Dark pickled body parts?

Remember Ira? MY Ira. She was my baptism girl. I LOVE HER! Anyways, her Mom got baptized on Saturday!!!! MIRACLE!!! We used to teach her! And her testimony is soooo amazing, but she works every sunday and had other issues to deal with in her life. She knows the church is true, so she was willing to do anything. Even if it means a new job and everything. That's HARD! Especially in Russia! I mean, it seemed a hopeless case, but she was just so amazing and willing to do what it took to be a member and follow her Savior. I love Sveta soooo much, their family is so amazing. I had to sing at her baptism (mortifying) and I made snickerdoodles. Way fun.

We had a holiday on Saturday. There are so many holidays in Russia, it's not even funny. No wonder they can't make a living. There's a holiday every other weekend. Of course the celebrating always starts the day before and goes till at least a day after. Then there are the recovery days from all the drinking... which, lets be honest, since they drink alcohol here literally like water, has to be a LOT of alcohol to get all these people drunk. Crazies. I got my butt grabbed on the metro that day. He was obviously VERY drunk, but that's not an uncommon occurrence here anyways, drunk or not.I never told you about my insomnia nights. My gosh, could anything else go wrong. My body and mind have just fallen apart on my mish, I feel like a hypocondriac... or however you say it. But yea. I couldn't sleep for like 5 days in a row and I was dying.

But guess what! You know how there are two secret creepy closets nailed shut in our apartment? Well, one opened up! ... Maybe I helped it along a little, but it opened. :) Anyways, there are TONS of books! I am so sad I don't read russian, cuz they're all so pretty, and you know I love pretty books. I FEEL like I should be able to read them... sadly i can't. But I have learned all kinds of things from what I could read, like all the words for birds and sea creatures. I read some fairytales in russian. Whoever lived there before us was obviously studying to be a doctor or something because I found so many medical books and an arm pump and stuff. Dude, I totally scored, and it kept me entertained for the sleepless nights. I even found two puzzles and did them both. Should I have spent my time studying the scriptures? Probably...

OH! There are also HUGE jars filled with dark pickled body parts. Or at least that's what it looks like. Creepy.

We had sun on monday and I LOVED it! My comp and district leader are both in major depressions. Lots of missionaries are, I hear. Tends to happen to everyone. But it's baaaad.

The other day we had a fun metro experience that made me think of you mom. We had to switch metros and so were cruising through the corridors from one to the other. But we came around a corner and came to a wall of people dead stopped. And we were still FAR from the escalators... Imagine being in a concrete hall and having no way to go back or forward and you know it will go on forever. haha, it wasn't bad for me, but i thought of you. :) YOu would have FREAKED and screamed bloody murder! It took us a while, we don't know what was wrong, but we were eventually freed.

Wednesday we were on the train all day to a city called Vweeborg... i'm trying to spell it in english for you. :) I'm still shocked at how people live. Yea, there are stories with that, but they're all the same and boring.

So, I've been studying all the parables Christ taught in the New Testament. For the first time, I'm REALLY understanding everything I'm reading! I love it! I was reading The Parable of the Sower and it was weird. As I read and thought, I could totally see everyone we're working with here fall into one of the categories of people Christ spoke about. wow...

Something else hit me this week. It's super obvious, but I just really THOUGHT about it this week. You know how satan doesn't get people all at once. Like he doesn't coax someone off a cliff right away, he does things little by little. Always. Well, It's so interesting to me that here, the little things are mostly the biggest problems for people. People hear what we teach them, they believe, they know it's true! They're willing to give up huge things in their lives, alcohol, porn, even living with someone. But the little thing that gets people.... tea. They don't get it. Why can't we drink tea, it's so not harmful... It's so weird that BECAUSE it's so little, it's what drags people down! It drives me nuts.

Also, since I think about you guys ALL the time, (and seriously, the more I experience, the more I know I SOOO lucked out getting parents and a family like mine! SOOO thankful! I love you!) and I know families are SUPPOSED to be a huge tool to bring people to the gospel... but here... I'll teach people about how the church loves families and how we know we can be with our families forever... but it's so hard when they respond with things like "I hate my parents" or "I don't like my family, I don't want to be with them forever" and they're DEAD serious... sooooo sad! Anyway, I'm so thankful I can be with mine forever. What can I say. My family freaking ROCKS DEATH! written March 13, 2008