Oh for cute, the most youngest brother is 14 today (well, today for me anyway). Hang on. Bryant. You're 14. When did that happen? Oy. I feel like I should be singing "Sunrise, Sunset" here. Wasn't it yesterday that they were young (born? Small? I forget the word here)? Haha. In any case, happy flippin birthday, Bry! In true Russian style I'm going to skip the birthday song and go straight for birthday wishes: I desire for you a beautiful wife; many happy children; luck in your studies; friends, friends, and more friends; a nice car sometime in the future; a good singing voice; a house with heat in the wintertime; delicious food (also sometime in the future); cleanliness; health; a chance to meet somebody famous; and all your best dreams to come true. I'd go on like a true Russian in True Russian style (no kidding. Get them going and they don't stop until they've hit up every good, ok, neutral, and even semi-neutral-almost-bad thing they can think of for you. It's quite amusing), but I've got other things to report. Consider yourself well and properly desired-for.
In other news, and this you may understand was pretty much the highlight of my life thus far, two of our investigators were baptized on Saturday! Woo! We met Dasha and Yulia my first week out here on the island (literally like the first or second day), gave them a pass-along card for a copy of Finding Faith in Christ, and set up an appointment to watch it with them. After the movie we set up another appointment to teach them the first lesson, and by the end of that lesson they'd committed to baptism. Um. Can we say golden? They showed up at church every week after that (even conference, and they sat through it all!), immediately started drinking herbal tea right after the lesson on the Word of Wisdom (side note: tea, as you may have heard, is rather popular here. I'm pretty sure I'm going to come home composed entirely of tea we drink it so often. But I digress.), and basically did everything else we committed them to do, all with smiles on their faces. The members of the branch absolutely love the two of them, so their baptism was really well attended and amazingly spiritual. Gah! I love this work! Now if only we could get our other investigators to be as cooperative as these two. We've had to drop several because they refused to progress, and that was lame. The last couple of weeks we've been focused on finding more people to teach (yay! Contacting!), and we're only just now starting to see the fruits of those labors. Here's hoping the teaching pool will increase itself soon, because we need those people and they need the gospel.
In other other news, on Friday of this week we (that is, the missionaries) have been invited by the Joneses and the Nobles to celebrate Thanksgiving with them before they all take off for the States and "live like civilized people for a month." Needless to say, we're all looking forward to it (even Sister Ivanova and Elder Papoke are excited about it, and they've never even observed it before now. Apparently word about American holidays (and how we celebrate them) gets around). We've been strictly forbidden from bringing anything other than 1 or 2 liters of juice per companionship, of course, because Sister Noble and Sister Jones are in this and in all things True Relief Society Sisters and have in all likelyhood prepared enough food to feed the entire city. So. No need to worry about your Poor Starving Missionary Daughter (HA) in Russia on Thanksgiving, because I get the feeling she's going to be very very well-fed.
Speaking of delicious food though, can I have some recipes? I want to do some experimenting with Russian ingredients and see what comes out. Please please please I would love coffee cake, pie (apple, blueberry, whatever), banana bread, regular boring bread (it's icky here), texas chocolate cake, and anything else you care to send my way. Oh and also, if at all possible, can I have one of those Joseph Smith Translations of the Bible that they sell at Desperate Book, please? Assuming of course that it isn't too heavy at any rate.
Welp. That's all from me today. Be safe, have fun, and remember that I love you all!
-Sister Read
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