A david archuleta christmas

We should probably start mixing up our music choices, but I'm not even tired of it yet. It's getting cold here. You'd think that Russians would be used to cold, but actually as soon as it's a little crisp outside they bundle up in layers and layers and get after me if I forget tights. I love this fall weather so much! The wind and the dead-leaf smell and freezing hands and ears. Actually that sounds pretty unappealing, but I enjoy it. And coming inside and drinking hot chocolate is a straight-up miracle. Actually I've been burning my tongue a lot this week on hot beverages. Be careful, friends!

One of our investigators, Zulya, was baptized this week! I don't know if I've ever mentioned her by name, but we've been teaching her for about a month and a half, and she has a young daughter who is disastrously energetic and reminds me of my nieces so much. I'm happy and excited for her! 

Otherwise this week wasn't terribly eventful, probably because almost every plan we had (fortunately not including the baptism) fell through. Also people like to make vague plans and then never answer the phone, and I can't even be too mad because I was the worst at answering the phone before I came here. So I'm getting what's coming to me. In a heightened attempt to look older than twelve I acquired some lipstick, which goes against my every flute-player instinct. I'm also pretty sure it doesn't actually make me look older. Oh well. Language problems, we were talking to an old lady and she was dressed pretty fancy. So I tell her "You're a very stylish woman". "Really?" she asks, "why do you say that?" Well, turns out I forgot to pronounce a letter and told her she was a very powerful woman. Rookie mistake. That woman also gave us an Ikea magazine, and now I have my heart set on going to Ikea one of these p-days. Oh and there was one night we were running all around looking for an address and we met a random cool woman who happened to live in the same apartment building we were looking for, so she led us there. And popped into a store on the way and bought us kitkats. I'm convinced that 1) people here are some of the nicest people and 2) kitkats here are about thirty thousand times better than in America. They are so delicious. 

Last Monday we went and walked around the Kremlin with some cool members. There was a lot more picture-taking than I was mentally prepared for. We've been to the Kremlin before, but this time we went and looked around in the mosque in the middle, which you can do for free! You just have to cover your head if you're a woman, of course. But apparently even in there photographs were totally permitted. It was such a beautiful, peaceful building that I felt kind of weird taking pictures inside, but I eventually abandoned my conscience because of peer pressure. Dreadful.

I tried some pretty dang tasty street food called shaurma, hang on while I try to get that from my companion. Ah, beautiful, enjoy that picture. Yes, that is the ikea magazine. No, we didn't read it, we just looked at the pictures.

I'm sure General Conference was great and I'm going to encourage you all to watch it if you haven't yet. Then I'm going to try to take my own advice before next week.

I love you all! Remember that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing, and you're way more valuable than many sparrows. I also want to challenge you all do do things more deliberately this week. Think about why you're doing the things you're doing and focus on the purpose instead of just going through the motions. Because I know I'm trying to work on that too, and it'll make things better, I promise!

Sister Nielsen

I am becoming a weather expert

Ah, the unforeseen benefits of trying to talk to everyone. They call the period of warm weather in early fall бабы лето, or something that sounds vaguely like that- "women's summer", it means. Because back in the day the women would work all summer harvesting potatoes or whatever, and once fall started and their work was done, the weather would turn warm again for a week or two and the women would have their summer. 

It's super weird how all our plans fall through all the time but we still do tons.

This week was normal, no lasting health issues for anyone at all. 

Have I talked about Sveta? Actually, seeing how weird her name looks in English is telling me I definitely haven't. Sveta's cool. About a month ago, we were getting ready for splits, and we like to actually have appointments and things then. So I was flipping through our area book with the phone and decided to call this girl off a former investigator sheet. I did, and I had absolutely no clue what she's saying to me. This is why I hate phone calls, because understanding is about ten times worse. But instead of her getting frustrated and hanging up (reason №2 I don't like phone calls), I hear "It's okay, you can speak English". What? We set up a meeting, which was good, and she's been coming to church since then. She speaks English frighteningly well and has pretty much achieved older-sister status in my head. Also she has a new car, which I have ridden in and it is sweet. We haven't met a ton, though, because she's been way busy with her job, and because in the past she'd made it pretty clear that she didn't want to talk about our church.  But last week at church she said we should call her and meet this week, so on Saturday we met and went for a walk around the Kremlin, which somehow led to her telling us about how she's been seeing God's hand in her life since she started coming to church, and she finally feels like now is when she should be baptized. What? So that's cool, and we did absolutely nothing to make that happen. It's funny how that is. We're a little useless, but we're here, and we try to pop into peoples' lives at the appropriate times for us to help them out.

