May has officially ended and Spring has finally arrived... ish.

To my dearly stove-bereft parentals... and every other valuable person in my life:

 

My condolences, of course, on the loss of your stove. I hope you have a proper funeral for it before you go replacing it with a new one. Speaking of funerals, we had the opportunity to attend one this week. That was interesting. For the record, it looked and felt just like the kind of funerals that we have in the states, although the members of the church here assured me that that was because the lady who passed away was a member of the church. Apparently funerals here don't look at all like they do back at home. I'm not entirely convinced. It was a nice service though, all things considered. I don't think I want to be repeating the experience any time soon anyway, though. I think I've had my fill.

 

Sister Kovalevskaya goes home at the end of this week, which of course means that either myself or Sister Lewis gets to fly back to Vlad and take over training her greenie. I'm still hoping it's going to be Sister Lewis. I intend to keep my junior-companion-the-entirety-of-my-mission status. Being a trainer tends to cramp that kind of style up, I've heard. We'll see. Nobody's called us yet, so maybe that means that neither of us will do any training, and instead they'll find a mini missionary for Sister Tolmachova. That would be interesting. I'd laugh, at any rate.

 

Oh, and also: My life, as of right now (and at least for another three days), is offically complete. We found a new investigator this week, and he's from China. He speaks Russian, but only a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit. And he speaks no English. What does that mean? Firstly, it means that my companion (who spent a good deal of her life growing up in China) gets to practice using words that are completely foreign to her (gosh, you'd think it was basically forbidden to talk about the church in mainland China, or something) while teaching the vast majority of the lesson, and secondly it means that I, as a Russian-speaking missionary in my Russian-Speaking mission (although okay admittedly I have also used my French and Spanish and almost Japanese) got to testify about the Book of Mormon... in Chinese. Oh man. Does life get any better than this? Yes, it was only one sentence, and it took him about 40 seconds to figure out what it was that I'd said, but still. I don't even speak Chinese. And I got to testify. Next week Sister Lewis is in charge of teaching me how to pray. And the week after that... well... we shall see. It might be a little awkward if she gets a transfer, though. I think the phrase, "I know that the Book of Mormon is true" might only get us so far in a lesson about, for example, the Plan of Salvation. But it's a start! Man... I love being a missionary.

 

I think that's all I have to tell you this week. So. Think on it, and get back to me. In the meantime, I love you, have a marvelous week, and try to get some sunshine in your souls (singing the hymn is allowed too).

 

-Sister Read. I have no idea what that would be in Chinese.