This week has been the most spiritually uplifting week of my life! The Spirit is constantly with me when I'm obedient and I cannot describe how much I love that! I have so much to talk about, I don't even know where to start.
After I said goodbye to you guys, I was immediately swept away to start the MTC journey. I got my tag, my schedule, my books (the packet lied... my books literally weigh 20 pounds. Someone used the baggage scale to prove that), and then I met one of my teachers. Her name is Sister Quinn and she got back from serving in Samara exactly two years ago from today. Our other teacher's name is Brother Froelich. He's been back from his mission for about a year or two as well. I don't know where he served. They speak the language very fluently. My companion's name is Cectpa (Sister) McKell and I seriously LOVE her. She's from Draper, UT and she has such a sweet spirit. I tried to attach a picture of the two of us together, but it wouldn't work for some reason, so I'll try again next week. That's one of the only pictures I've taken so far, but I'll try to take more to show you what the MTC is like. We had a lot of meetings on the first day. We met a few fake investigators and had the opportunity to teach them in huge groups. Pretty cool.
The food situation was as expected. It's a giant cafeteria with a TON of food options. I have to admit, the food is super good, but I don't think I'll ever get carried away since I'll have 8 weeks to try everything out. We have a specific time allotted for gym everyday, so that's been a huge blessing since the food is delicious.
The living quarters aren't as tight as I thought they were going to be. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it. There are three bunk beds, six tall closet things (if you can call it a closet), three desks, and four people. Sister Mckell and I only have one other companionship living with us since there aren't very many Russian speaking people in the MTC, especially sisters. The sisters that are living with us are Sister Fackrell and Sister Leavitt. They are so great! They are our trainers, so they show us around and help us a lot. They leave in a couple of weeks, so we won't get to learn from them as much as I thought. We will most likely have the room to ourselves for the rest of our time at the MTC after they leave because a HUGE group of sisters left for Russia on Monday, so there are two or three empty rooms around us. The first night was really fun because Sister Leavitt's dad was in town so he sent her a big box full of fancy cheeses and snacks... pretty weird. Anyways, we went over to a neighboring room and had a cheese party! He sent her a cheese slicer as well so we just sat on the floor and passed around the cheese. So great!
I have learned so much here already, it's truly mind blowing. Our teachers only speak to us in Russian, so there's a lot of charades going on on their part. It gets pretty funny sometimes. Our District is phenomenal and they all have something different to offer. Our zone is equally as amazing. The learning aspect has been going great! On day two we learned how to pray in Russian, on day three we taught a lesson in Russian, and every day since then we've taught lessons. At this point it's a lot of memorization and reading off of papers, but I've learned so many words, I cannot imagine how much I'll know before I leave the MTC. Cectpa McKell and I do laps around the hallway when we're trying to memorize things, and the other Russian Districts started to notice that. At one point, the Elders from another District had us count how many steps it took to walk a lap, measured our stride length, and calculated how many laps it would take to walk a mile. They concluded that it would be about 42 laps around the hallway to get to a mile. Anyways, The investigator that we've been teaching is named Nastiya (rough English translation). We taught her about 4 lessons. The first lesson was kind of rough because we didn't know how to pronounce any of the churchy words, so we basically just sounded out words in front of her. Awesome. The second lesson went a little bit better. Brother Froelich told us that we weren't allowed to use notes, which we assumed meant we couldn't bring ANYTHING, so we struggled with words a little bit again, but not as much. The third lesson was WAY better because Sister Quinn clarified that we could bring a rough outline to the lessons, but we weren't supposed to read a script. The fourth lesson started off embarrassingly because right as we knocked on the classroom door that Nastiya was in, we forgot that we needed a Book of Mormon for our lesson, so we ran away. As luck would have it, Nastiya opened the door right as we turned to run away. Neither of us knew what to say, so we just started shouting a bunch of Russian-sounding gibberish at her. Good times. That lesson went very well though. Afterwards, our teacher showed us a video that Nastiya sent them to show us. She complemented all of our hard work and progress. Then she threw in a surprise. Her name is actually Cectpa O'Neil and she is going to be our teacher starting tomorrow (today). I'm really excited, but I was not expecting that.
So far we've had two devotionals and both of them were SO spiritual. Elder Oaks' daughter, Jenny Oaks Baker, a world renowned violinist, came and spoke to us on Sunday and played about four songs for us with her family. Cectpa McKell is an AMAZING violinist and Jenny was her teacher, so she was really excited to see her. Then we had a devotional on Tuesday that we helped set up for, and Sister Bonnie Oscarson (the General Young Women's President) spoke. It was definitely a spiritually uplifting talk, for sure. Cectpa McKell and I are in the MTC choir (best decision so far) and we sang a a different version of "Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer" at the devo. It was so powerful, I started tearing up while we were singing.
It's so crazy that I've only been here a week! It feels like I've been here for a month because of how quickly everything is flying by. I'm so glad to hear that you are all doing well. Let me know how school goes on Thursday! My P-days are on Wednesdays if you didn't already know that (I thought they were Mondays). Anyways, stay righteous and do your best in everything! I'll talk to you next week!
Do Svidanya! Love,
Cectpa Wagstaff
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