I'm Addicted

Zdrastvuitye!

Lots of fun and strange things have happened this week! I love Russia so much! I'm so grateful to be here at the time that I am.

The food here in Russia is my addiction... I literally cannot get enough of it. Sister Johnson is going to make me so fat, but I'm not even ashamed. First of all... my most favorite candy. The candy here is legit in general, but there's this one candy that is sent from above. It's called добрянка and it is heavenly. Imagine a huge glob of Nutella surrounded by a crunchy wafer cocoon, all covered in a thick layer of chocolate. Salivation! Seriously so good. I ate six of them in one day. Not good... but it tastes good. Another of my favorite foods is called шаурма. Sooooooo goood! It's basically like a Russian gyro. They take a Russian tortilla and fill it with a little bit of mayo, some raw carrot strips, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, a meat of questionable origin, and top it off with a delicious tomato sauce. Really simple, really amazing. I've heard many rumors of what the meat actually is. Most recently I heard that it is dog... but it seriously tastes so good, that myth will not deter me!

Oh, the weather. What to even say about it... It is REAL cold here. Like... really cold. Like... it's snowed every single day this week and we've had to break out the sleeping bag coats. It's cold. People spit loogies on the ground all the time from chewing tobacco and smoking and it literally freezes in like .5 seconds. Kinda fun to watch. The other day it was snowing SO hard and I was just wearing a headband thing... yeah... my hair froze. You probably could have served iced beverages to everyone on the block with the amount of frozen water that accumulated on my head. Sister Johnson and I had to run to the store during the snow storm and I felt so bad because the snow hill on my head was melting everywhere. I left a stream of water behind me. Oober embarrassing... lots of weird looks. It's cool though.

There's a lot of crazy people in Russia, but I love them. I get a lot of weird looks because of the way that I talk... especially when I accidentally say "как вы прожёвываете?" (How you chew well?) instead of "как вы поживаете?" (how are you?)... You'd be surprised how many times this has happened. Love it.Oh yeah... During one of our lessons the other day, this random lady busted in the family's front door with a little box of unprescribed medicine and begged us to give her a shot. She didn't leave for a solid 10 minutes and it was the craziest thing. The family that we were teaching hardly even knew her... they called her the "weird neighbor." They ended up calling an ambulance for her and made her leave. Great fun. Totally ruined the spirit of the meeting... but it was still good.

Oh yeah... we have a less active member in our branch named Andrei. He's a character fo' sho. He's about 25 years old, sells dream catchers for a living, and he thinks he's a witch doctor. Legit. Anyways, nobody teaches him the lessons in his apartment anymore because the spirit does not reside there. He has a bunch of demonic-looking stuff hanging up everywhere and his necklaces were pretty satanic looking. The lesson that we had with him wasn't terrible... but it could have gone lots better. We taught Andrei about General Conference and Joseph Smith. When we got to the topic of Joseph Smith, we asked him how he knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Andrei was baptized in 2000, so he knew at some point that all of this was true. He then went on about how he prayed to God to know that Joseph was a prophet and God took him back in time to see the first vision happen in person. On a later subject, he talked about how he's been to the spirit world and how he's seen spirit paradise and prison. Let's just say things got a little bit weird. Thankfully the spirit was able to come back after that and he agreed to read The Testimony of Joseph Smith and pray about. Very strange... very spiritual-ish? He came to church on Sunday and that was a train wreck and a half. Not even going to talk about that. He's fine, but the faith of all of the members is a bit shaken up.

Also, a hardcore baptist invited us to come over and we literally just stood there for 20 minutes while she tried to explain why our religion is wrong. Let's just say she wasn't a huge fan of our faith. Not really sure why she wanted us to come over in the first place. She was like 90 years old and knew the Bible backwards and forwards, so we didn't have much to contribute. To make matters even better, her friend came over and they both went at it. All we could do was bear our testimonies and give them a copy of The Living Christ since they basically spat upon everything else we offered. It was an interesting experience for sure. It's okay though. God loves them and so do we.