I went knocking for my first time! I thought it was going to be absolutely terrifying, but it was actually about the same as talking to people outside. 

It's also funny when it takes you way longer than you planned to go find the possible address of someone you're tracking down, because things keep coming up to prevent you from going straight there. And then you finally get there and the person you're looking for isn't there but shows up a minute or so later. It's like "oh, that's why this had to take so long".

This one woman we're teaching always has two kids in tow- her toddler and a disabled girl she looks after. It's super distracting for her on lessons, and it's hard for us to do our job, too. So for one lesson this week I was entrusted with distracting them. This is 380% harder because I'm not allowed to hold children. It might have made more sense to have the member who was at the lesson distract them, but she's starting her mission papers this week and is therefore really more interested in teaching. Well, I know, and many of you know how, disastrously bad I am at dealing with children. By some miracle though I managed to make those kids my minions. Still a mystery to me. I have no idea how the lesson went, though.

Sister Wilson's been trying to have me take the lead on lessons, which is kind of necessary. If I don't, I don't have the speed or the Russian ability to actually say anything at all. It doesn't always happen, though, as in the above paragraph. But we try.

Last week we spent the rest of our P-day with Alsu. That's another name that looks weird in English. Alsu is, in fact, the aunt of the Sveta I just talked about. Although Alsu was baptized last summer, we actually met her after we met Sveta because Alsu doesn't show up for church much. She's 70 years old, and a professor of English. She even corrects our pronunciation of English words. It's pretty funny. She's known a lot of missionaries, and she refers to us all by our first names. For example "I took Connor and Matthew out for lunch not long ago" and it takes us a second to realize she's talking about the elders. So to her, I'm Rosa (or Rosichka), and it's really odd to be addressed such. She showed us around a walking street in Kazan that's based on the architecture of St. Petersburg (fake bridges!), and took us into a tiny fake village that's nestled in between buildings in the middle of the city (real bridges). So that's what my picture is.

I love you all! I hope you are having great weeks and eating good food and making cool friends.

Sister Nielsen

Kazan is the sports capital of Russia

The FINA (or something. I think. It was big and official) world cup was here this summer, so a lot of people ask us if we're volunteers with the swimming thing, even though it ended almost a month ago. And the FIFA world cup is going to be here in three years, so this city is nice and it's just getting nicer. And I'm so glad it is, because that means it's the most up-to-date city in our mission. Which means it has the best hospitals in our mission. Yeah that's right, you guessed it, we got to spend a night in the hospital. Also there are T-shirts aplenty here that say "Kazan- sports capital of Russia", so if anyone wants one let me know...

Okay, before anyone panics, I am in perfect health. I should probably take Sister Wilson's mom off my email list for this week. All right, done. I just don't want to scare her any more than she probably already is. A little over a week ago my companion woke up in the middle of the night with pain in her chest. She talked to a doctor over the phone and took the medicine he recommended, and tried to ignore it. But it kept getting worse. So on Tuesday we went to a polyclinic in Kazan center, and it was so nice. And weird. Walking into it felt like walking into America. It turns out doctors aren't super patient for people who don't fluently know their language, and with doctors you run into a lot of unusual vocabulary, so we were there for a whole evening, being passed from office to office, it felt like. I tried not to laugh in a nurse's face when she asked me if I could come help my friend because "she understands badly". I just stared and managed to say "I'm worse". That was funny. We had to come back to the clinic on Friday for Sister Wilson to have a camera shoved down her throat. That was unpleasant enough to watch, I can't imagine how it must have felt. I didn't even get any pictures of it, to her disappointment. After that they sat her down and told her she had two ulcers in her esophagus, and one of them was pretty big and it was bleeding. They told us they'd called an ambulance and we were going to the hospital.

