Another week another train ride

Well another week and another train ride. Right now I am typing this email in a post office in Samara after having spent a very sleepless night on a train from Penza to Samara. We got on the train around 10 last night and arrived in Samara at 6! YEA! It is so hard to sleep on trains! I don't know how people do it. If there are any suggestions out there that would be great because I"m really feeling the fatigue setting in from not sleeping. But oh well. Life goes on.
So.... this week was good. Just "missionarying" as usual but lots of good things happened. We were able to meet with some great inactive members this week and that was great. It is always such a good experience to see them light up when they talk about their baptism. THey know this church is still true but for some reason or another haven't been able to come to church but it is so great to be able to work with them.
This week we were also able to continue the "new" tradition of District Meeting-- in person-- which was great. It is such a great break to be able to get together every week with the ELders and talk about our investigatiors, get their help and opinions and just feel like we aren't alone in this work.
I would like to also announce to everyone that I had a big full week of goal accomplishing. Well... First, Sister and I had set a goal to eat a baked good everyday and we nailed it. Then i had set a personal goal to memorize "Follow the Prophet" in Russian-- yes, all 9 verses, and I did it. THis morning we did a mini-performance and I only messed up a couple of times when I couldn't remember if it was the verse with Jonah or Daniel about lions and whales. That song is golden. Even better in Russian. It took a full week of memorizing every verse every day while we contacted but we did it!!!! I can also say that I walked on a balance beam. Thanks to the support of my companion I walked all the way across and back which is really scary for me-- someone with NO balance and NO self-confidence in those kinds of things. But look... as my mom always says... we can do HARD things!
We had a great experience tracting this week. We had decided to zaidyom to an apartment where a former investigator had lived. We knocked and talked to her briefly but she replied that she just wasn't interested but we decided to knock the whole podezd. We went up to the top floor, knocked on the first door, and the lady immediately let us in! We had a FANTASTIC lesson with her and we were able to talk about the power of prayer and the PLan of Salvation. Her husband had died and she had been struggling with a lot of thoughts about the plan o flife, why we are here and if there is something afterwards. After talking to her for ahile we found out that she had actually met with the missioanries a few years ago and had the Book of Mormon. We asked her to read it adn pray to know if it was true. It was a great experience and testimony-building experiecne to me to know that yes, Heavenly Father does prepare people and does help them to accept this Gospel. He is in charge of everything!
Saturday we paid our rent and our hazaika brought us a HUGE bag of tomatoes. We knew that we wuold be going out of town this week and so had to do something with them and so we made a big pot of tomato sauce/soup. It was really really yummy and we were even able to freeze some so I"m looking forward to that when we get home. We will be here in samara today, I will go to Lithuania tomorrow to renew my visa, we will work here in samara on Wed and then that night take a train back to Penza. Whew!!! A crazy week but all is well. I love yuo all! Thanks for the great emails and good luck Taylor at BYU and all of you returning to school and HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVA! That is so crazy she is already two. |I just hope she knows who her favorite aunt is;) Lots of love!
Sister Morris