Now that I think about it... we've had lots of crazy lessons this week. We have an investigator named Kiera and she is basically the definition of a drama queen. We love her to death, but she can be a handful sometimes. She's 17 years old, was literally about to walk into the waters of baptism (not even joking... she was in the baptismal suit), and found out that her brother died minutes before she was supposed to be baptized. Kiera's kind of fallen away since then. Most recently she eloped with this guy of whom she brought to the lesson that we had with her. It was really hard to get the two of them to concentrate because they were distracting each other (to put it lightly), but she eventually made him leave and we were able to give a powerful lesson. She told us that she still has a desire to be baptized, so she's not as far gone as we thought.

The Relief Society had a super fun activity this week that we were able to go to because all of the Senior Missionary Sisters from our area came, so we had to translate for them. They planned a cute little tea party! Well... I guess it wasn't little. There was enough food to feed the entire ward. I can now say that I've eaten caviar. We ate lots of блины with fish eggs in it and there were about 6 different kinds of pies and cakes. So good! At the activity we almost burned down the church building. No joke. Since it was a special occasion, it was unanimously decided that the tea was going to be heated with a tradition "tea pot" called a сама вар. This thing's legit. You pour the tea into a big cavity in the pot and literally light a fire inside of a tube to heat it up. Heaven knows why, but for some reason it was decided that the closed balcony with a tiny ventilation window would be the best location to light a fire in the building. Let's just say people still smelled like smoke after leaving sacrament meeting the following day.

Lots of fun things have happened with our apartment this week. First of all... our air conditioner broke at like 5 o'clock in the morning one day. I don't know why Sister Johnson had it on in the winter, but she did. Anyways, she turned it on when it had been snowing outside and it started making dripping noises. We thought it was like an animal or something because of how quiet it was. Then the AC full-on started dumping water onto Sister Johnson's bed. Seriously so funny. It stopped water falling when we turned it off but it was making horrible crackling noises for the rest of the night. So great. Also, all of the lights in our apartment except for two tiny ones decided to go out. it was the strangest thing. When the landlord came to look at the lights, he got all mad because apparently we're not supposed to have the AC on in the winter... probs broke it forever.

Anyways, those are my adventures from this week! There has been a rumor going around that as of Thursday, we won't be able to wear our tags anymore. I don't know if this is true or anything, but it's just a heads up. I hope you are all doing well! Thank you for all of your love and support!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Cectpa Megan Wagstaff

Vot! Eta ya, v Russia!‏

Zdrastvuitye!!!!

Welp... After almost two full days of travel, I'm finally in Mother Russia!!! Such an adventure! I actually didn't have have very many opportunities to proselyte on the journey because I sat by my travel group literally on every single flight. That usually doesn't happen... like ever... but for some reason it did! Also, we're not allowed to proselyte in airports, so that was like half of our travel time. Anyways, we began our journey bright and early at 3:30 in the morning. We got on a big chartered bus and rode over to the Front-Runner station. On our way to the airport on the Front-Runner, we had an amazing opportunity to sit by a man who works in the media department for the Liahona magazines. He shared so many inspiring stories with us and it was a great way to start off our journey with a spiritual experience. His last name is Migy or something, so you might be able to see his name in the back of the magazine. Anyways, we had quite a few hours to kill when we got to the airport after we checked all of our bags and stuff, so my travel group and I went and got some Cafe Rio for breakfast at like 6:30 in the morning. So good! We had to say goodbye to our MTC District shortly after that and it was a lot more sad than I thought it would be. Such a bitter-sweet moment. Three of them are headed to Moldova and the other is going to Rostov. They are going to do great things over there!

