chocolate is a good treatment to improve your mood

Or so we we are told when one of our investigators hands us chocolate.

Hi! I finally succeeded in taking and attaching photos, so I should probably talk about them too. Assuming these pictures send and are what I think they are. Good luck.

We went to Toliatti, as promised! We also go there again tomorrow, which is a bit excessive, but we're supposed to. I'll probably take some sleeping pills for the bus. No shame.​ But we did splits with the sisters and it was rad. It snowed pretty much the whole time, and we got lost an embarrassing amount. It took us three bus rides to get home one morning because we kept passing our stop (the windows were foggy, okay). That should be a picture of me and sister Thomas by a sign (pay no mind to the pub behind us) that we found between meeting a nice woman who gave us the wrong directions to the bus station and actually finding the bus station. So splits was nice, and effectively used up half our week.

One of my accomplishments of the week was eating meat jello! It's called holodets or something that I cannot spell in any language. You all should know that it is neither as bad as some Americans led me to believe nor as good as some Russians tried to convince me it is. I ate one of my companion's portions so I will have very strong bones, apparently. I took a picture! That's all pretty Russian food, so maybe it's interesting. I hope so.

That last picture is where it gets interesting. I'll try to explain. Remember Aleksei, our physicist historian friend? He wrote that out for us. I'll try to translate it, but I don't think it would make sense even in English. We show up at his apartment the other night for a lesson, and he tells us he wants to show us something interesting he discovered. All right. Here's how it went:

"I was looking you guys up on the internet and I found something really interesting..."

"yesssss...."

"You were telling me about this Joseph Smith guy, and I found on the internet that he predicted the Second Coming would be in 1891"

(we spend about 10 minutes trying to explain that we believe that no one knows when the Second Coming will be except for God, although I'm assuming what he read had something to do with D+C 130, and he scrolls all over wikipedia looking for where he found it)

finally:

"So yeah, I thought it was really cool that he predicted it would be in 1891, because that's when I predicted it would be too."

WHAT

So basically what's on the sheet of paper is 1. when the early Roman Catholic church though the Second Coming would be, 2. the fall of the Roman Empire, 3. The fall of queens authority in Great Britain (I don't know history... the revolution thing that involved Oliver Cromwell or something). 4. Some mostly meaningless math, and- the years 1891 (not the second coming), 1917 (revolutions in Russia), and 1929 (the beginning of the great depression).

Or something. This man uses a lot of words that aren't in my dictionary. He also predicts the outcome of elections, here and in America.

So I don't know what the Roman empire or Britain or the great depression have to do with anything, but I do know that it's a miracle I understood anything on that lesson. We had a pretty smooth transition into faith, somehow. At the end of the lesson he offered to write me out a whole scroll of paper with his signature method of predicting which days will be my up days and down days throughout my life based on only my birthday. I'm actually pretty excited, although I have no faith that it will be accurate at all. ("wait, how long will that take you?" "an hour, maybe two" what.)

If you didn't get anything I tried to explain for the last three paragraphs, don't worry. I

didn't either. 

Anyway, things are going well, trio life is as great as ever, and I'm pretty sure I want to stay in Kazan for a long time. There's still so much of our area I've barely been in, and I'm only just starting to find out who all the people on the branch list are (other than those who come to church). Kazan is great.

I've dumped pretty much all the thoughts in my head into this email. What else: Captain Moroni is hilarious and a role model for sass, but that's not new., Write down your personal revelation, and also I'm really out of shape.

Seriously. I did like ten squats and now I can't walk up stairs.

I love you all! You are awesome. Have the best week!

Sister Nielsen

We ate at least eight bags of muesli this week

This has probably been the busiest week I've spent in Russia. That's a good thing, but we're just not too used to it. This area is doing well! It's sweet.

