Schnitzel Pizza

Hello everyone!

This week was a crazy week. We did a ton of walking around and talking to people on the street because a lot of our plans fell through, but by the end of the week everything worked out!

First of all, big news! We got transfer calls this week, and I will be moving to the city of Irkutsk! I will still be an STL, but I will be in a trio with Sister Campbell from Scotland, and a trainee who I do not know yet. My STL companion will be across lake Baikal in Ulan Ude which will be a challenge, but I am really excited!!

This week, we had GERMAN NIGHT! Right now, we have two German elders serving here in Novosibirsk, so we decided to have a night celebrating their german-ness. It was a really big success! We actually had quite a few of our friends come, and they thought it was great. The elders organized a presentation about Germany, we did a scavenger hunt, and had lots of German food. We made two german cakes, had schnitzel (we put it on pizza, idk why), and pretzels)) Also juice, because Russians never have a party without juice.

We also celebrated a holiday this week, Men's day! Pretty much, we congratulated all the men for being men. We also won a stuffed cat from a claw machine and decided to give it to the Elders as a present. But, one of the Elders is allergic to cats, so we also put some allergy pills in there for him.

Lastly, we had a record week in our mission this week and had 6 baptisms this weekend!! There was a family baptized here, and the baptism was so wonderful. Basically, there are two members who are sisters, but they stopped coming to church a long time ago. They had their own families, but the elders found them, and now they decided to be baptized! The two talks in the baptism were given by these two sisters and they were so powerful. Both of them cried more than once, and expressed their sincere joy and peace they had from seeing their children and husband decide to follow Jesus Christ. It brought them so much closer together as a family, and it was just such a wonderful, joyful day.

I hope you all had a wonderful week! Love and miss you all!

Sister Jones

Photos:

Members crazy dog

old pic of me and sis richardson bc I took not many pictures this week:))))

I Don't Know What To Put Here This Week, Lol

Hello everyone!!

This week was such a blast:) First of all, REALLY exciting thing happened on Sunday! We were at church, and an older lady walked in that we didn't know. She said her name was Lubov, and it was her first Sunday at church. She has a friend who is a member that lives in Norway and she just wanted to come to church, so we are probably going to start working with her! We are really excited:))) It's not often that people just walk into church wanting to learn more.

We also had exchanges this week with Left Bank. I was with Sister Horgmo, the one from Norway. It was really so much fun! She has only been in country for 5 weeks, so it was kinda fun to be a senior companion and to have to know all the Russian and stuff. I felt very blessed, because we went to visit a grandmother and a family and I understood everything! The Russian comes! I've been here for a year now so it's about time. We also had a hard time ordering a taxi because he went to the wrong address and was like "I'm by the stoplight!" and I was like "There is no stoplight!" and he just kept saying it over and over. He eventually found us, lol...

Another fun thing this week was the hockey game we went to on Saturday with the Elders and their friend Kirill. It was the Novosibirsk team, Sibir, against some team that I can't remember the name of, lol. Sibir won though!! 3-2/. No fights, but it was so much fun!

This week, I studied a lot about the freedom to choose that each of us has and the role it plays in our lives. I am so grateful that I am able to choose between right and wrong. Each of us can choose to change. To be a little better each day. To believe. To act. To serve. It is one of God's greatest gifts to us and we should be taking advantage of it each and every day. Choose the right!

I love you all:)))

Sister Jones

Pictures:

Hockey game

Sister Richardson with a crazy dog at a members house

Me at a cafe

Conference, Conference, Conference

Hellooooo everyone!

This week was a crazy week! We had tons of conferences. We had exchanges with the sisters from Omsk on Tuesday, zone conference on Wednesday, and district conference on Saturday and Sunday. It was crazyyyyy and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little tired.

We had a really fun week this week though! We had a meeting with one of the members, Lubov, this week. She's a grandma and she is the sweetest lady ever! Her husband passed away about a year ago, so we go over every once and a while to spend time with her and talk about church. This week, she taught us how to make some wonderful Russian pastries (picture attached) that were SO good! We made these roll things stuffed with cabbage and some cottage cheese type pastries. I don't know how everyone here knows how to cook, but they literally all do and it's wonderful!

We also met with Sasha, a recent convert. She's currently working 3 jobs, so it's a miracle that we finally met with her! She didn't really want to meet but she came anyways. We got to the topic of prophets and apostles, and Sasha started asking a ton of questions about them and about the history of the church, and when we told her we could do lessons with her about it she was really happy. So she's really excited to meet with us now! She came up with a whole plan of topics she wanted to learn about and we are going to go through them every Wednesday.

District conference this week was wonderful! We had church leaders from Moscow (Elder Golden) come and speak to us. I loved the talk given by Sister Golden in the Saturday session. She talked a lot about the importance of scripture study. She compared it to going to the movies. If you want to go to a movie, you set aside time for it and go to the movie. If you want to learn piano, you make time for lessons and time for practicing. It's the same thing with scripture study and church things in general. If we don't make time for it, it won't happen. If we don't make time to pray, we won't. If we don't make time to study our scriptures, we won't. If we don't make time to go to church, we won't. It all depends on where our priorities are. If we something is really valuable to us, we will make time for it. How valuable to you is your relationship with God? Are you willing to make time for it?

That's all I have for this week! I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying life:)

Sister Jones

Pictures:

-Zone conference!! 

-Our really good Russian pastries, we made with Lubov

-My hood covered in snow

Look For The Good:)

Hello everyone!

This week was a wonderful week! We had the chance to go down to Barnaul and do exchanges there. It was freezing! The wind was so strong; I lowkey thought I might die. On the plus side, my eyelashes froze! On the downside, I didn't get a picture because I was freezing to death. Happens, I guess. Barnaul was great! I was with the trainee, who happens to be Russian. It was so fun to be with her! My Russian got so much better from speaking Russian all day with her. We went and visited a few grandmas and a family. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was a fun trip!

We also had a really fun activity this week! It was combined with the branches on Left Bank and Right Bank. It was all about the Book of Mormon and prophets. It's really hard to explain the whole activity, but pretty much one part of it there was a tree of life. We had to walk through a dark hallway holding onto the iron rod. When we got close to the tree, there were people with candy and pie trying to draw us away. A few little kids almost went over to the dark side;) The tree was beautiful! It was covered in white lights. We all got a mandarin and it was just a very peaceful place. Doing what you feel is right is sometimes hard. Sometimes there are people with pies trying to draw you away from what is most important. But, holding on and enduring brings greater joy than any of us can even imagine.

Sorry for the super short email, but I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

Sister Jones

Photos 

1. some member gave me a "cup of coffee"

-The rest are just fun pictures from this week:)