The hospital was interesting. They took Sister Wilson and started poking and prodding her, and I had some conversations with people, including a random lady with terrifyingly perfect English. And then they told Sister Wilson that she had to stay in the hospital at least until Monday. The most awkward part was definitely trying to explain to the doctors that I couldn't just go home, that I had to stay at the hospital too. That made absolutely no sense to them. But we got it worked out and they took us up to the ward. The three people already in there were thrilled to see us. They must have been so bored. They laid Sister Wilson down and stuck an IV in her and I busied myself getting acquainted with the woman on my other side. Lutzia is about 85 and and absolute angel- we have an invitation to come over to her house when she gets out of the hospital. I'm so glad we were in there with her. The ward started to fill up as the day wore on, so there were a couple girls in there with appendicitis, and and a few middle-aged women with other stomach problems. I just sat on my bed (I got a bed!) and read my dictionary like a novel. Because we had no idea we were going to the hospital, we weren't super well-equipped. During visiting hours we got an awesome church member to bring us a few things we needed, toothbrushes, dishes, pajamas, etc. We had about the least restful night you can imagine, there was a lot going on in that ward overnight, and in the morning the American mission doctor who lives in Moscow called and told us to get out of there. The nurses and doctors all thought we were crazy for leaving. Maybe we were. I know Sister Wilson missed it when we left.

I probably haven't talked about food enough this letter- Russian hospital food isn't bad! It probably wouldn't fly in America, but that's just because Americans don't like their oatmeal with salt and butter.

So that was the hospital. Both before we stayed there and after we had some days where we stayed inside a lot more than usual, on the orders of our mission president and doctor. So our kitchen is now pristine (it was actually way good that we had time to clean that, after an unfortunate incident involving beet juice), and our area book is looking great, and I am pretty bored. It's hard to find effective things to do! We made two pans of brownies...

Sister Wilson is definitely on the recovery side of things now, though. Which is so good. I think we'll be pretty busy in the coming weeks too, partly because we postponed a bunch of appointments this week. 

Also the other people in the hospital were SO NICE and it got me thinking. Jesus told us to feed his sheep. And I'm definitely a believer that God puts us in places so that we can meet and help specific people. We're around people to help them and build them up! Take care of people! You can all do that. Okay?

I love you all! You are the coolest! (Sorry I didn't take any pictures this week. But I have a goal to improve!)

Sister Nielsen

PS. also I don't know if I told anyone this anywhere but sister wilson and I are staying together in kazan this cycle. and probably next cycle too! so she'll die here, most likely. it's a good place to die

The biggest theme this week was probably baking

I promise we do real work, but other things happen too. The other week at the end of district meeting we asked the elders if there was anything we could do for them. They both hesitate for a second, and then shake their heads no and pretend to busy themselves with packing up their bags. We pry a bit more and it turns out they were hiding a secret desire for pumpkin bread and poppyseed muffins. Okay, we can work with that. So this week we were walking home through the outdoor market we live by and saw an old lady selling pumpkin! Perfect. We spent a dinner one day and some of our time before bed making a mess in the kitchen. It was everything we dreamed except that the only oil we had on hand was sunflower oil, so what we made were more like sunflower chocolate chip muffins. They still smell like pumpkin though so it's weirdly deceptive.

Also old ladies are always trying to give us bags of apples, and Sister Wilson started in talking about caramel apples. What? No. Who has time to make caramel apples? Not us, that's for sure. But she wouldn't let it drop and a couple of meal-times later we ended up with caramel/white chocolate/cinnamon apples. Which are among the most delicious things I've eaten in months. I'm glad she was persistent about it.

But have I told you about the most wonderful thing I've eaten? Friends and colleagues, I reveal to you the...

nutella and sour cream sandwich!

I'm serious. I would never have guessed how well those go together. You can hate, you also have to try it.

I guess I believe in a lot of weird-sounding things that are true.

The other day I was talking to a girl on the street car and when she told me where she lived I actually knew what street it was. I guess that means I'm for real settling in here. Also recently I've been having lot of good conversations on public transportation, which is encouraging. Actually it is possibly because it is so obvious that I can't speak Russian. One question I really enjoy asking is if people have favorite tourist attractions. Not because I'll actually find out any cool ones, because if they tell me the name of a museum I'm not going to be able to repeat it (much less find it), but because the word for "tourist attractions" is eight syllables long and kind of a mouthful. I can say it on a good day, but I usually trip over it and break off in frustration. It makes people about 80% friendlier towards me, for whatever reason. So then I try to give them a Book of Mormon, invite them to church, and send them on their merry way.

