Wow! How has it already been a month? Time is flying by! We got two new districts this week. All 15 of them are speaking Russian. Our zone is huge now. I’m still trying to get to know them, but there’s so many and not a whole lot of time. We got a lot of international missionaries in this group. They represent Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and England. The rest are from America. I have only talked to two (the Americans) of the seven elders, and one is borderline way too flirty. Granted he’s new to the missionary world, but he’s not very aware when he’s too close to a sister and the elders have to keep reminding him. It’s kind of humorous, but it keeps happening so I think one of the sisters is going to have to make him aware of how uncomfortable it is.
I’m getting to know the Georgian (the country, not the state) elders more since the last district left. They are definitely my favorite elders here. They are the funniest trio. They’re Elders Hunt, Healy,
and Christensen. I can’t believe we didn’t talk much until now, but they are only a week ahead of us so we’ll be with them for the rest of the time here basically.
Sometimes it’s weird to think I’ll ever leave the MTC and actually serve in the mission field. There are days where we joke that after we serve a year and a half in the MTC we’ll go home.
Sunday’s devotional was really cool cause the BYU men’s choir came to sing for us and they sang some songs from The Prince of Egypt film. Everyone was freaking out because it sounded like real music! It was so much fun to see everyone get so excited. You can still hear people singing it as you pass them and people were playing it on YouTube today while emailing their families.
Sister Bunderson’s cold was worse this week, so we went to the doctor at the BYU student health center. Sister Bunderson got some drugs for her sinus infection. Her cough syrup has codeine in it so she can only take it at night or she’ll be knocked out. At least that’s what we thought. The first night she took two tablespoons instead of two teaspoons as directed on accident. She took three times as much! But she didn’t fall asleep nearly at all. She’s still trying to recover from her lack of sleep. We told the whole zone about her over dosage, but that was not a good idea, cause one of the really weird elders, Elder Power, keeps asking her if he can have some of her codeine, and we aren’t sure if he’s serious or not. I hope not, but he’s weird enough that he would.
Another funny event this week was that Elder Cole, or Dwight, has been appointed our District Leader for the next three weeks. It is so hard o take him seriously since he takes himself so seriously. It’s completely unreal. Last night our branch president had an urgent errand to run so he couldn’t stay to discuss the devotional with us so Elder Cole was in charge. He then made it a lecture instead of a
discussion while writing and drawing odd things on the whiteboard. It was related to the discussion, but so weird. It took so much not to laugh. A few of the sisters lost it and soon the rest of the district was in hysteria while Elder Cole was just confused. We feel like we’re living in an episode of the office where Dwight is the manager for a day. I haven’t watched enough to know everything Dwight
does, but I’ve seen enough to know how uncanny it is.
This week, Sister Bunderson and I were asked to be the branch music coordinators. Naturally, we sing a lot in the MTC. We sing so much here! I’d say at least ten times a day. Especially when we sing High School Musical all day long as a district. Our favorite is What I’ve Been Looking For, Ryan and Sharpay version a cappella. We sound so good except Ryan, me, sounds very gravely and pitchy thanks to being sick and having a yucky throat. I just want to prove I can sing
Thanks for the sheet music Mom. We actually heard Peace in Christ here at a devotional and we love it! (If you haven’t heard that song yet, look it up on youtube!)
On a much more spiritual note, our lessons with our investigators have gotten so much better. We are officially off script and we can converse in extremely broken Russian. This week, we taught a man who spoke in Ukrainian, not Russian during TRC. That was hard but too realistic. We had my favorite lesson this week. Ксеня was an atheist when we started teaching her because she couldn’t believe God could exist in a world where so much bad and evil things could happen. We found out that her mom had died early, leaving her behind to take care of her younger brother. She didn’t have a
great relationship with her mom, but she still loved her. This week we taught her the Plan of Salvation and the spirit was so strong. She was so happy that she could live with her family forever. We asked her to pray at the end, and in her prayer she said “God we love thee” and I had to help myself from screaming and crying. I felt so much joy for the progress her soul had made from openly hating God to expressing love for Him in a conversation with Him. I have to keep reminding myself that our investigators are actors, our teachers actually. However, they act as someone they personally taught. I can’t wait to have the same genuine experiences I’ve have here in Ukraine.
The mission has definitely been a rollercoaster of emotions of discouragement and infinite joy. I don’t think I have ever laughed as much as I have here, which shouldn’t make sense since we’re all missionaries, but at the same time it does. I have not been as happy as I am here. I cannot wait for the next seventeen months and I am definitely saddened when I realize this will be over in a year and a
half. Best decision I ever made!
Love you all,
Сестра Вихар
Сестра Вихар
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