This week rained pretty often...well, a couple times. And I seem to always wear the same pair of shoes when it rains,so I guess I know what to do if I want rain. We met with Amy officially for the first time this week. Her brother and mom were recently baptized and she also wants to be baptized. It was great to meet with her. She has so much light in her eyes. First we just kind of checked to see what she remembered from the first two lessons that she had had with her mom, brother, and elders. Then we talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how we follow him by faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. We also introduced her to prophets that lesson. We talked about how in "the enduring to the end" part of life, God has given us not only the Holy Ghost, but also our leaders to lead and guide us. A prophet is the mouth of God on the earth. I like to do an example where I put my fist out and then ask them to put their fist underneath mine. They then attempt to follow my fist. They don't know where I'm going to move it, so of course it's hard. Then I hold a pen and they hold the other end of the pen. it is then very easy to move along with my hand. My hand is an example of God. With out prophets we don't know how to follow Him exactly, but when we have a prophet, we know what God wants us to do. Now, of course that doesn't take away our own personal revelation for our lives, but a prophet gives us the information that we all need in order to return to the presence of God.
This week we were running a little bit late, and with public transit you never know when you'll get anywhere exactly. We were waiting for a marshootka and we decided to pray. The next one was ours. We had actually gotten on on the wrong side of the street. The driver got to the end of his route and asked us where we needed to go. we told him and he explained we had gotten on the wrong one. Usually they have a break before they start their route again, but he immediately pulled out and went back the other way so that we could get where we needed to go!! AWESOME!! I have had a bit of a struggle with the language this week. I didn't feel like I could understand as much or talk as much... it was kind of frustrating. After one of those lessons where I didn't feel I could say very much, we were heading home on a marshootka. I ended up sitting next to this super nice lady and was able to just talk with her. She wasn't really interested to talk about the gospel, so we talked about other things, but wow! It was just what I needed! She said I spoke Russian well! haha It was kind of funny as she wore the same perfume as Grandma and when I talked with her it felt like I was talking with Aunt Becky or Grandma. I LOVED IT!! :) As we were getting out, sister Zamorina accidentally stepped on her skirt... luckily it didn't fall down, but I still found it very funny.
We were able to meet with Natalia this week. She is the Relief Society president in our ward. Her daughter has the most amazing story how she joined the church! she met the missionaries and got baptized when she was 13. Decided to go on a mission and served in Washington D.C. (p.s. ask Elaina what her last name is. She served several years back at the visitors center there and maybe they knew each other!!!). After her mission her mom, Natalia, got baptized and her daughter then went to America just feeling she needed to go there to meet her husband. I'm leaving out a lot of details, but she just got married and lives with her husband who served a mission in Russia, in Georgia! haha She made us the most DELICIOUS lunch! It was cheese filled, fried-ish kind of bread things...I don't know how to describe it, but they were SO yummy!
One night this week we were so hungry that we ate half a watermelon... in the morning as we said what we were thankful for, I said that I was glad that I couldn't get fat off of watermelon because it's mostly water.. Sister Zamorina asked how I knew and I said because I had to use the bathroom last night. She started laughing and said that she had had to use it 3 times last night!! hahaha! I couldn't stop laughing!! I love my companion!
We have a new little girl we're teaching. She is 9 years old and her mom wants her to get baptized this Saturday. so, this week we have been rushing to try to help her get all of the lessons. We have tried to do interesting things for her. When we taught about the Law of Chastity for instance, Sister Zamorina did a little cut-out of a princess. We made her a crown. Kings and princesses live and castles. Temples are the house of God, and so, we as his children, we are like princes and princesses. We talked about how she wants to get married in the temple to a prince who has also kept himself clean. We talked about how princesses wear special clothes and we, as children of God also need to dress modestly. We will wait to get married in the temple and then start our families with our prince etc... We hope that she understood enough of what she needed to at that age!! haha
This week at sports night we started playing with the football and about 10 little Russian kids ran and started chasing us and trying to get the ball away from us!! It was like a zoo! We would have to run and almost tackle them to get the ball back and then they would start running back and forth in between us as we kind of played keep away. we ended up playing with them a little bit and I taught 2 of them... kind of... how to throw a Frisbee! haha It was way cute and funny! Most of them, the little boys and girls, were just in underwear running around! :) I also got to play my violin at church on Sunday! I played dad's favorite version of "if you could High to Kolob." I felt so blessed to be able to do that as I can't always share my testimony in words, so I hope that they could feel it through my music! After our Branch President came up to us and he asked me if I could play every week, or maybe every other week while I was here! I guess one of his counselors had talked to him and said that it was SO wonderful to here the music and that I wouldn't always be here to play, so they needed to use me while I was here!! haha! Well, hope you all had a WONDERFUL week!!
love,
Cectpa Cunningham
Natalia and me with her yummy lunch!!
Our half watermelon! haha night time... don't judge how we look! It is 122 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity on top of that!!! Our apartment has about 86 degrees Fahrenheit!!! So, watermelon does the trick!!!
Our missionary family at the baptism.
Playing with the little kids.
I taught them how to play ninja destruction at sports night! love it!
Crammed in the car with Ulya who leaves on her mission soon and our investigator Ekaterina! She took us to her friends house, so we had 3 investigators who all work for the company Nature Sunshine. it was started by an LDS person and is based in Provo. Sergei, one of the men, said he'd noticed the brilliant light of the smiles of the owners of the company, who are LDS, and he said that we have them too!! :) We read Lehi's dream with them! Cool!
Morning Work Out
0 comments:
Post a Comment