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
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