Zdrastvootye everybody!
This week was SPLENDID as usual! One of the BEST parts was when I got your LETTERS!!! MAJOR SHOUTOUTS to Nicole and Ashlyn and Shrina and Kate and Alixa and Sister Rust and Sister Martin and the whole Bird family! YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST! I am working on replying, so expect some letters in the nearish future! And keep them coming, they were so much fun to read, seriously made my day! :)
Some highlights of this week...
We kept up our street teaching, we taught like 40 something lessons again, it was crazy but so great! We had one person we talked to call us a day later and ask to meet with us to learn more, so we're meeting with him this Wednesday! The only suspicious thing...he didn't know what street he lived on. -__- So we're kind of not sure what this is going to be like, but we're taking our friend from the branch with us so don't worry Mom! Also this other guy called and asked a ton of questions about our church over the phone, so I talked to him forever and let me just say that talking in Russian over the phone is probably not the easiest thing I've ever done, but it went well and he seemed satisfied with all the answers so that was good! Another exciting thing was that we met the CUTEST old lady named Rosa who wanted us to come see her, but she didn't remember her phone number (no old people know their phone numbers! it's crazy! Actually i can't judge, I didn't know my number for a really long time) anyways so she just gave us her address and we're going to go meet with her this week too. We met her as she was coming home from the doctors and she had just found out she had diabetes and she lives alone and the nurse was really mean to her and she is SO cute and nice so I'm happy we got her contact info so we can talk to her more. :) She was just going through such a hard time and so I'm happy we met her so we can help!
This week we are focusing more on helping people who don't come to church anymore, because a lot of them are either really sick, or going through really hard times. We met with a really sweet woman named Ludmila last week, and when we got there, she started to cry and she told us basically everything that has gone wrong in her life, and she's 60 something so she's had some time for some things to go wrong. She has a mentally ill daughter, and another daughter who takes her money, and it's just really rough. The more I'm here, the more people I talk to, the more I realize I have like no problems in life and I should pretty much never complain again. Which I guess is a good lesson to learn! We're putting all our energy this week into helping people like Ludmila, and helping them see if they come back to church they'll have so much more support and help.
It was a holiday weekend this week, it was Men's Day! We walked around all day Saturday congratulating men, and it was so funny. We were wishing one man a happy holiday and this other lady came up and like got in line behind us, and then wished him happy men's day too. He was pretty old, and you could tell he really liked that we were all standing in a line, complete strangers, wishing him happy men's day. Another guy we met started telling us how much he likes fishing, and I told him how my dad likes to fish, and all of a sudden he was like "I'm in the house" and I was so confused, then he explained he is in the house like the government, right under the mayor. He thought it was really cool that there were Americans in Volzhsky and he invited us to this big convention thing where he was giving a speech, and he told us he would call us in March to give us the details because they also have really good food at this convention thing. We're not actually sure it that's allowed, but he was nice so we just said that would be great haha.
Also for the holiday our branch had a music night. They told us we needed to think of a talent, or a speech. We just said we'd do a surprise. We thought forever about it, and finally we just wrote this rap thing, that was like "waddup Volzhsky, its the Syostri Missionyerki" and some stuff like that, and the two elders in our branch beatboxed for us. We thought it was kind of like a talent show night, but then when we got there we realized it was like a really serious thing, like with war songs and poetry and stuff that was making all the old people cry......and all of a sudden they call us up and we were like "oh my gosh....what are we going to do" because we didn't want to offend anyone!!!! But we had nothing else, so we just did the rap. Turns out they all thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world, and I'm pretty sure no one was offended. Plus the elders did head shoulders knees and toes so we weren't the only ones who totally stuck out. It was really cool to hear everyone talk about World War II though, because Volgograd played a HUGE part in it, so everyone is super super passionate about it. We also sang a Russian song with the elders and the younger people in the branch called "Kon" I think, you should look it up. It's like "Mui edyom s konyom, pol polyu dvaiyom", and it sounds super Russian. It was cool.
The people here are so wonderful. The branch really takes care of us, and even though the older people get impatient with our Russian, the younger ones are all so helpful and fun. The people on the street are usually pretty nice, we've only had a few people who weren't, which was actually surprising. A lot of the old women bless us, and a lot of the younger people humor us and listen. English club is usually more interesting to them, and we had some people we invited off the street come this week, which was awesome! One of the weirdest things about being on a mission is that I feel like I talk to SO many people! It makes me so happy though, especially when we have a good conversation and we're able to share something with them that will help them. We taught such a huge variety of lessons this week on the street--everything from family history to tithing to the Book of Mormon. We talked to one guy for like 30 minutes, he was doing most of the talking, and he talked about like cars, and young people, and suicide. I was freezing to death because it was really cold that day and we were standing still for so long. Anyway, at the end I asked if he like to read, he said yes, and we gave him a Book of Mormon. A lot of the people we talk to are just plain lonely I feel like, so it's nice to hear what they have to say.
Thank you for the letters again! Keep them coming! Haha I miss you all, thanks for reading!
Lots of love,
Seestra McGhie
PS: No one can say "McGhie". Everyone either says Mak-Gee (like Beeg Mak) or MAgi, which in Russian means Magic. The branch people also called me Sister Mangee for 2 weeks, and some of them still do. The funniest was when I introduced myself as Seestra McGhie on the street, and this old man thought I said Sister Magic, and he was like "I don't want any of that!" like I was some witch woman. I doesn't help that Sister Houseman's name means "Chaos-man". Haha it's hilarious.
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