Happy New Year!! Just finished up week 3, and the weeks are starting to fly by a little faster.
WEDNESDAY: Last Wednesday we had the opportunity to clean the Provo temple! I’d only been inside a few times and I didn’t realize just how beautiful it is. My companion and I mainly worked on the sealing rooms (where people get married). They were absolutely gorgeous, and everything was lined with gold. I’ve never cleaned a chair so intensely as I did in the temple. We had to wipe the gold part with a different cloth than the rest of the chair, and every leg got an individual wipe down. But it was really cool to be able to do that!
THURSDAY: Thursday was not the greatest day, I’ll admit. One of my favorite things to do in the MTC is run on the track and unfortunately, I ran too hard earlier in the week without stretching and now I have a massive knot in my hamstring. So, I was only able to run a lap or two:( It worked out though, because as I was stretching, I started talking to this sister who does martial arts. She was like “do you want to learn some self defense?” And I obviously said of course!! I’m just hoping that I won’t need it in Russia, but if I do, I’ll be safe mom;) We also had our first TRC on Thursday. For TRCs, members in the area that speak Russian come and volunteer, and we teach them a 20 minute lesson. They went pretty well, the first one was wonderful (we taught the teacher because a volunteer didn’t show up) and he said that we had a good plan and spoke well! The second one was with this cute grandma from St. Petersburg, and my companion loved it, but I didn’t really understand what was going on and I didn’t say much either. But I guess it can only go up from there!
FRIDAY: Friday was a good day. Сестра Murton made me go to the trainer and roll my leg, which was good because it was hurting a lot. We had a conversation with a German elder in our district about wisdom teeth for some reason which was how I found out that other countries keep you awake for wisdom teeth surgery... ouch. They numb the area, but still! In class on Friday we had an amazing discussion on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I know for a fact that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Even without the confirmation of the Spirit, there are so many facts that confirm this. There are so many things in the Book of Mormon that people didn’t know were true about ancient America until after the book was written. Joseph Smith only had a 3rd grade education. There is no way he could have translated the Book of Mormon without Gods help.
SATURDAY: I finished basic core! Basic core is this little book full of phrases and stuff we memorize to get the basis of Russian, and I finally finished it! Now we start on harder things !! Two of the elders in my district also witnessed some poor girl sliding down the hand rail of a staircase and fall off of it! She was fine and tried to brush it off, but they were laughing ridiculously hard for a solid 5 minutes.
SUNDAY: Сестра Maccabee was sick. In her own words, “I was a zombie this morning”. Сестра Murton and Сестра Eckery got called as Sister Training Leaders! They basically just check up on all the sisters and welcome the new sisters in when the come. They even got a flip phone! Our Sunday night devotional was so so good. Brother and Sister Coslett spoke. They are from Northern Texas and have the cutest little accents. Both of them had very hard lives growing up, and had parents that abused them and abandoned them. However, they both found their way to the gospel and I had never heard someone who loves Jesus as much as Sister Coslett does! God cares about every single person on this earth, and we are all precious in His sight. No matter what others say, you are of infinite worth.
MONDAY: I made Сестра Murton run a mile;) She loves horseback riding, but she wants to get into better shape, so I told her, “ok, today we are going to run a mile.” She didn’t like that. She kept saying over and over “I can’t do that, a mile?? That’s so long! I can’t do that. I won’t do that.” It was actually the funniest thing! I convinced her by saying she could blame me if she fainted, and she didn’t! Afterwards, I kept saying “now don’t you feel good? Running is just so amazing!” And I think she’s starting to believe me! We also began learning conjugations in Russian, which took me all the way back to middle school Spanish. Conjugating is turning out to be the easiest part of learning Russian! But probably for not much longer. We decided to celebrate New Years at 10 pm because it was midnight where my family is (and we weren’t allowed to stay up), and I made makeshift sparkling apple cider out of apple juice and sprite from the vending machines:)
TUESDAY: We started the year off right with service at 6:25 AM! My companion and I were in charge of taking out the trash all the bathrooms in our building. It took forever to do because almost half of the MTC left to their actual missions, so there were lots of boxes and trash. The choir sang in the Tuesday devotional. We sang “Jesus Once of Humble Birth”. When we were practicing, the choir director was telling us all about the second coming of Christ (in the Book of Revelations). The devotional was by Tad R. Callister and his wife, Kathryn. They spoke on receiving revelation, and how God is eager to share his mind and will with us, we just have to be more eager to listen.
It was a wonderful week this week, full of ups and downs. But this week was also a good reminder that I am not here for me. I may be having troubles learning the language, and not being able to say what I want to say. Being a missionary is hard. If I were here just for me, I wouldn’t have come in the first place. But I am here for other people, and to teach them about Jesus Christ and His infinite, eternal love for them. No matter what choices they make in this life or what kind of person they are, we are ALL precious in His sight.
Thank you for all the emails and prayers this week!
До свидания
Сестра Jones
Pictures:
1. My name tag in front of the Provo Temple
2. Snowball fight! It snowed a lot this week
3. A random picture someone airdropped me during the devotional. I don’t know who this person is...
4. Сестра Murton with the makeshift sparkling cider