A week ago we were outside and I walked up to an older lady. "Hi! Can I give you...(I fumble and nearly drop my Book of Mormon) ...something..." Well, turns out she loves this sort of thing, so we sent her off with all sorts of reading material and we set up a meeting for the same place the next day. And she actually came! When we walked up she started in. First, she wanted to take us into the neighboring elementary school to give a speech to the kids about American culture. That's pretty not-allowed here. Second, she wanted to give us massages, because she knows how stressful our life must be. Third, she wanted to take us to a mosque... and on and on. She's an interesting woman. But she also wants to meet with us and hear all about our church, and she came on Sunday and liked it. We'll see where that goes.

Everyone in all the eastern Europe missions has this schedule where we wake up and run out the door right away to go talk to people on the streets for an hour or two before coming back and eating breakfast and getting ready. At first I was skeptical, but now I have no idea how I would wake up properly without having to pretend to be cheerful in the morning as we distract people on their way to work. It's way great.

We're not supposed to have meal appointments with members, and I can see why. We would never get anything done. Also it takes at least half an hour on the bus to get to most peoples' houses. However, they love to feed us, so when we teach new convert lessons or have investigators at an activity we have to be really careful. The other night we were given a feast before a lesson, and it was explained to me that the food we were eating is normally eaten on birthdays or New Year's. "Oh. Is today a holiday?" I ask. "Well, not really... but, uh, Elder Northrup is going home soon." Okay. They love their food. And I love food too, so it works out. Wow, food comes up a lot in this letter. And our district leader is in fact going home in a week, at transfers. I'll probably stay in Kazan, so it shouldn't be too exciting otherwise.

Actually one holiday that did happen this week was September first, the first day of school. Zillions of kids running around in suits and backpacks holding flowers. I still don't know if the flowers were for the students or for the teachers. Maybe both. We're across the street from a school so we were hearing music booming from there all morning.

There's a lot of good stuff going on. I love you all!

Sister Nielsen

alone time

I may or may not have gotten separated from my companion on the metro. That was stupid. The metro in Kazan is only one line, so it's not like you can get lost or anything, and it's absolutely gorgeous. The two stops in center have huge mosaics all over the walls and ceilings, and some random man we met down there the other week told us that it was the most expensive metro in the world to construct. I'm not sure I believe that, because it's just one track with ten stops, but it is so pretty. There's a mosaic on the ceiling of one stop that's a dragon, and it's sweet. Anyway, we walked into the metro and heard the train coming, so we ran. And then got there and hesitated for half a second, and I jumped on the train and turned around to find closed doors and, through the glass, Sister Wilson's face with eyes as wide as my own. So I rode to our stop and waited for the next couple trains, and then tried to borrow someone's phone (without success... I realized I didn't know how to say "borrow", and I'd left my tiny dictionary at home. And phones don't work too well in the metro anyway), and then I just walked home. I got there about five minutes before my companion showed up. So that was unexpected, but also not all that exciting. Just kind of funny. All in all, not our most productive afternoon. I don't recommend it.

Exchanges were this week! That meant the other two sisters in our zone who live in Tolliatti came up and slept in our living room for three nights,and on Tuesday and Wednesday I was with different companions. That also meant a lot of eating, oh dear. We made so many crepes, and there's a certain practice that involves drinking milk through cookies. And you can't stop. Sister Twede has been out longer than any other sister here, and she is so competent. I learned a lot from her, and we gave out probably four times as many Books of Mormon than we usually do. It was impressive. I also had my first genuine plov, which was so delicious I'm getting hungry thinking about it now. 

More entertaining was spending a day with Sister Hullinger, who was in the MTC with me, so we both don't speak Russian and it's glorious. But people are actually really surprisingly nice, possibly because we're so obviously drowning in the language. We also taught a second lesson to one of our investigators, which was interesting. Not actually all that different from being in the MTC again. So she understood everything we said, but we didn't really know what her questions were exactly. Add that confusion to screaming children, and you have our lesson. That's why it's good that we had a church member there- Liza's 24 and just generally awesome. So we set a baptismal date! At least, I'm pretty sure we did.

We went to the Kremlin last week, and just walked around because we weren't sure what to even do. It's huge and pretty. There are tours and museums and stuff, so we'll have to figure that out. We also spend more time than I ever expected teaching Russians how to play Uno. So only twice, but unexpected. English club attracts an interesting group.

So many cool things happen if you just make a little effort. Also, way cool things happen when people just try to make other people happy. Good stuff. Go do something scary and nice, okay? I love you all, and hope you're eating fewer sweets than I've been lately!

