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.
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