The first plane ride was so fun! I sat by Elder Peterson who is also serving in Samara and he had never been on a plane before. Let's just say it was highly entertaining to watch how he reacted to everything! I'm just glad he didn't throw up. We sat by a wonderful lady whose name has escaped me right now. She was so nice! We got to talk to her a little bit about what a mission is and how the leaders of our church issue our callings. It was a strange experience teaching in English. Still great nonetheless. We didn't commit her to baptism or anything, but it was a really cool learning experience. I can now say that I have seen the Statue of Liberty... barely... but I have seen it! I saw it very far off in the distance when we landed at JFK in New York. Our flight was a little bit late leaving SLC and we only had an hour layover in NYC, so we literally had to charge through the airport. I have never run so fast in my entire life. That's actually a lie... but you get my point. When we got to the gate, everyone in our group decided that they needed to use the bathroom... terrible idea. The people at the gate started yelling at us and said that plane was leaving. We basically had to scramble for our lives. Thankfully, we made it on time. This plane was SOOOO nice. There were two huge seats per section and there were little TVs on the backs of the seats in front of us. We couldn't watch the movies or anything, but we could play the little crossword puzzles and there was a Russian language game on there that was kind of fun. There wasn't anyone sitting in the section next to me, so I couldn't really attempt to talk to them in Russian. My seating assignment was next to Elder Peterson again, so we did a lot of crossword puzzles and stared at the map on our screens for a majority of the trip. This flight was 9 hours so it consisted of a lot of sleeping.

We were all exhausted when we got to Moscow because it was kind of hard to sleep for more than an hour at a time on the flight. While we were in the airport we had our passports checked in this really beautiful room and then we had to sign a bunch of documents. We headed to the Embassy after that. The drivers in Russia are literally all crazy. I cannot express to you how many times I thought I was going to die just on our 45 minute drive from the airport to the Embassy. People park on sidewalks when they want, people cut you off when they want, people DRIVE on the sidewalk when they want, and I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a speed limit. There are so many potholes in Russian roads that it feels like we are doing an off-road excursion all the time. Anyways, the Embassy was super boring because we were all falling asleep the whole time. It took a couple of hours because all of the employees were on a lunch break. We turned in our passports, payed for another passport, and sat around for an unnecessary long time. So great. We said goodbye to the rest of our travel buddies and Sister McKell, Elder Peterson, and I hung out in the airport for like 9 hours. Elder Peterson wasn't feeling well so he was basically just a lump that we dragged around everywhere. There were a couple of times that we got to talk to Russian people, but they couldn't understand anything that we said, so that was swell. After a lot of walking around, sleeping, and being bored, we finally got to go on our last flight. Thankfully this flight was only about 2 hours and the plane wasn't even bad. I, again, was by Elder Peterson and we were sitting by a man named Roman... he didn't want to talk very much. We basically just slept the whole way to Samara.

It was about 2:30 in the morning when we got from the airport to the apartment that we were staying at, Sister McKell and I spent the night with two sisters who were serving close to the Mission Office, They were so great! They were up and waiting for us when we got there. Cectpa McKell wanted to sleep on the floor, so I got to sleep on the bed. Their apartment has 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitched, and a fairly large entryway. The only thing that was weird about it was the bathroom. The bathtub faucet was directed into the sink for some reason and the shower curtain went straight across the bathroom... not even covering the back end of the tub. Strange. The next morning the two sisters dropped us off at the Mission President's apartment and we got to eat breakfast with them. Their apartment was seriously so nice! It looked very American and had lots of decorations. We ate pancakes, eggs, bacon, and juice with the Mission President, his wife, Elder Peterson, Cectpa McKell, and the PAs. Russian juice is the best thing on the planet. It's legitimate, straight-up juice. Not filtered... not artificially flavored, not all diluted. Just juice. So good. Everything that we had was delicious! After that, we had an orientation where we talked about all of the legal stuff and what we should and shouldn't do in Russia. President Schwab briefly interviewed all of us and then we got to meet our new companions! My companion is so amazing! Her name is Cectpa Johnson and we have so much in common. She is really short, she went to Utah State, and we both like a lot of the same things. After the initial hello, we got to eat some KFC. It doesn't taste a whole lot like the American kind, but it's still good! We got our area assignments and said our goodbyes one last time. Elder Peterson and Sister McKell are serving in different areas in Saratov. Sister Johnson and I are serving in an area in Samara called Aurora (Аврора).

Our apartment is seriously so nice! All of the sisters who come back from Visa trips, are here for Zone meetings, leadership conferences, or exchanges stay in our apartment which is why it is so big. I have been told that we have one of the nicest apartments in our mission. Our bedroom is bigger than it looks in the picture. The big curtain is just covering the back half of the room because that's where we store our suitcases and stuff.