Love,

Sister Nielsen

My hours are dying

I have really bad luck with watches and clocks. The watches I brought with me have all met untimely (heh heh) deaths and I accidentally murdered a clock in the branch building with a mop handle the other day. So I don't often know what time it is, either. It's bad.

Behold, the one photo I've taken since coming to Russia. Actually, I didn't even take it. Although we're going to the Kazan Kremlin today so there might be more next week.

I think these letters are going to get progressively shorter the more used I get to Russia. I can't even think right now of what to say. Also this last week went SO fast. Will they all be like that?

It suddenly turned cold in the last week or so, so that means there were about two days that actually were cold, and a lot of days that everyone seemed to think were cold but really weren't. You don't need a coat if it's 65 degrees out and sunny. But when it was actually cold it was enough to make me, the prepared soul who came to Russia without a jacket, need to go to a mall. Malls are the weirdest things as a missionary. Half of you wants to go touch all the clothes and buy things you won't be wearing for 18 months, and the other half of you knows how much time you can waste in there and wants out. Also while we were there we had to go to a store that was basically Russian walmart. Which was cool. But all in all just weird. I just tried not to be distracted by all the scarves and sneakers, for those are my true weakness. We also ended up enlisting the help of two of the young women in our branch, Yana and Luba, who are way cool and, as normal teenage girls, were a valuable resource in knowing where to buy a cheap but still useful jacket. They're 18 and 17 and trying to decide if they should serve missions, and we have good conversations.

Another result of the weather is that we ask pretty much everyone about it. Most people want to tell us about how it's a cold August this year even if they don't want to come to church or read the Book of Mormon, so it works out.

I want to eat everything all the time. I can't tell if that's normal for me or a result of being a missionary. We finally got a "Samara Mission Official Cookbook" for our apartment, I gather that a senior couple a few years ago put it together. I love cookbooks! On a related note, one morning for exercise we made borscht... whoops. It was raining, okay? My inevitable weight gain might as well happen now, right?

Unexpected things happen. We were waiting for a bus, and asked this random girl how often the 44th bus came by that stop. She looks something up in her phone and then tells us she's going to drive us to another bus stop. Okay. So we get in her car. Then she's all "hey, I don't really have anything to do right now" and just drove us straight to our appointment, which took probably 25 or 30 minutes to get to by car. Uh. Thanks! Also it turns out the place we were trying to go was pretty remote (there were actual houses there. Not apartments. What) and I don't think we ever would have found it on our own. Or one day we were trying to get somewhere when an older woman calls out to us. We turn back in slight confusion and she orders us to open her bags and starts shoving apples inside them. I think she'd just gotten back from her dacha. So our bags were pretty heavy that night. It was almost a Snow White moment. Or there's this one girl we ran into four days in a row in random places all over Kazan. What are the odds of that? Actually, maybe probability has nothing to do with it. After the third time I felt about 98% sure we would run into her again, and of course we did.

That is an interesting part of missionary work, and it's been interesting to see what that has to do with unity in our companionship. Like when sister Wilson and I don't know what to do, so we stop and pray, and then we both independently of each other know we're supposed to go left or teach about something specific. It's cool.

But yeah, we talk to a lot of people, and try to teach a lot of people, and actually have people who actually want to talk to or be taught by us, so that's cool. There is so extremely much to learn and simultaneously a lot of time and no time. God knows everything and the best way to do things is through the guidance of the Spirit. There's so much more to that than just saying it, of course. You all are way cool! Do good things!

tons of love,

Sister Nielsen

week 2 in russia, or I'm glad I can rely on my overly readable face to help me through the language barrier

I have a problem, and the problem is that I look like I'm about twelve (vaguely related is that the words for "twelve" and "nineteen" sound fairly similar in Russian, especially when I'm trying to follow the conversation and then realize someone just asked how old I am and I think "oh right I have to answer" and then trip over my words. fun). If anyone wants to give me advice on looking older, let me know.

I know I promised photos, but apparently I lied. Sorry about that. We normally email from the branch building, which is extremely convenient, but the internet there wasn't working, so now we're in a very dimly lit internet cafe. I don't know if I even could attach photos on here even if I had taken any, and if I read enough Russian to understand what's up with this computer. P-day is busy, and we still need to go find things like brooms and pillows and dishes.

I'm trying to remember what happened this week so while I'm thinking about that I'll write whatever comes to my head.

