One Cycle Down

HELLO friends and family!
Thankyou all again for your wonderful emails! The best part of p-day is getting mail and getting to hear from the “outside world” for a little bit. I have to mention to Jill that I find it interesting your cake didn’t work yet the brownies you sent me were amazing! What happened? Just think though, you still have 14 months to improve your cooking skills and cook me an amazing dinner when I get back. I loved hearing about Octoberfest and about mom’s fun trip to Virginia. HOLY COW Eva is HUGE! What happened! Dad thanks for your updates on the Idaho Outdoors. I do really miss those adventures. And Taylor all I can say to you is good job. Freedom is totally worth the price. Good luck with basketball tryouts this week, I know you we will be great and I hope that you have a coach;) SARA that is so exciting about your move to Las Vegas. That does mean that we will be very close to each other HUZZAH! And I’m sure mom is really glad that airfare is really cheap to Las vegas (and dad). Devin thanks for the poem. That is EXACTLY how I”ve been feeling this week.
This week has been good, a little colder and a little harder but good nonetheless. We’ve had some interesting experiences (meeting old grandpa’s while tracting) and some really good experiences. We had District conference on Sunday and so we were able to be together with all of the Saints in Saratov and with President Bennett. It was great to be with everyone and to see how the church is growing in Saratov. Our investigator Natalya was able to attend and I think she enjoyed the conference. It also was the end of a cycle!!! Hole cow! I’ve made it in Russia one whole cycle, hurrah! Think at the end of next cycle I’ll be on my first Visa trip, crazy. It looks like I will be staying in Oktabrasky with my mini-missionary Sis. Semikolenova. She is great and we have had fun serving together. I am just so impressed with her dedication to serve the Lord, she already served a mission and here she is on the cold Russian streets, getting yelled at, sworn at etc., all voluntarily. Wow! Because it is the end of the cycle and because we had district conference it means president and sister Bennett were in town this week. Sister Bennett unexpectedly dropped in the other morning for cleaning checks and we had an interview with president Bennett. It was great to be able to feel of their strength and get reenergized for the next cycle.
This week we met a lot of great people but I specifically wanted to mention a few. We met a young girl from Kenya the other week who wanted a Book of Mormon in English. She is going to school here and speaks English as her first language. We finally got a copy of an English Book of mormon and were able to deliver it this week. She lives in a dorm type place and so we waited for about 30 minutes for some girls to go up and get her because we couldn’t go up there. The wait was totally worth it though because she returned with about 5 of her friends who were also interested in the gospel. We had a great conversation with them and they asked the best question an investigator can ask, “how do you know the book is true”. AWESOME! In that situation all I could do was bear my testimony and challenge them to read it and find out for themselves. It was a great experience! I think they speak French with each other and so they were speaking in that and so I didn’t understand everything that was going on (devin, I needed you) but it was a great meeting and we are excited to meet with them again.
Here are some pictures from the week of my companion and I when we imagined going out in the cold! But in the cold is where people are! Thanks for all of your love and support. The church is true! Help the missionaries (are you sick of hearing that one yet). This week we had a wonderful member go out with us, after a long day of work, on the streets contacting. She was actually with us when we went and visited our Kenyan friends and was such a support and so sweet. The members here are amazing. She is at least 50 but was willing to give of her time, energy, support etc to help the missionaries. When we met her at our spot at 5 she simply said, “I’m yours tonight”. How cool is that. She was truly an instrument in the hands of the Lord and was willing to help out the missionaries on a cold winter night for 4 hours!!! WOW!!! Have a good week, eat some borscht (it’s delicious), drink some tea and think of me. Love you all!
Sister Morris