go around the long way

There's not a ton to report. The weeks are flying.

We had the sisters from volzhskiy area here on splits this week and it was great. For reference, volzhskiy is basically the city center, and zavodskoy is anything south or west of that. Our apartments are actually really close together, so we actually kind of had real splits, as in we worked in both our areas. That's pretty unusual here.

It meant I got to work with Sister Hullinger! We came out together and have been on splits a lot, except not since Kazan. We did stuff. Ran around, talked to everyone, exceeded our goals for ice cream consumption (go us!). Living the dream.

We've knocked into a few cool interested people lately, still it's hard to convince them to meet with us. Knocking definitely brings out my most awkward, fidgety side, and sister Hines laughs at me.

Sister Hines laughs at me too much. Why can't I have a companion who takes me seriously? I am a very serious person. She laughs when members try to set me up with other missionaries, she dragged me to the gym to day and laughed at me when I tried to lift something... 

Oh yeah, we finally made it to the gym today. Sister Hines was in her element. I mostly just stood there as she repetitively picked up heavy things. I don't have any pictures, but I do have a picture from when we found a punching bag in the stairwell of a building we were knocking. 

I'm including a picture of my latest food adventure. I'll have you know that that was NOT a milk shake. It was basically bad apple soda.

Um, I bought new shoes? I think I'm reaching new lows in boringness.

I have to hand it to sister Hines, though, because we've been contacting a LOT. I mean, we haven't had a member-present lesson (that didn't fall through) in... a long time. I feel like normally that would start to get me down after this long, but everything's fine. I don't find contacting for the entire day for weeks on end daunting like I would have a few transfer cycles ago. It's good. Everything's good. 

Also for the last week or so people have been weirdly nicer? As a rule, of course, none are interested in the gospel, but at least some of them have been stopping to talk to us. It's probably all the prayer.

Okay I love you. Be good, work hard, don't waste time, do what makes you happy.

Sister Nielsen

my trusty proselyting shoes are dying. these were only like 1,200 #babushkastatus