Old New Year! January 16, 2012

Happy OLD NEW YEARS from Russia!
Sister Tunney was a bit sick this week, so we had a bit of time at home.  I have enjoyed taking time to read the Book of Mormon out loud in Russian with Margo and Marina (our girls who live next door).  They help me with my pronunciation and it's just SO fun to spend time with them!  We had some good miracles this week.  We met with Lubov this week.  She was able to tell her husband that she was being baptized and we planned her baptism for this Saturday.  We asked her to choose who she would like her to baptize her and she said, "Well of course, sister Kany!"  haha!  I was flattered... except for the fact that we as women do not hold the priesthood.  It's so interesting when things like that happen because I wouldn't have even thought that she didn't know that men only hold the priesthood!  It was funny though!! and there's a first time for everything, right?  She talked with Lidya before she got her interview with Elder Tropnikov to be baptized and she said that she had invited her husband to come to her baptism.  He said that he would like to come and see what it is like!  Coming from a man who was SO against anything that she had to do with us... it was a miracle!  We are SO excited!!

We went out to the Erominka's again this week.  But it was so frustrating because Vanya kept asking all of these questions but he wouldn't listen to our answer... They were questions that he wouldn't
have if he understood the basic principles of the gospel and would actually just really listen to what we said instead of just looking for another point to argue about.  He's just not open right now, so we
just bore our testimonies and said that we couldn't answer his questions if he wasn't willing to listen.

This week we got some bad news about Laura (our miracle lady who wanted to be baptized).  Apparently she went to a friends church and said that it was what she needed and everything in our church was confusing... We think that she just heard some bad information about our church.  She is coming today to give us back the Book of Mormon that we gave her, but I hope that we, with Lidya, will be able to talk with her and help remove any fear from rumors that she heard.  We know that she felt the spirit when she was with us, and we hope to remind her of that.  If not right now, I hope that one day she will remember what she felt and come back.  It's hard when something like this happens, especially when we felt like it was such a miracle and know she felt it was right, but everyone has their agency.

This Saturday we had a very exhausting day.  We were going out to visit one of our members who lives WAY out of town.  We asked which bus stop was the right one and the people on the bus told us where to get off... well it ended up being the wrong one, so we had to go back and wait another 20 or so minutes for another bus.  The Lady who had told us it was that stop came back and apologized as she'd realized we were talking about another stop... haha  Well, we finally got there, but then on the way back we waited for like 40 minutes for a non-existent Marshrootka.  So, we finally decided to go wait at the nearby bus stop but then saw another Marshrootka coming that we could take.  IT was
raining, so we were of course FREEZING, but we started running to grab it!  The driving laughed at me when I got in, but we made it.  So after our 5 hour adventure to get out to our members house we didn't even want to go back outside again that day, but we headed to sports night at the church after a brief lunch at home and got splashed by two cars that drove through these HUGE puddle way too fast! haha oh well, it was an adventure!  At sports night we tried to teach the hand slapping game "Down by the banks of the Hanky-panky.".... I don't know what it is though here... A riot always breaks out whenever we want to teach a new game and someone always complains and says that they don't
want to play!! haha

I hope that everyone is doing well!! I sure love you all!
love,
Cectpa Cunningham