine me speaking, actually that might be quite impossible, I barely believe what’s happening)."No, I don't want to buy this shirt, but I do have a question for you. Do you believe in God?" "Oh, yes I go to Russian orthodox church. I love it" "oh yeah? what do you like about church?" and go into testifying about feeling the holy ghost at church and when I read the Book of Mormon, and invite them to church. One of them seemed interested and took my book of Mormon, but then turned around and placed it on his shelf to be sold. "No! You have to read it. It is for you!!" kinda funny. But super fun in Russian, no reservations.

Another exciting thing that happened this week is that we ordered our Cyrillic nametags!! The fun of this is that we get to pick how we want our last names spelt with Cyrillic letters...so we spent so much time trying to fit in as many silent cool looking letters as we could in our names...but that didn't really fly with our teachers. I considered translating "little" which would mean I would be called "Sestra Malinkee" which I decided would be too weird. My teacher said the church doesn't let people do that anyways. But it will still be pronounced a little differently ...."Sestra Leatyell" I’m so excited!! We'll hopefully get those in the next to two weeks.

Okay, funny moment of the week happened this morning while I was running on the track....a "senior" sister missionary passed me twice!!! I was like "what the heck?" so I really got to step up my game.

I love you all, have a wonderful week!!

Cectra Little