From Reyna With Love: Letter #17 - Short week, photos, Mother's Day skyping!

Preevyet preevyet,

I feel like I just wrote to you all! Happy Mother's Day! Getting to skype with my family this week was the best ever!!!!!

Mother's Day 2013

Mother's Day skype session

Now they can tell you all that I'm actually doing well and I'm not faking it or something in these letters haha! Because I don't think I could have faked being happy over skype! Big shoutout to Sage because she wrote me a dearelder and I totally meant to say something here, so THANKS SAGEY love you!

Sooo I'll try to think of all the fun things that have happened since Thursday....well, Friday we had to say bye to Sister Houseman which was definitely the opposite of fun, but all the young people from the branch came to say bye and did this totally awesome rap thing for her and stuff, it was so nice! We already miss her so much! But she'll do great wherever she is, Sister Houseman is just the best!

Working at a dacha

Saturday morning we woke up early, and headed out to "Green Island' to work with a lady named Nadezhda on her dacha! It took some seriously crazy public transportation skills, because we had to marshrutka out there, plus a transfer, plus understand this woman on the phone who really never took a breath--not to mention that she's pretty old, and she hasn't figured out that you don't have to have your mouth on the speaker of the cell phone! It was hard, but we made it out there! When we got there, she fed us some homemade apple juice and asked, "can you dig?" We were like..um yep probably! So she taught us how she wanted it dug and we...dug! Her garden is really adorable, she even gave us a huge thing of fresh radishes at the end. As I was digging, I realized how weak and wimpy I am. I had a blister after probably 4 minutes. So lame. After awhile she was pretty nervous for us because we were like baking in our jeans and she reeeeally wanted us to put on these super see-through lightweight dress things that we totally are not allowed to wear..haha.
So we just kept taking breaks, and every time she insisted we drink this super hot fresh mint/lemon tea stuff. So as sweat is like rolling down our faces, we are drinking boiling tea. She also had some chickens and a rooster that kept crowing, so it was kind of a nice little feeling to be digging and out in the middle of nowhere.

On the marshrutka out there it was hilarious--I tried to ask the driver for a schedule (raspisaniya) but I accidentally asked for a raspiska, which is this super detailed receipt thing that we usually only get when we pay rent! So I was asking for a full-page receipt for our 60 rouble marshrutka ride! Haha he just looked at me like, are you kidding? Sister Holmes saved me and was like, raspisaniya! Haha too funny. Sister Holmes is so awesome! Her Russian is SUPER, and she's just so much fun! We are always always laughing. We were practicing phrases in the marshrutka the other day, and we were practicing for Plan of Salvation, so basically like where we were before we came to Earth, and where we're going after, and one of the phrases was, "we will all die", and so right as Sister Holmes is about to practice saying it in Russian the whole car goes quiet and everyone is looking at us and I was like ummmmm maybe don't say that right now actually!

Church sunday was great, a couple people came that hadn't come in like years!! Super exciting to see all of our visiting people is working! I had to play the piano for a suprise musical number...I got about 15 minutes warning. I would give myself a 6/10. Definitely a D-. But they sang well and really really loudly probably to cover up my playing haha. So it went well. Elder Allen gave a really good talk! Tell his mom! Haha it really was so good. And then later that night we got to skype home! The family's house we skyped home at was so nice, they fed us dinner after, with fresh veggies from their dacha! They had these green onions out to just eat plain, so I decided I should try one and let me tell you Sister Holmes and I are both regretting that decision haha. A green onion is a green onion, even if it came fresh from a dacha.

Hmmmm so this is looking like the shortest letter ever!!! But I am going to make up for it by sending pictures. :) Plus I only had like 3 days to work with, so cut me a little slack ;)

Love you all so much! I should be getting mail at transfers next, so in 2 weeks! Can't wait, you guys never disappoint. :)

Today's quote is....

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today."

--Dale Carnegie

супер любовь

Sister Мэги

PS: Sister Holmes just did something so funny. She's sitting here writing a letter, and we have this big pad of paper and she wrote a whole letter on the back of the cover page...and the cover is this huge picture of a unicorn and like fairies with this purpley magicaly background....okay maybe it's not that funny here, just trust me it was funny! Haha bye till next week!

(I cannot get these photos to move! So they're staying here, at the bottom.)