Week 13 язык ангелов "ya-zik ang-elov"

Good morning everyone!!

I am excited to email you all. Not that I have amazing news or anything, but it is my one connection to home that means so much more now that I am so so so so far away from all of you :) I miss you all and hope you are all staying healthy, happy, and strong in the gospel. It's the only source of true happiness on the earth today.

This weekend we were able to listen to conference. I loved it.It's amazing how boring I used to think conference was and would fall asleep during it...but ever since I really knew that these were powerful men and women and God speaking to us two hours is over so fast. Our mission president got English copies of conference out to us at the beginning of last week so we were able to listen to bits and pieces at our apartment over the weekend. We attended the sessions on Sunday at the church in Russian because we had a couple investigators come. I tried for about thirty seconds to understand, but then took the opportunity to get some good studying in in the dark of the chapel. Slightly disrespectful probably, but what else can I do. I made sure to drop everything when the prophet spoke out of reverence. I think Heavenly Father understands. We have three investigators with standing baptismal dates this month and two of them came. It has been interesting to observe our potential investigators this week in their first lessons. When we began to explain that this weekend coming up is extremely special because we get to hear form our Prophet!!! amazing right?! there were a couple investigators who brushed off that fact and said casually they had to work or would be out of town this weekend so they couldn't come to church. And others, the elect really, get wide eyed and bright eyed when we told them about this amazing opportunity. "oh, man, I want to be there to see that"- it has been a good gauge as to who really understands the definition of a prophet and the truth our church claims.

I am not sure what to say about the language.. I am pretty discouraged as to be expected, but really I feel like I haven't been able to learn anything substantially new since I've been here. Really goes to show I am book smart and can learn when im studying hours and hours a day (like at the mtc) but I am praying that the

Lord will help me learn even when I am not getting a lot of studying in. But my mtc vocabulary is getting me by. I teach about 40% of each lesson and whenever we stop into a member or nonmembers home I share the scripture and spiritual thought. But I am trying to be motivated to progress in a measurable way. Our mission president requires that we read the book of Mormon (in Russian out loud) by our first year mark here and then also to have the 'missionary language vocabulary and phrases' or 'tall' book that comes in the different colors for the different languages that has all the necessary vocab for all the lessons completely memorized in the first six months. That's a huge overwhelming goal, but is is something measurable so I am starting slow...memorize a page a week and hopefully pick up speed as I have been here longer. No luck with Ukrainian yet, but my companion still has to tell me when someone is speaking Russian or Ukrainian to me.

Whenever someone turns away from us with the excuse that they don't understand us, my companion always comforts me by saying, "do you know why they don't understand us, its because we are speaking with the "языкам ангелов" or the tongue of angels. Even if we were speaking perfect Russian they would turn away and say they didn't understand because they don't know the language of the angels."

Its the perfect way to console myself. If they were truly elect, they would know and feel the power of what we are saying. I'll let you all find the scripture references of the speaking with the tongue of angels and the power of the holy ghost...

Here we are the sister missionaries over two wards- kharkovski and nova d. We are considered to be in "Kiev" and we get around by walking and riding marshrukas-the buses here. When we need to go into center we take the metro across the river--it reminds me exactly of crossing the Charles river over the Longfellow bridge on the T in Boston. Love it. Their metro is very similar to one of New York or Boston-underground, tons of people. We went into center this week for a zone meeting. The church building is right in the middle of the city, its like the third floor of a business looking building-kinda cool. We meet in a building in our area but we are getting a new building in the next couple weeks-an actual church building everyone is really excited.

We live in "Kiev" and its about a fifteen minute bus ride to get to the river. Our members live right up to the river. Kiev is huge-it takes about two hours to drive from one edge to the other. We walk mostly everywhere, but will end up taking a bus a couple times a day to get to certain appts and then we take the metro (the subway) into center when we have a meeting as a zone or something. I looove that we walk everywhere. Love it.

How do you get around town? and was it a pain to trying to get your luggage to your new living quarters?

we took a taxi from the mission office which is right next to the temple. it took about 40 minutes. pretty painless.
Did you take to much stuff?

No. I did good. And once I realized I can get pretty much anything I need at the stores or street vendors here I was fine. We do need to revamp our wardrobe. In the mtc they stressed that they don't want us to look like fundamentalist with dark long boring skirts and clothing. And that's exactly what we look like here. Everyone here gets pretty dressed up on a regular basis. Maybe we can get wearing stilettos approved to better fit in with the culture.
Is there anything that you are already missing from the states?

Not really. They have McDonalds here which I don't plan on ever going to, but its a constant reminder that that oh ya, i'm from America, and i'll go back there someday so im not really missing anything much.
And tell us about your living quarters....

We live in a super nice apt- 4 rooms for the two of us. And we have a big kitchen, a 'workout room', a study room, a room for our beds and a room for our clothes. Its super nice.

I love you all!!! Have an awsome week!

c little