I've had the opportunity to experience many different types of Russian transportation. The Metro is my favorite! The picture of the blue tile wall with the columns is what the Metro station looks like. It's so cool! The Russian buses are pretty normal, but they have these van things that are literally death traps. Everyone crams into this little van and we hold on for dear life as the driver whips through traffic as if no one else is in the vehicle. Scary! Most of our transportation is walking though, so we don't get to experience that too often.

We teach at least one lesson every day with our investigators. The first night I was there I got to help teach a lesson to an investigator named Deema. He speaks English and usually takes the lessons in English, but since I was there they decided it would be best to do it in Russian. Great. We taught him about Joseph Smith since he's been having some doubts on whether or not he was actually a prophet. The lesson went well, I thought. It's hard for me to understand everything that people are saying because they talk so fast and he uses words that I'm not familiar with. Anyways, Deema is a great guy. He is very nerdy and intelligent which hasn't helped him at all in his conversion process. He turns to his intelligence and not Heavenly Father when he has doubts, which creates even more doubt. Not good. We're working on it though... he's getting close.

A majority of our day consists of contacting. I'm not so good at contacting yet because I have no idea what people are saying. We mostly just walk around a lot and avoid the drunk people. We did have a cool experience when we were contacting the other day though! We met a wonderful woman named Natalia and she was a miracle. Natalia was standing outside of a shop with one of her friends and it was obvious that her friend wasn't interested in the least. Natalia put up a cold wall at first, buit that broke down really fast. Sister Johnson and I taught this lady on the sidewalk for literally an hour. Natalia's friend got tired of standing there, but Natalia just waved her off instead of following, which was definitely a miracle. The light that I saw in her eyes was indescribable. I felt the spirit so strong even though I could barely understand what was going on. Her personality and her likeness took such a profound switch when we started talking to her. There's no doubt in my mind that the Lord had prepared her for this moment. She agreed to come to a baptism that was being held the following day after we basically taught her the entire first lesson. I had lots of other cool experiences too, but I've already made Sister Johnson sit here for like 2 hours, so I should probably go soon!

I haven't eaten any super crazy Russian food yet. I did get some McDonalds the other day and Sister Johnson bought me a canoli which was really good! Nothing too exotic though! I will try to catch you up on all of the cultural stuff later. Russia is an amazing place and I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to serve the people here! I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Cectpa Megan Wagstaff

Almost Time!‏

Zdrastvuitye!

Aaaaaah!!!! I got my travel plans this week! My district will meet at the travel office at 3:35 in the morning on October 13th and make our way to the Salt Lake Airport. Our first flight leaves at 8:43 am, and lands in New York at like 3 pm or something. I don't know if the times on our travel plans account for the time differences or not. Anyways, we have a short layover in NY and then an excessively long flight to Moscow. We will then have a 13 hour layover where we will hopefully be able to tour Red Square with some of the missionaries serving there. Guess we'll have to see! After the super long layover, we will fly in a rickety Russian plane into Samara! We leave on the 13th and get there on the 15th... that's a lot of sitting. It's getting real, guys! I'm so excited!

Conference in the MTC is definitely not like watching conference at home. Such a testimony-building experience for sure! Everyone listens to the speakers so intently and so carefully, not like at home where it's appropriate to watch in your pajamas and crash on the couch... Although I will admit that I drifted off a few times at the beginning of the Saturday afternoon session. Probably my favorite quote from the entire conference came from on of the Saturday sessions. The quote was given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, originally said by Mother Theresa: "This work is about love, not statistics." If this isn't the definition of missionary work, then I don't know what is. Just because an area doesn't have the highest baptizing rate doesn't mean that it isn't successful. You can touch millions of peoples' lives just by loving them and still not get a single baptism out of it. Our purpose is to bring people closer to Christ, not baptize the masses... although there's nothing wrong with that:) Our purpose is to love and teach people about the restored gospel. Everything else falls into place from there.