Cool stuff is going on all over the mission actually. Next week Saratov is getting a stake! It'll be the third stake in Russia, and I'm pretty stoked. Although I've never been to Saratov. It's down south and I've been (as you know) up in Kazan since I got here. But Sister Wilson served down there for about a year. I think she wanted to somehow go down and be there when they organized it, but it's about a day and a half's journey for a nephite, so no.

There's been actual snowfall, with snow staying on the ground. Sometimes when I talk to people they ask me if I've ever seen snow before. What, does Russia have a monopoly on snow? Although I've discovered that the easiest way to be funny in Russian is to pretend to be baby about the cold. So I milk it. I make jokes about not living through the winter or living in a freezer, and people think I'm funny. Have you ever seen snow before? Yeah, in movies. Hahahaha. I crack myself up. It's not very freezing yet, happily.

There were a couple of holidays this week, which meant we had double encounters with drunk men. Good stuff. Did I mention Sister Wilson carries mace? That stuff comes in handy. Now, the mission's official policy on drunk people is "run", but sometimes they walk into the branch building when you're there with a missionary-aged recent convert right before English club and start yelling you in a mixture of Russian and German, so you don't get around to running. And then the elders turn up and he decides to fight them, so you just spray 'em in the face. The man, not the elders. I need to get me some kind of spray or something, probably. That was the second and much more dramatic of the encounters, the first one just followed us around outside until a random bystander pepper-sprayed him. Thank you Russia for solidifying my resolve to not drink alcohol.

A random former investigator we called agreed to meet with us, and she has the best English of any Russian I've ever met. I don't know why that's noteworthy enough to make it in here, but I was pretty impressed. She's studying to be an interpreter, that's why. She says things like "it's no biggie". She wasn't super interested in what we had to say at first, but miracle lesson and I guess we'll see now? I also found in her a fellow Fall Out Boy fan. Fate. What's the most useful thing I did before my mission that prepared me for what lay ahead? Listen to fall out boy. (That is a joke, a JOKE, read your scriptures, kids)

But yeah, this week was good. We ran around a lot and taught a lot of lessons. Okay, maybe not a lot by some standards, but our area is the north half of the city and it takes us ages to get everywhere on the bus. It's so cool to me how the stuff we teach, the stuff missionaries teach, we teach to everyone. We teach the same five lessons to everyone. We teach it to kids, we teach it to old historian-physicists. We can teach it with fun object lessons and candy bribes, or we can pick apart every detail to highlight the logic of it. And it seriously does apply to everyone. Every person. It blows my mind just a little. Sometimes it's fun opening people up and figuring out which thing they need. Every person. Even the people who are happy in their life or aren't interested in anything, if you really talk to them, needs something we teach. It's amazing.

Remember to check back for next week's episode: Toliatti Again. Will the MTC-reunion atmosphere kill our productivity?! Will we beat our cereal record?! Will Sister Wilson ever get trunky?! Don't miss it!!

Okay that's all. I love you all! Have a wonderful week. Do things you haven't done before! Don't get in situations where anyone has to be maced! 

Sister Nielsen

strength in numbers

Good news, guys- I've finally mastered the art of small talk! Well, maybe "master" is too generous a word, but I've come a loooong way. I'm satisfied with my progress. So the event of events this week is that I had a visa trip. This meant we spent all Tuesday on a bus to Samara, allWednesday doing the fly-to-Latvia-fly-back thing, and then we had to come back to Kazan. So probably not our most productive week. 

I got to practice all the conversation-having on planes. On one flight I was sitting next to this cool Latvian businessman who lost attention any time I brought up the gospel. In order to not feel like I'd given up on him I had to keep talking the entire flight, which means now I know a lot about the Latvian economy. It's mostly boring but apparently there are a lot of beavers in Latvia, and they shipped some of  them down to the Netherlands because in the Netherlands they don't have enough and need them for some reason. He told me exactly why, but I forgot. Anyway, that conversation was in English, which is almost worse, because then I can't use a language barrier as my excuse for being awkward. Another plane conversation was in English, but that woman was actually Russian. She wanted to practice English with me and I also couldn't talk about the gospel with her because she would just ask me an unrelated question ("what sports do you play?") whenever the me-being-a-missionary thing came up. It was actually pretty funny.

