The computer can't keep up with my fingers today

So if while you're reading this you happen to see a word that looks li ke thi s, just assume it's something in Russian and not to be understood by the filthy capitalists anyway. Or it could be your imagination, I suppose. Either way.

 

On Saturday we had a branch activity where we hiked up to a spot in the middle of a forest just north of the city, spent an hour cleaning up beer bottles and other pieces of trash, and then had a picnic and played picnic-y games like throwing a volley ball back and forth in a great big circle and watching as the elders held competitions with some of the members to see who could run down the very steep hill fastest. I must say, it is quite nice to see that all the usual customs and formalities are observed for branch activities everywhere, including sausages which take forever to cook on the skewers in the fire and a branch presidency member who insists on doing a spiritual thought as soon as all the food is ready to eat. The church really is true everywhere.

 

In any case, hiking into the Russian Forest meant wearing something other than the usual proselyting skirts (for us, at any rate. As far as I know, the elders are still required to wear slacks when they're out preaching), and that meant putting on pants, and that was weird. When I started my mission I would've done anything if it meant I didn't have to wear a skirt (even if it was for only an hour or two at a time), and now I don't think I can function properly without one. Plus the pants I brought don't fit like they should, so I finally broke down and took them to a tailor today (which for some reason is really cheap here. Guess I'll find out why when I get my pants back in a couple of days). Sigh. Life is so hard sometimes.

 

All of that, however, was not the story I wanted to tell you this week. This week I wanted to tell you about how President gathered all five of us sisters in the mission and had a special three-day Sisters' Conference with him and Sister Pratt in the mission home (which happens to be President's appartment, seeing as how the mission home burned down several years ago and they still haven't gotten around to rebuilding it/buying a new one, if they ever will). Hooray! Sister Pratt made lots of delicious food and we had lots of discussion/training about how to become better teachers, with practice time afterwards. I highly enjoyed myself, and I'm pretty sure the other sisters did too, although I'm still feeling the effects in my throat because I (as Sister Lewis put it) "spent three days talking non-stop." Sister Volkova, who is from Moscow and is currently serving in Khabarovsk, doesn't speak very much English, and therefore needed a translator. Just in case you're wondering, it takes a whole lot of thought to translate what somebody else is saying so that the message makes sense and carries the same point, while still keeping up with what's coming next. I discovered that it's easier to go from your native language to a foreign one though, because then you can at least figure out what the speaker's getting at... mostly, anyway. Basically what I'm saying here is that I think I may have found my profession in life, or at the very least my retirement hobby, because I don't think I've ever enjoyed myself while talking so much as I did last week. I'll look in to that when I actually have to get around to choosing a focus for my major.

 

That's all you get today. I love you all, I hope you're all preparing properly for General Conference, and I expect stories, as usual. Pleaseandthankyou.

 

-Sister Read. No title today.

If nothing else, at least you know it's warmer than in Vlad

Today, in case you hadn't noticed (this is for you silly people on the other half of the globe who still think it's Sunday), is Monday. Do you know what that means? Did you guess finding celery at random in a supermarket (which in and of itself is extremely unusual. Like, extremely unusual. Generally we buy our food at indoor markets where they practically kill you if you even THINK about picking out/touching any of the food for yourself. You may have it handed to you, thank you) in Russia (I've never seen it before today) and deciding to make soup with it? Well, you'd be right. Yay! Soup! I think I'll make chicken noodle, mostly because chicken is the only meat I actually recognize here (not my fault, for the record), and also because Sister Lewis is feeling under the weather and could probably use something vaguely American to eat today. No, I don't care to know that chicken noodle isn't actually American. It sounds American, and that's enough for me.

 

On Tuesday I had another quarterly trip to Korea, and because we were there on Tuesday/Wednesday, they had a special 6:00 am session at the temple and that meant that I got to go twice in the 36-hour period that we were there. I also bought myself more earrings (have I mentioned that those for me are like ties for the elders? Well they are. It's the only thing can change in my wardrobe, and I'm going to take advantage of it), and because I found a place that sells them for about 85 cents a pair, I'm slowly amassing a very large collection for myself. I figure that since I'm not overly fond of souveniers anyway, if I'm going to get myself something I might as well get something I'll use in the future. And if I can find myself many things I'll use in the future, well... okay then.

 

Sister Tolmachova doesn't have to get her visa renewed, obviously, so she got to spend the time we were in Korea hanging around the office playing translator for President and working the Russian Underground System to get him a parking lot near the church. I'm sure he would've had the Assistants do it normally, but it just happened to work out that they were both in Korea with me at the time, and in any case it's always easier to get things done when you've got a native speaker involved.

 

Anyway, the computer just warned me that I have five minutes left, which I think is horribly unfair because I had about a million other things to say. Fine. I guess you'll just have to wait until next week. I love you all, I hope you're staying safe and wet (yay! Fall!), and I expect you to have entertaining stories for me next week.

 

-Sister Read. American... ish.