We had our last Skype appointments this week and I have to admit, I was pretty sad. We taught a returned missionary named Karly who lives in Salt lake. She served in Kyiv with one of my teachers. For some reason we weren't able to see her on our end, so we just talked to her via Skype. She was seriously so nice! She complemented our Russian a lot and encouraged us to not be shy when we speak. Karly must have been on a bus or on one of the tram thingies in downtown Salt Lake because we kept hearing announcements in the background that said: "Now arriving in Salt Lake City"... "Next stop, Mormon temple." It was pretty entertaining considering we couldn't see her. After we finished teaching Karly, the two lab coordinators asked Sister McKell and I if we'd want to teach another volunteer. Of course, we said yes. This volunteer's name was Veeka and she's from Ukraine. She was so sweet! She laughed at pretty much everything we said, so that was interesting. I had a really enjoyable time teaching her. Veeka told us that she is going to serve a mission in the near future and Sister McKell and I freaked out! We got so excited and was laughing at us... again. It was great!

During one of our study blocks, Sister McKell and I went to our beloved "sacred garden." I have attached a picture of this spot so you can see what it looks like. It's just a little sitting area in the back corner of campus that has so many plants and it is so beautiful! While we were studying, I noticed that there was an opening in some of the shrubberies that line the fence along the outside perimeter, so Sister McKell and I decided to check it out. Lo and behold, there has been a cute little street of houses right next to us this whole time. The house closest to where we were standing had some Halloween decorations up, which made me a wee bit nostalgic since they don't have Halloween in Russia. The owner of the home, a sweet old lady, came outside and talked to us a little. Well, I don't know if you could call it talking. We were a good 30 yards away from each other, so it was more like a loving shout. She was really sweet and talked to us about some stuff that I couldn't hear. I'm sure it was great and old-ladyish. As we were walking away from the fence, a some-what concerned looking security guard drove by and asked what we were doing. After we explained that we were just looking at the outside world and justified our case by saying that we're leaving on Monday, he just kind of nodded and drove off. Good guy.

This morning, all of the Russian sisters got up at 4:15 in the morning to see the blood moon. Totally not worth it. I forgot to grab my glasses before we ran outside, so it looked like a brownish-red smudge in the sky. I could see it better from our room anyways, so I just went back in and enjoyed it with my glasses on. Such a great use of 10 minutes. This morning was the last opportunity that I had to go to the temple for another 16 months. It was such a great experience, as usual, and we pigged out on our last temple breakfast afterwards. That's something that I'm going to miss a lot when I'm out in the field. Being able to go to the temple every week has been such an amazing spiritual recharge. People should never take the temple for granted. There are so many people out there who have to sacrifice so much in order to enjoy something that we have so readily available to us all the time. Such a blessing.

Well, I have a lot to do to prepare for this journey on Monday! Many a load of laundry to do. Thank you all for your love and support. Continue being great examples and reaching out to others. Have a great week! Next time I write, I will be in Mother Russia. Woot, woot!

Da Svuidanya!

Love,

Cectpa Wagstaff

Getting Close!‏

Zdrastvuitye!

Only a week and a half left and I will be in Russia!!!! I'm so excited, I can't even contain it! I already love the people and I don't even know them yet! My district will get our travel plans this Friday, so I will be able to tell you about all of that next week. Based on what I've seen from previous missionaries who have gone to Samara, we will most likely have a direct flight from SLC to Moscow, a 12 hour layover in Moscow, and then a train ride or something to Samara. It'll be an adventure for sure! Sister McKell and I and one other Elder will be traveling to Samara together. Many selfies will be taken on this excessively long journey. 

Thankfully the cold that I was battling only lasted a solid 3 days. I was totally fine by Wednesday evening (of last week). I got to go on a fun little field trip off campus this week and it was really weird to see the real world. Sister McKell had to prepare for a performance, so I decided to go on splits with Sister Kim and Sister Jessop so that I would have time to study. I didn't realize that Sister Kim had an appointment scheduled at the Sports Medicine clinic for her knee, so I got to go with them. Sister Kim hurt her knee when she was young and continued to hurt it throughout her life. The other other day she twisted it weird and it started to hurt pretty bad. By the time she was able to make the appointment her knee was totally fine, but she wanted to make sure it would be alright on her mission. Anyways, it felt so strange to ride the shuttle through Provo and see the real world! I sort of forgot that people have lives outside of the MTC. Sitting in the doctors' office was pure bliss. I love the atmosphere of medical places. We got to watch Sister Kim get examined by a Sports Med doctor and it brought back so many memories. She also got X-Rays which was really cool to see since I've never had to experience that before. At the end of the appointment, they gave her a brace and said she'd be fine. Great use of 3 hours (my sarcasm hand is raised).