Actually the funnest way to start conversations I got from Sister Wilson- you write a verb in your planner and then ask people on the bus what it means. They can get pretty into it. I had two women trying to explain the word "to limit" to me the other night.

So yeah. Conversations are exhausting and layovers are exhausting. My next visa trip will probably be a bus to Kazakhstan, which should be a lot more quick and painless, so that's something to look forward to. I wish I could say that everyone survived this trip, but we had to leave two elders in the airport in Moscow because one of them lost his document that proved that he came into the country legally. But the rest of the van-full of us made it back whole, so that's good.

Oh, so we're in a trio! Me and still Sister Wilson and now Sister Thomas! But I told you all that. So far it's been fantastic. It's made it way easier to talk to strangers, for some reason. Also, every activity we do is 150% more fun. Both of my companions have decided to go off sweets (and there are some other restricted substances but I forget) for the month of November. I've resisted, because I don't like to be controlled. Or because I like sweets. Anyway, it looks like I'll be reaping the rewards of being the only companion that can eat the food people give us.

Last night we went knocking and ran into the most interesting man. We talked to him for long enough in his door way and he ended up inviting us in (and we could go in, because we're in a trio). His apartment was full of maps and charts and scrolls and it took me a second but then I realized that all of it was chemistry and physics and history and philosophy. There was a table in his living room covered in papers that I couldn't read. It all kind of reminded me of Indiana Jones' dad's study. If I remember it properly. Anyway, we taught the Restoration to a mad scientist named Aleksei and he was pretty receptive and invited us back. I think he liked us because I told him I studied chemistry for two years at university. So that was really cool and also how I found out that I can understand people when they talk in Russian about the big bang and gravity. There was also a lot we didn't understand (something that happened in the seventies that involved a word I definitely don't know), but he was pretty patient with us. I'm guessing he's probably used to Russian-speakers not understanding him. But I have a feeling that our discussion would have been fascinating to me in English. He gave us copies of a book he wrote. I can't read it, for a couple of reasons, but I'm sure it's great.

That's definitely not everything, but I don't want to bore you. I hope you had an excellent Halloween and I love you all! My general advice for you all this week is to realize or rerealize that every person you ever meet is unique and super awesome. It can make you tired, but it's awesome to get to know them, because you can always find out what you need to say to help them. Have a great week.

Sister Nielsen 

Three times three

I've gotten to the point that when random people ask me how long I've been here, I say three months. It's all rounding, of course, but it's weird. Three isn't that many, and it also is. I'm staying here for a third transfer cycle. So is my companion. So, what changed, you ask? You guessed it, we're serving in a trio. Sister Thomas (she was with me in the mtc so there are pictures of her somewhere that I've sent) is coming up here! We're not together yet, first we have to take a bus down to Samara and Sister Thomas and I have to take a plane out of here and back in to renew our visas, and then we have to come back up here, so that will take the majority of this week.

So we haven't seen her yet and I have no idea how she feels about it- it's probably weird coming into a companionship that's already been together three months. Really weird. Well, I can't say that Sister Wilson and I know how to teach with a ton of unity anyway, so we'll all have something to work on.

The trio should only be for this transfer, as Sister Wilson goes home in December. Super weird. 

Hi people that wished me happy birthday! I'm going to try to get back to you, but I'm short on time. So, I love you all! Sister Wilson tried to use the "Sunday is Sister Nielsen's birthday" line to get our investigators in church, but it didn't work too well. Russians, from what I have seen, take birthdays at least twice as seriously as Americans do. For example, we have an eternal investigator named Lilia who we haven't been meeting with lately because she usually doesn't keep commitments, including the commitment of showing up to meetings we set up. Anyway, Lilia has the strange habit of showing up to church for about 15 minutes of gospel doctrine and then leaving again. I glimpsed her through a doorway and we went chasing after her to try to talk to her. Well, apparently the knowledge that it was my birthday wasn't enough to persuade her to stay, but it did persuade her to go and buy me a cake (it seems our lessons about the sabbath aren't sticking).

Anyway, people here are really awesome and kind, and I'm really grateful to them.

So yeah, I became older, but only by the same amount that I become older by every week.

But it's the same old same old here, trying to make activities start on time and not run two hours late, and trying to remind people that we're missionaries and not just two (soon to be three) blonde American girls who'll hang out with them.

On an extremely related note, this week I found myself in an art gallery with a less-active (there was a string quartet and it was sweet. But not where I wanted to be) and a overly long walk of the city with this cool young couple who're mostly interested in English. Sorry, friends.

As much as I wish I could actually speak Russian, I'm really glad I am American, because otherwise I'm pretty sure no one would ever talk to me. Not being Russian gives you something to talk about for long enough to talk about the gospel before they lose attention. I have concluded that I have too boring a personality to ever be able to do missionary work in America. All the respect to missionaries who serve in their home country.

I love you all and you are cool! We've been doing a paper airplane object lesson for the Plan of Salvation a lot lately. I like the Plan of Salvation and also partly I just like paper airplanes. Remember that following God's plan is the best way to live our lives. Have a great week!

Sister Nielsen

I finally got to watch The Testaments

Actually only about half. Some of the exciting side effects of having a companion whose leg is falling off.

That's an exaggeration, of course. Don't worry about Sister Wilson's leg. Too much. We didn't stay in all that much either, which is good, because we were barely in our area this week. We had a conference in Samara, which is 8-9 hours and a time zone away from us. We spent pretty much all of Wednesday and all of Friday traveling. 

How was that? Well, I'm more than a week behind in my journal still, so apparently not super productive bus rides. I also had some delightfully authentic Russian outhouse experiences. Literal holes in the ground! Sometimes if they're luxurious they have doors, but don't expect the doors to close.

Our conference was great, though. We heard from a member of our area presidency and from a counselor in the general young women's presidency. We talked a lot about faith, which I'm pretty sure we could talk about in every meeting and not run out of things to talk about. 

Another thing about the conference was that it involved two zones, so I was reunited with almost all of the missionaries I was with in the MTC (except one. poor sister Graham). It was super interesting because I kind of expected some of them to have changed, but everyone is exactly the same. Except they're in Russia. I guess I probably haven't changed in the last two months either. For example, here's a sample conversation with one of the elders (who won't be specified):

me: "How's your Russian?"

Elder __:"Better than yours!"

Ahh, classic. That's probably funnier to me than it is to any of you, but I hope you appreciate it anyway.

Don't worry, I dealt him a reasonable portion of sass later.

Also I don't know who's idea it was to house ten sisters in one apartment while we were down there, but it wasn't that brilliant.

I managed to break another watch moving around mattresses in said apartment. That brings my total number of wristwatch casualties to three. Actually, this one is still at least functioning sort of, but due to the smashed face and the tendency to randomly stop and start again, I've decided to retire it.

There were real live Americans in church yesterday! That weren't missionaries, I mean. A lawyer from Salt Lake City is a guest lecturer at one of the universities here, and he and his wife showed up! They were so American. It was weird. They absolutely loved our branch despite not understanding anything.

We actually do have a pretty sweet branch up here. If I'm out of here next week (One of us is almost definitely, so we'll see who it is on saturday) I'm sure going to miss it. 

Last night we started talking to a random woman who spontaneously invited us over to her house to have tea with her daughters. That's pretty unusual for here. She wanted us to share a spiritual thought (good, because we were going to anyway). We had a sweet chat about God and his plan for us. He really does have a plan for us. He knows what we're going to do and who we're going to run into. Think about God's plan more often and think about how you can rely on Him more. Because it's entirely worth it.

I love you all and hope your personal study of the scriptures is going well. Also I hope your lives are going well, but if your scripture study isn't you should take this as your cue to re-evaluate it. Have a great week!

Sister Nielsen

first snow

and second, and third, and...

We skipped dinner one day to go buy me some boots, and I'm pretty glad we did, because it's been snowing a couple times every day since thursday and I still have both my feet! Ah, Russia.

I think I'm a little late to the General Conference party, but we watched it yesterday and Saturday and it was great, of course. I'm still feeling a little overloaded about it even, as in I don't know what about it I wanna tell all you cool kids. I enjoyed Claudio Costa's talk and I want to get better at studying and telling the stories of Jesus! For some reason the children's song "tell me the stories of Jesus" had been stuck in my head all before that, and after "I'm trying to be like Jesus" was all in my head, and the sentiments in those songs are definitely related. Time to start holding out for next month's Liahona. About half of what I wanted to do while listening was to instead read the talks with a pen in my hand. Soon. 

Our cool Toliatti sisters came up for splits this week. We can consume an impressive amount of milk when we get together. And other things, but milk is the most remarkable. I love them! And working with them is interesting and informative. This week pretty much nobody wanted to or was able to meet with us this week, but we met lots of cool people outside! And a lot of boys that want to hang out with us and don't understand what we're doing here. Okay. I evidently need to learn more slang because I only have a general idea of what they're saying to me. Cool.

A senior couple and their daughter and our mission president's daughter, who just finished her own mission in Romania, showed up in Kazanon friday and we had a sweet activity in which I thoroughly embarrassed myself trying to eat a donut off a string (I thought I left that behind in america...) and found myself teaching a lesson in English while almost everyone else there played uno... You do unexpected things here. Also peer pressure is strange.

You probably don't get told enough how cool you are! Each of you is awesome. Keep putting your one foot in front of your other foot. You can do it!

A secret that I'm letting you in on is that maybe I'd write more but right now I'm just really hungry and want to eat this orange.

That's about it. Here's a selfie that probably has snow in it, but I don't remember. I love you!

Sister Nielsen

I'm pretty sure this week was only three days long (Note: this is from 9/28)

We spent two nights in Toliatti again for zone training and I discovered that I'm surprisingly fairly capable of making small talk with strangers. I just don't know how to make it actually entertaining or missionary-related. I also feel pretty resentful towards buses right now, which is unfortunate given that we're going down to Samara at least twice within the next four weeks.

Part of it is that I don't enjoy riding on buses for hours on end and part of it is that down in Toliatti I had the most crowded bus ride of my entire life. Actually it wasn't a bus, it was one of those things that's a sketchy white van with about 15 seats and about 40 people inside, and the driver talks on his phone and drives a bit aggressively. Fun stuff. 

Zone training was good, though! We talked a lot about prayer, and I'm still trying to figure out to apply things I learned without spending 30 minutes for every prayer I pray. I need to work on that. I mean, I don't mind praying all day, but sometimes there's other stuff to do.

All the Jehovah's Witnesses are really nice, but we've discovered that if you accept invitations to their house you stay there three times as long as you planned. I didn't understand all that much but I did eat some delicious cake. 

I enjoy that the language barrier allows me to ignore awkward moments. We have had some truly dreadful ones, but I can get away with pretending not to notice. Much of that is because I have no idea why or to what degree something is uncomfortable, so I just blunder on blindly. 

I ate at McDonald's. And it wasn't that good. The inside of the restaurant looked pretty classy, though.

Oh, and I finally got to hold hands with my district leader :) (I'm joking, don't worry. I mean, I did, but it's because hand-holding while praying in circles is pretty common here)

I've been thinking about how it's good to believe in myself but not good to rely on myself. I need to rely on God a lot more than I do. That's one awesome thing we get to do through prayer, is take all the things we don't actually have the power do to on our own and just hand them over. It's a relief. 

I love you all. Have wonderful weeks! Watch General Conference! Take more photos and be better caught-up in your journal than your one and only,

Sister Nielsen