Apparently the unexpected tends to happen on a mission... occasionally

Well. I don't remember if I told you about it last week, and if I didn't then it was a ridiculous oversight on my part. But. On Sunday when we got to church we found out that we'd been given an investigator who was not only completely golden, but who already had a baptismal date and was scheduled to be baptized the following Saturday (that is, two days ago). She'd met the missionaries in Nakhodka and was supposed to be baptized there before she moved to Vlad to continue her studies, but for logistical reasons the baptism didn't work out on the day it should have, and it was pushed back another week. Basically what I'm saying here is that we had a baptism this week (hooray!), and it was by far the easiest baptism I've ever had... sort of. Teaching-wise, anyway. We had to do a lot of negotiating to bring the branch presidency around to to it (for various and sundry reasons but which basically boiled down to the fact that they didn't know her and weren't convinced that she had a testimony. Once we got her acquainted with the Branch President though, he was more agreeable), which was horribly ironic in my opinion, but oh well. All's well that ends well... or something. I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't mind a few more of these kinds of baptisms in the future. ... Just not too many. It's nice to be able to see the fruits of your labors too.

 

In any case, my life continues on. We've got more streets to wander up and down on here in Vlad, and they don't all know me here, which means that contacting is a little more entertaining (although I'm not going to lie, street contacting is officially one of my favorite things to do anyway. So many hilarious people out and about... especially in the bigger cities). We can't split up the threesome as often as we might have on Sakhalin though, because here people try harder to walk off with one or both of my companions (and I mean this in a very literal sense. People are always in a hurry around here, and we're kind of stubborn. Generally what ends up happening is that one companion will stop and talk to somebody who is standing still (usually waiting for the bus) and the other companion will start up a conversation with a passer-by. If we aren't careful, we end up walking several hundred feet with the passer-by before we realize that the other two are still where we left them, and rapidly falling out of sight). It's amusing, when they aren't offering to marry us so that we can take them to America. Sister Tolmachova gets those especially often, and it cracks me up every time.

 

Incidentally, if you would be so kind as to pass on to President Dalton my thanks and my advice that if his niece is going to buy boots in America and not in Russia, she would be best off getting something extremely warm and cheap, because in all likelyhood they're going to fall apart towards the end of her first winter, and she'll probably end up having to buy more anyway, that would just be peachy. Incidentally, I may or may not be buying new boots this winter...

 

But that's all I've got for now. Fall has almost begun, the sun is still shining, and I'm officially okay with all of that. Enjoy yourselves this week, and remember that I love you.

 

Oh yes, and thank you mom, for that hilarious description of your shopping trip with dad: "I went into the shops and Dad sat outside and read his book. It was a win-win situation." Ha. Gosh, is this my family, or what?

 

Much love,

Sister Read

Why do the mosquitoes even bother biting the bottom of my toes? It's not like there's anything worth their effort there...

Today, apparently, is Labor Day. Aren't you all so proud of me for knowing that? Actually, I'm not going to lie, I only know that because we had two new missionaries (no sisters until November, siiiiiigh) fly in on Saturday, and they can't get into the consulate today because it's closed. Huh. Who knew that consulates actually celebrated the holidays? In any case, happy Labor Day everyone. I hope you're all prepared for school to start tomorrow.

 

And, for the record, I am officially homeless no longer. I never was to begin with of course, but that is entirely beside the point. President decided that it would be easier to find an apartment in some other missionaries' area in Vlad, and so we moved back into the same apartment that we had before we left. This means that I've had a grand total of two areas on my mission. Hooray! I don't know if I can actually call it the same apartment though, because when we got in late Tuesday night I didn't even recognize it. The floors were filthy, it smelled funny, and there was junk all over the place. The best part though, was that there was a huge swarm of fruit flies in the kitchen (some of them stuck to the strips of fly tape which was strung up like christmas decorations all around the room) and a little note that said, "Dear Sisters: Sorry about the flies... We don't know where they're coming from." Which had been signed by the elders, presumably before they abandonded ship earlier that day. I was too tired to bother with them, and the elders swore that the sheets were clean, so I went to bed. The next day we decided it wouldn't hurt to spend some time getting things back in order, or at least trying to discover the source of all the flies, so we spent a couple of hours scrubbing and gathering things to be thrown out. Around mid-morning ish Sister Tolmachova discovered the source of all the flies when she opened a cupboard that had been blocked by bottles of emergency water. I'm assuming that at some point the bag that she pulled out had contained perfectly normal ordinary vegetables. After a couple of months in a blocked-off cupboard though, they had turned into something completely unrecognizable which was oozing brown goo. Ick. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time examining it. The funny thing is though, that once we got rid of the vegetables and all the other trash lying around, both the funny smell AND the flies just disappeared. How on earth could that have happened? Basically what I'm saying here is that I will never ever ever loan my apartment to a pair of elders again. Like really, never again.

 

In any case, I tried writing to President today and the computer ate my letter, so I suppose I'd better get going and write him another one. Enjoy your week (especially the fact that it's fall!), and try not to get into too much trouble.

 

I love you all,

Sister Read