Week 6

Six weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye. Wow. This has been a wild week. A lot happened this week. I'll try to remember what I can but again I'm probably going to forget stuff.

So I was able to give the newest missionaries a tour this past week (we now have like 9 armenian missionaries and 3 georgian missionaries) and it was pretty fun. It's been fun getting to know them. We are now super tight with the 3 weekers that are speaking Russian. They're so sick and we have a lot of fun. Recently we've been obsessed with outdoor volleyball. Like we used to go inside on hot days but literally every day we play volleyball and it's a blast. We have a lot of solid volleyball players so it's wild. 

The older group left this week and they sang Homeward Bound which wasn't fair because it's one of my favorite gospel songs and it definitely put me in tears. I already miss all of them. They will all be amazing in Russia though. I guess this makes us the oldest group which is so weird. 

This Sunday me and Elder Dumbrell were made Zone Leaders!! Normally they only call one companionship to be zone leaders but we have 47 new missionaries coming today. So we have 4 zone leaders and 3 sister training leaders. It's me, elder dumbrell, elder camacho(he's the one that does the funny skits), and elder Hartmann(plays football at Harvard). Tonight we get to meet the new people and it's going to be crazy because we're almost doubling our zone. We're going to have almost 100 missionaries and we're going to have all 7 languages in our zone which hasn't happened in a long time. Russian, Armenian, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, and Ukrainian. Sacrament meeting is going to be crazy haha. We all sing in our respective languages and so it's going to sound like chaos, I love it.

Speaking of more crazy news... We've had three apostles come within the past week!!! Apostles. Crazy. I already told you all about Elder Bednar coming but this sunday we had Elder M. Russell Ballard come and this Tuesday we had Elder Neil L. Anderson. It's been a spiritual downpour recently. They broadcasted the last two devotionals and I've been on the camera a lot for the choir so I guess it makes me famous now. We know the prime spots to be on the camera. 

Another fantastic thing that happened this week. Yesterday we got our Cyrillic tags which means my last name is officially in it's evolved Russian form. My name for the next 22-ish months is now Старейшина Уайтинг. (Star-ay-shi-na, oo-ai-ting). So rad. I'm in love. 

Speaking of Russian it's improving every week. We did our Skype TRC's yesterday which means we talk to someone who is from Russian or who knows Russian. It was super cool and it's amazing to see how we can hold a good conversation with someone. 

Now to get to the spiritual side of this week. This has been one of the greatest weeks for me spiritually. I feel like I've changed so much and that I've improved so much as a missionary. Elder Ballard talked about locking our hearts and being happy. It was super good. Someone took a chastity pamphlet and wrote "lock your heart elder" and they were hiding it in random places around the residence. Someone put it in Dumbrell's pillowcase. It was hilarious. But back to the devotionals. Elder Anderson's devotional really stood out to me. He showed a video of recent converts who were sharing how the missionaries found them. In the middle of the video I just felt a shockwave of the spirit and I almost burst into tears. I had been feeling pretty sick over the last few days so I felt like it was harder to feel good when I was feeling so terrible but during that video I instantly felt so much love for the people in Moldova. Another thing he said that stood out was that Miracles Are Real. Recently I've been reading a lot about miracles and I have seen and heard so many in my time here that it's ridiculous. President Clark shared an experience he had not that long ago with a man who had a heart attack and wasn't going to live through the night but he gave him a blessing and this man was able to go home even after having more heart attacks. There's more to the story but I'm trying to keep it as short as I can. But I just want to tell you right now that miracles are real. Ask for miracles and expect miracles. Have faith. 

EVERYONE read Alma 26. That is pretty much how I feel right now. One of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon. 

I'm loving the MTC and I'm so grateful for the experiences I've had here. The food is still bad, the days are still long, and the language is impossible but I'm loving every second of it. I'm excited that I get to serve this new massive zone as a leader. 

Love you all back home! Keep sending me things haha. I'll try to get letters out asap but I don't have much free time. Make sure you send me addresses if you want one. See ya next week

-Старейшина Уайтинг