I got used to eating things like kasha+salt+mayo really fast, and it's surprisingly good (kasha is I think just wheat that's been broken up that you boil in water until soft). Also kefir or sour cream on everything (shoutout to Annemieke, the only person that I know of in America who eats kefir. You're cool! Also not American, that might explain it). And lots of granola. Also they put hazelnuts in a lot of things, including snickers, which was a good choice. There is a lot of different candy. And we try a lot of it. Which might be to my eventual downfall. Speaking of downfalls, I tripped in the crosswalk of a major street the other morning when we were running, and now kneeling is more painful than usual. I'm a very coordinated person, yes. Also my favorite graffiti is the stuff in English. You have to wonder how they choose it. I saw "skype" written on the side of a bridge the other day. what does it mean? I also still can't say what I want to say half the time, but I now know how to say such things as "in exchange for two" (useful when paying for bus tickets) and something that means something like "no way!" or "you don't say!". I actually have no idea what it means, but we say it to old people when they tell us their age, and they appreciate it.

Also sister Wilson is trying to get me over my fear of talking on the phone. So far it's not working.

I haven't said much about sister Wilson, probably. What do you want to hear? She has a lot of brothers and basically is Rapunzel. It's great.

We've been having problems with men, specifically men who are interested in sister Wilson and not much else. They can be very persistent. Hence why we don't talk to a lot of men. Also we try to pass them off to the elders, but this week they were way busy with upcoming baptisms, so we eventually ended up teaching a lesson to the boy we met the other week, did I mention him? We ran into him contacting early last Sunday morning, invited him to church, and then he actually came. Actually, I probably didn't say, when we first met him, sister Wilson promised him if he'd come to church he'd find a job in the next week, and of course he did. That might have blown his mind a little. But he came to church and we only met him the one time. Does that actually happen? I thought that was a myth. Anyway, it's a good thing he's extremely normal and so far not creepy at all. Mostly he's just extremely interested in what we're about and quite honest with us, which is entertaining. He's trying to get rid of all the addictive/destructive things in his life, which means right now he has no life. So he was quite happy to come to the baptism on Saturday and church again on Sunday. The other people that we regularly meet with have been meeting with missionaries for years and years, and it's really rather frustrating, but in the last couple days we got a bunch of calls from random people we met in the street or from the area book who are interested in meeting with us. So hopefully we'll start doing more things. 

Oh, we had zone conference, and that was all the way in Tolliatti. A couple of six-hour bus rides and staying in the Tolliatti sister's apartment. Which was hot and humid and terrible for sight and sound, but also really fun. One of those sisters is sister Hullinger, who was in the MTC with me, and on the second night we were there we went on splits, and she and I contacted together. It was great. We didn't really understand what people were saying to us, so it was all the more fun. 

"here, take this pamphlet. we just recently moved here!"

"what is this propaganda? I'm Russian Orthodox, I don't need this"

"what a cute grand-daughter, okay bye"

Actually that's how most contacting goes now I think of it, it would be like that whether we knew Russian or not. The biggest difference is that we don't understand when they tell us to go away, so they can't get rid of us. Heh heh.

Anyway zone conference was great, and my cousin elder Hemrick was in fact there, and no I would not have recognized him without a tag. We probably should have taken a photo to show Granny or something, but who does that? People who plan well, that's who.

Wednesday we had English club, with more people than I expected, at least. It was great, though I doubt anyone actually learned anything. That's actually the most awkward thing about not speaking much Russian, is that a lot of them switch into English when I don't understand, and then I still don't understand them. Or actually, I understand the words they say, in both languages, but I have no idea what they're getting at. That's the real problem. Oh well.

And two of the people the elders were teaching were baptized on Saturday, and that was great. There were a lot of people, it was packed, and we provided sandwiches (sausage + cheese + bread. These people are easily satisfied) and the elders said they would bake (that's a beautiful dream) and unsurprisingly went out and bought cookies. Ahhh, it was a good time. 

I'm trying to leaf through my journal to figure out what else we did this week, but it's dark in here and I wrote small.

So yeah. Russia is great. Lots of things to say that I forgot, probably. Oh well. You all are great. It sometimes surprises me more than it should how much God loves us and how well he knows us. He really does have a plan for everything. Wow. Remember Jesus loves you too! Do good things!

I wish you lots of love and fewer mosquito bites than I have,

Sister Nielsen