Pretty much all of the lessons that Sister McKell and I taught this week were very spiritual. There was one lesson in particular that basically punched me in the stomach with the spirit. This was our last lesson with our investigator Galeena before baptism and we wanted to make sure that all feelings of doubt or discomfort were removed before her big day. We decided to show her the video entitled, "благодаря ему" (Because of Him). Probably the best inspirational clip I've ever seen. I honestly don't think I've EVER felt the spirit so strong in my life. Being able to testify about how wonderful and loved she is was indescribable. It really helped me see that all of this... my life, my family, this mission, everything... is because of Jesus Christ. Baptism is such an amazing, life changing experience and I'm so glad that I got to help her have that opportunity. If I was able to feel the spirit like that with a fake investigator, I can't even imagine how much stronger that will be with real people who want to change their lives.

On a less spiritual note, all of the Russian Sisters decided that it would be a fun idea to have a vechereenka (party), so we did. We all have no idea why, but some random person sent one of the Russia Sisters a 14 lb carrot cake with a birthday note attached to it. She has no idea who it's from, and her birthday is in May. Very weird, but it made for some great party food. Sister Kim had some chips and salsa laying around, so we ate some of that. Sister Jessop had some glow sticks, so we sat around in a glowstick-lit room. It was a ton of fun! It felt like a really big, really weird sleepover that only lasted about 40 minutes because of quiet time. Still great nonetheless.

Sunday was a crazy busy day of meetings because Sister McKell and I are Sister Training Leaders as of last week, so that's been a lot of fun! The devo on Sunday was pretty good. We had already heard from this Brother before because he spoke about a month ago. Got to love the 9 week MTC life. Still really good though. After that, my district decided that it would be fun to watch Legacy in Japanese. Horrible idea. Everyone except two of our Elders left after 20 minutes. Sister McKell and I went back to our room to help Sister Kim and Sister Jessop pack. Best decision every! We had such a great time helping them get everything together. Many laughs and photographs. They left at 4:30 Monday morning, so we got up with them to say goodbye. They gathered all of their remaining belongings and we escorted them to the bus. It was a very bitter-sweet moment. They are both going to do great things in Moscow. Even though our room is empty and quiet now, they are still here in spirit. So many memories! There is a work for both of us to do in Russia, the Lord just needed them in there a little bit before us. On to mother Russia!

Fun fact! My district's classroom has a camera in it. No other classroom in the entire building has a camera in it. We have all come to the conclusion that this is because of one of our Elders. This particular Elder is named Staraisheena (Elder) Sparhawk (awesome name) and he is from Saudi Arabia. His dad works there or something. Elder Sparhawk had to be finger printed and went through an interview process that was intended to identify whether or not he is a terrorist when he first got here. We have decided that this camera is intended to make sure Elder Sparhawk isn't making any terrorist advances on us. We all get a huge kick out of this because he is literally the most innocent person I've ever met in my life. I will attach a picture just so you can see how non-terroristic he looks. Elder Sparhawk is the one standing in front of the other Elder. 

This week for our Skype appointment, Sister McKell and I got to teach a Russian member who lives in Boise right now. Her name is Svetlana and she is from the Baltics. I got so excited when she said she lives in Boise that I started to reply in English. She speaks English, so she knew what I was saying, but it was kind of embarrassing. I love these Skype appointments, they are so fun. Only one left! Oh yeah, speaking of embarassing moments, in one of our lessons yesterday, our investigator was asking about the symbolism of the tree of life. Sister McKell thought that the word he was using for tree was the word for temple. Imagine describing a tree as if it were the temple and that is about how well that lesson went. I was so confused the entire time, but our investigator was highly amused.

Well, that's about it this week! I can't wait to share my travel arrangements with you in the next email! Then I will be able to tell you when I can call home and such. I hope you all have a wonderul week! Remember to read the scriptures and say your prayers!

Da Svidanya!

Love, 

Cectpa Megan Wagstaff