Joining the Baptists

Zdrastvuitye!

Hello everyone! These past couple of weeks have consisted of a lot of traveling and a lot of adventures! Due to the excessive amount of travel, I wasn't able to write on P-day and I now have a very limited amount of time to write about my weekly happenings. I will talk about the goings-on from last week in this letter so that my letter on Monday isn't two sentences long. Let us begin!
So.... Last P-day Sister Johnson and I rode on a bus for about 2 hours and arrived in the good ole city of Tolyatti. I seriously love Tolyatti! It's like a modernized version of Samara! So cool! On the first day, I went on exchanges with a Sister named Sister James. My first appointment with Sister James was with an eternal investigator who we met with at McDonald's. Let me just talk about the McDonald's for a second. In this beautiful McDonald's you had the option to order your food at the counter or at these super futuristic-looking kiosks that descended gracefully from the ceiling. Why is this not a thing in America??? Even the children's area was amazing! I totally would have played in it. There was a huge coloring table and a bunch of interactive decorations. It was nuts. I cannot even handle how classy these fast food restaurants are. Anyways, back to the appointment. The investigator that we met with was named Eegr (Egor) and he's been investigating the church for 6 years. Crazy because he's only like 25. Anyways, Sister James's birthday was the previous day, so he bought her a cake and we feasted! It was pretty interesting sitting in McDonald's eating a big old cake and sipping raspberry tea. There's a first for everything I suppose. Eegr was so great! He speaks nearly perfect English and understands sarcasm, which is basically unheard of for Russians.  We had a pretty good conversation with him about why active members of the church just decide to stop going. It was actually really interesting. I had a pretty intense pondering session to figure out how to answer this question. There are so many reasons why active members of the church stop going. There isn't one, universal answer. If there was, we'd be able to get all of the less-actives back to church. It was a very thought-provoking conversation indeed.

The second day in Tolyatti was equally as interesting. I was on exchanges with a native Sister named Sister Kozmenova (thankfully she speaks English). Our first appointment was with a lady named Svetlana. She was a gem! Svetlana basically force fed us apples and clementines as soon as we showed up at her apartment. We shared a message with her from "The Living Christ" and I felt the spirit so strong. Definitely a very inspired document. Read it! After we met with Svetlana, I got to try knocking for the first time. Let's just say I'm not a huge fan. Sister Kozmenova's family was found through knocking, so she utilizes every opportunity she can get. At the first door, a youngish man answered the door and took everything that we gave him, but he ended up declining a follow up visit and walked away to smoke a cigarette in the stairwell. Lovely. The second door went okay... sorta. A middle-aged woman answered and she agreed to take one of the pamphlets, but she clearly was not interested. She was literally shutting the door on Sister Kozmenova's back, but Sister K kept fighting. She testified and testified about how important this message is and how much it would bless her family, but the lady wouldn't budge. I pretty much had to pull Sister K away from the door to keep her from getting crushed. Good times.
We went back to the apartment afterwards to grab some grub. After watching Sister Kozmenova make food for herself, I've discovered that Russians are the strangest cooks. Sister K literally threw whatever she felt like into a pot, cooked it, and ate it. Some strange creations were concocted in front of my eyes. Glad I didn't have to eat it. One day she made this nasty pasta thing with old cheese, olives, and mayo that physically made her gag. Her favorite thing to do is throw a bunch of sliced potatoes into a pot and add basically everything in the fridge on top of it. Cheese, olives, beets, tomatoes, celery, pasta, bread, mayo, ketchup, anything and everything. Very... unique?
I did a lot of contacting with Sister Kozmenova and it was quite the adventure. We talked to a lot of little old ladies because they can't run away very fast. They were all so sweet! There was one man that we tried to talk to but he clearly did not speak Russian. He walked up really close to us, muttered something unintelligible in some strange language, and did the weird cross sign over Sister K. I had to muster every fiber of my being to keep from bursting into laughter. It was great.

The next day I was with Sister James again and we had an appointment with an investigator named Marina in a beautiful park. I think it was called the English equivalent of "Liberty Park." It was so amazing! There were a few tank replicas, a cannon replica, and some soldier headstone displays throughout the park. There was also this really cool monument called the "Eternal Flame" that is circular and shape and has some symbolic pictures on the inside. There was supposed to be a flame burning on the top, hence the name, but there definitely wasn't a flame of any sort, so that was a lie. Anyways, I guess the only investigators that I met with in Tolyatti spoke English because Marina also spoke English. Marina and I are basically besties now. She was so nice and wanted to know all about where I came from, my mission call, my thoughts on Russia, and how America is. She was fantastic! Marina is learning Japanese right now and she loves anime and British shows. I hope I get to see her again someday!

Sister Johnson and I witnessed a few miracles this week! Here's one! After one of our appointments with an investigator fell through, Sister Johnson and I were kind of at a loss with what we should do. We called pretty much everyone we could think of to try to set up an appointment with no luck. After contacting for a while without any luck, Sister Johnson and I pulled ourselves off of the main sidewalk for a minute and said a quick prayer asking for miracles. After we closed the prayer, the first person we came across was named Vera (Russian word for faith). Her name fit the bill perfectly. Vera was quite an interesting lady. She isn't a lawyer, but she works for some sort of lawyer information firm. She expressed to us how much she wanted to talk to us and about how her daughter's family would most likely be interested as well. She literally was a miracle.
So... for the past couple of weeks, my District Leaders have begged me to straighten my hair. Since last Friday was the last District Meeting of the cycle, I decided to humor them and straighten it while I exercised that morning. It took an hour and I'm not sure if it was worth it, but I did it. Let me tell you, it is not easy to do wall-sits and yoga while straightening one's hair. Not at all.
Sunday was a very... different day. One of the Sisters in our zone, Sister Coleman, called and asked us if we could go on an exchange so that she could go to a Baptist church service. Of course we said yes. President approved it, but he thought it would be best if Sister Coleman went with one of us and not her native companion. Sister Johnson had to give a talk in our branch, so lo and behold, I got to go. Apparently the Sisters have this potential couple who are Baptists. They agreed to come visit our church on the condition that we visit theirs'. The Sisters' branch and the Baptist church started at the same time, so we figured it would just have to be a righteous sacrifice to miss our church. It took about 30 minutes to travel to the Baptist church but we arrived about 15 minutes early, so Sister Coleman and I just chilled at the bus stop in front of the church. While we were sitting there, we received a phone call from President and he sounded pretty frantic. He told us that apparently there had been some sort of misunderstanding and that we wouldn't be able to attend the Baptist church since it is at the same time as ours. He reminded us that it is a commandment to take the sacrament and that it definitely wasn't okay to go to another church in place of taking the sacrament. Totally didn't even think about that, but it makes sense. I guess I won't be getting baptized into the Baptist religion this week. Oh well!
That's all folks! Keep being good people and doing good things! Have a fantastic week!

Do Svidanya!
Love,
Cectpa Megan Wagstaff