Yeti Adventures

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was quite an adventure!

Oh Visa trip... SOOO tiring!!! I'm fairly certain I got a solid 4 hours of sleep between the night before and the night after. The trip was a solid 24 hours! We got up at 3 in the morning on Tuesday and got back at 3 in the morning on Wednesday. There were 6 Elders, 3 Sisters, and 2 Senior Couples on our trip. We flew on a total of 4 planes and had a combined air time of about 6ish hours. So many layovers... so much sitting... We didn't really do a whole lot in the airports. We didn't have a layover hardly at all once we got to Moscow the first time around, so we had to run like crazy people to get to our gate. We had 7 hours to kill when we were in the Riga, Latvia airport, so we ate a bunch of food despite the fact that we ate sandwiches on every single flight! There was a cool authentic Latvian café in the upstairs portion of the airport, so me and one of my travel buddies went up there to eat. There were all sorts of crazy juices, drinks, pancakes, soups, puddings and pies, and stuffed things to choose from. So good! 

We had some issues with switching passports when we got to Latvia, so that was an adventure, but everything was figured out by the time we left. For some reason, when our plane tickets were ordered, they put all of the missionaries except two on the same flight and then the senior couples on a different flight. Guess who was one of the two missionaries who got put in the senior couple group??? Meeeee! The other missionary was an Elder, so I had to be travel companions with and Elder!!! Dun dun DUUUUNNNN!!!! We had another long layover after we flew back to Moscow, so we did some more sitting. The Elders found a Burger King in the airport so of course they went there. The Sisters and I went to a pretty subpar pizza place that had cheesecake for some reason. Good stuff! One of the Elders on our flight back to Samara took NyQuil right when we got on the plane and he was literally acting high because he didn't want to let himself fall asleep until he got back to their apartment. His body was trying to sleep and he wouldn't let it so he basically acted like a drunk man. I shan't lie, it was very entertaining to watch.

Lots of craziness ensued this week. Here's a small list: One of the busses we were on got hit by a car (just ran into the bumper... hardly even made the bus shift), none of the busses we actually needed were running this week because of the weather, literally all of our plans fell through, and we got lost So. Many. Times. It was actually a really fun week because of how unpredictable it was, but it was also a very unusual one.

So far, this is the coldest week I've experienced on my mission. It was about -24C on Thursday, but with the wind chill it was -42C. That's real cold! It's definitely a struggle to talk to people when your face is covered in snow and you look like a yeti. Some people have sympathy for us and they listen for a little bit before they smirk and walk away. That's always nice!

We did see a miracle this week though! Since all of our plans fell through, we decided to call a former investigator. She sounded very excited to meet with us and we set up an appointment for the next day. I don't even know how to describe how the lesson went because I'm not even sure how the lesson went. She paused for a solid 45 seconds when we asked if we could start off with a prayer and then she went off about how badly she wanted to learn English...Then she talked about playing the piano...Then about her family... Then about us... and THEN we prayed. The rest of the lesson followed the same format. We only ended up talking about the Restoration for 10 percent of the lesson. We didn't feel like it was very successful when we left, but lo and behold, she came to church the next day! She bonded with lots of Sisters and asked a lot of great questions. Who knows... maybe she'll get baptized soon! We have faith!

Well, that's all folks! Make sure you stay warm and talk to yetis.

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff