Week 3

Okay so first things first, I have to give a big ol' birthday shouts out to my main man Noah Evaga who just got called to Korea! I'm so pumped for you my dude.

So I honestly have no idea how it's been 3 weeks already. They are progressively getting faster and faster. If I were going English speaking I would already be out of here. But wow has it been such a good experience so far.

Our zone is basically split up into the older group, the middle group, and the newbies. They switch out every 3 weeks so the older group leaves, the middle group becomes the older group, etc.. So after today we won't be the new people anymore. We're getting 13 new missionaries today, 11 elders and 2 sisters. They're all going to Russia I'm pretty sure. But because the new people are the coming it means that the older group left and I already miss them. They were some of the greatest role models as missionaries that I could've had and the zone feels really empty without them. 

So uhh here are some funny language mistakes I've made this week... We were teaching our fake investigator about prayer and at the end of the lesson I tried to say "Will you pray right now?" but instead I accidentally said "Will you be baptized right now?" and he gave me this weird look and said "Baptism?" and that's when I realized what I had done and we laughed about it for a little. But this next one was even worse. We were teaching TRCs which means it's an actual member of the church but they speak Russian (typically they served a mission there). So we were teaching this guy who served a mission in Kazakahstan and I wanted to ask him what food they ate there so I tried to say "what food" but I forgot how to say food but I had just learned it so I said "что писа? (shtow pisa)" but what I should've said was "что пиша?(shtow pisha)" . He just stared at me and then busted up laughing. I was so confused so I asked him what I said (in english) and he said I had asked him "what (certain male body part)" and so that was pretty embarassing but I laugh about it now so its all good.

The Russian is really really coming along and even though I feel like I still no nothing I've made a ton of progress. It's been incredible to see how much the Lord has helped me with this language and every day I love it more. 

The MTC has been such a blast and even though I can't wait to go to Moldova I'm really enjoying my time here. We had some pretty interesting experiences over the past few days. On sunday we had probably the worst/best devotional ever. It was the best because it was so weird and it was the worst because it was so weird. So this guy is in charge of a bunch of MTCs or something and they talked about their family and how he was called to be a mission president in Japan and their whole fam came along. Then they talked about how they were like way into singing as a family so they recorded a CD with church music and their kids singing. Then they showed a slide show of their kids with the music in the background. Their kids at this time were like 12, 9, and 6. A lot of the pictures were like really embarassing pictures of the kids. Then they brought the family on stage and the 6 year old (who was super small and skinny in japan) was now one of the biggest people I've seen. He was massive and he looked like he did not want to be there. Then they sang and he brought one of his companions on the podium and they did this duet and it was so weird because they would look into each others eyes while they were singing and it was so whack. The premise of the lesson was basically to bring music to the investigators haha. Some of the singing was good though so it was okay. We laughed for a long time after and we could barely contain ourselves while it was happening. Also an elder in our zone told us he wanted to do a one man play for us and so we were like why not. So we weren't expecting much but it ended up being one of the funniest things we've ever seen especially to come from this one particular elder. It ended up being super good. I'll send you all the video of it.

On tuesday we had another devotional but this one was AMAZING. It was a emeritus member of the seventy and he basically talked about how we can step up as missionaries. This one really hit me because I feel like there were a bunch of things I wanted to change and get better at and he spoke about all of these things perfectly. I have been told a lot to love the people and it just makes me more excited to go to Moldova and serve them. Also I love sundays and I felt the spirit so much this week. I've heard some of the greatest talks ever while I've been here on on mission, Elder Bednar has changed my life as a missionary.

My spiritual thought of the week would have to be centered on the word Sufficient. Our Heavenly Father doesn't expect us to have perfect faith or a perfect knowledge but sufficient faith and sufficient knowledge. Even though we fall short we can always get back up through the Atonement of Christ. Never feel as if you are not good enough. Work on the faith you do have and God will make up the rest.

Remember to study the scriptures and say your prayers. I love you all and miss you. Continue to keep me updated on things back home. I'll see you next week

-Старейшина Whiting