Week 5: Halfway done!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

This week was fantastic! I don’t ever think I’ve laughed so much in my life. Our district is definitely getting closer by the hour. It’s crazy to think we’re only just over halfway now. We are going to come
out of this so tight!

The people in our zone are definitely the weirdest people I have ever met. I don’t know if that’s cause I didn’t go to public school or if really weird people get called to Eastern Europe. There are definitely some acquired tastes in our zone. It really helps make the 9 weeks durable and interesting.

The oldest district leaves on Monday. It is so crazy and sad! We really get so close here. I can imagine it doesn’t feel much different than leaving the family all over again. They are awesome people. It’ll be hard to see them leave, but the mission field needs them. We do have one district that will only leave a week before us. That’s the Georgia/Armenia district, aka the funniest/WEIRDEST people on the planet. They’ll be the hardest to send off after being together 8 weeks. I dread the day our district separates after the MTC. I love them so much.

We finished learning all the Russian cases this week! During an exercise, we were asked to write an example on the board that we would use “with” in a prayer. For example “please bless my companion with health”. Sister Bunderson misunderstood the instructions, so she decided to write on the board “I write by the means of a pencil” (in Russian, “with” and “by the means of” is the same). We took a picture of it because we thought the sentence “please bless I write by the means of a pencil” was hilarious. However, little did we know at the time, that what Sister Bunderson had in fact written was “I pee by the means of a pencil”. Brother Buth, our teacher, started dying laughing when he came back in and saw that on the board.

Our investigators are progressing! Ксения is getting baptized now. She was a little hesitant at first and we told her to think about it more and she wouldn’t regret it. The next lesson she told us she definitely wanted it but her concern is that she’s not ready. That’s what we’re here for. Женя still hasn’t quit smoking! We had to push back his baptism date. We do think we’re making progress though because he doesn’t want to smoke and he has smoked a lot less this week. He told us he’s made a goal to think about Jesus instead of smoking when he gets his cravings.

M. Russell Ballard came last night! It was really cool to see two apostles here. He tried to start off with a Q&A session, but so many people got up that it lasted the whole time! There were a lot of questions that I didn’t have, but his answers answered some other personal questions/concerns I had. He emphasized trusting in the Lord a lot. He is literally the cutest old man I’ve ever seen! When he came in he didn’t sit down right away and joined us standing and singing, more and more confusion showing on his face with each verse until he realized we couldn’t sit because he didn’t sit first. When he left, he looked over the crowd and just had this little smile on his face and waved a tiny, single wave. He’s so adorable.

I hope everyone had an amazing week!

Love,
Сестра Вихар

PS. I just ate dinner next to the MTC President and his wife! She asked me to write a letter for her to send to ELDER HOLLAND!!!

Mom-I'm wondering how your Russian is doing. How many hours a day do you spend just on learning and practicing Russian? What is your favorite thing about the MTC? What is your least favorite thing?

Kaeleigh-We spend six hours a day in class, one hour in language study, and the rest of the time is up to us to speak your language. My favorite thing is Russian class actually. Our class is so close and I think we’re going insane here because we hysterically laugh together so often. I’d say my least favorite thing is having to be with your companion all the time. That sounds awful, but I don’t mean I can’t stand Sister Bunderson. I love her and we are so close. I mean that when one of us has to go to the bathroom both of us do. It is so inconvenient to have to do everything twice as much or find two seats next to each other. I’ll have to grow to love it though because this is my life for the next 18 months!

Mom-What is TRC? From your email about speaking in Ukrainian last week.

Kaeleigh-TRC is the teaching resource center where we teach members in the area who can speak our languages. This is our last week of it though. Next week we will start Skyping church members in Eastern Europe who speak Russian! It’s the same idea as role playing with our teacher/“investigator”, just with native speakers instead of returned missionaries.



"I pee by the means of a pencil" (in Russian)


Sister Bunderson and Sister Vehar


A sweet stranger sent this picture to Mom via text. They were dropping their own missionary off at the MTC and ran into these cute girls at the temple.


The Ukrainian flag flying at the Provo MTC


Gotta represent!