Buses, Planes, and Witches... Oh My!‏

Zdrastvuitye!

What a busy week this has been! I have never traveled so much in my entire life. Good thing I love car rides and airplanes! I got to go on my Visa trip this week which entailed a road trip to Samara!

The week started off pretty normally, aside from all of the packing that I had to do. On Monday, we said goodbye to one of our dear friends from the branch who was moving to America the next day to get married. Pretty weird story... ask me about it later. On Tuesday, we spent the entire day running around from place to place so that I could say goodbye to my branch buddies. I am really going to miss living in Solnechney. I made so many close friends and lots of memories. I'm sure I'll come back to Russia someday and I'll get to see them again!

Wednesday was the craziest of crazy days. I was picked up in the afternoon in a van and headed out for a 9 hour road trip to Samara! The mission mini-bus is nothing short of an adventure every time I have the opportunity to ride in it. This trip was no exception. As usual, there was more luggage in the vehicle than people, and not enough space for either. We picked up and dropped off about four different sets of missionaries on the way to Samara, and I somehow transitioned from riding shotgun to being smashed in the back of the van between a duffel bag, a suitcase, a random pillow (eww...), and the window. The suitcase was directly in front of me taking up all of my leg room, and the duffel bag was teetering precariously on top of it. I had to keep pushing it back up periodically throughout the trip to keep from being crushed. I had no circulation in my legs for a majority of the ride, but thankfully the view of the beautiful Russian countryside distracted me from the pain.

When we finally got to my home in Samara, it was about 9 at night. Everything turned into a big party from there. There were 8 Sisters sleeping in that apartment that night, one of which was my MTC companion, Sister McKell, whom I hadn't seen in almost 8 months. It was a glorious reunion. It was really weird being back in the apartment that I lived in for my first 4 months in Russia. I had forgotten how much I missed it. It felt nice to be back, even though it was only for a short period of time.

Visa trips never cease to give me excitement. President Schwab says that we're not allowed to like Visa trips, but you cannot take away my love for "airport atmosphere" and airplanes! This Visa trip was so great! Well, except for the fact that my seat was booked next to disgusting men on every flight. Did not enjoy that aspect. Our Visa trip was to Riga, Latvia like my last one. We flew to Moscow, had a short layover, flew to Riga, had another short layover, and then flew back the way we came. When we were in Moscow airport, we found a place that supposedly had the best frozen yogurt ever, so of course we ate there. Yes, it was delicious, but it was like $12 for a smallish bowl of yogurt. Worth it? Yeah. In the Samara airport I bought a tiny version of the fur hats that Russians wear in the winter. Best purchase of my life. It will make a great Christmas ornament. The rest of the trip wasn't much to talk about. On our first flight we were given sandwiches that gave me food poisoning. Yay. I didn't feel the effects of the food poisoning until our second plane was about to take off, so I had to sit in my seat suffering for about 20 minutes until the plane took off. Not pretty. Other than that, it was a great trip.

Oh man, I am obsessed with Penza! I literally love it so much! Sister Thomas is such a great companion and I love her with all of my heart. Penza is a pretty modern looking city and it has a lot of hipsters that live here. Outside of the city is a huge, lush forest. Sister Thomas and I went "contacting" (we pretty much went on a little hike) in it for a little bit because it was really hot and we wanted to see if it was cooler in the forest than being on the street. It was. I cannot even describe how breath taking it was. I felt like I was in a fairy land or something. A fairy land that still has mosquitoes though. 

Yesterday there was a massive thunder storm!!! Thankfully we weren't on the street for very much of it, but guess who we were with? A witch. Not sure which option is worse. This isn't even a joke, she is literally a witch. She has certificates all of her house stating that she is a certified witch. I don't know what that entails, but I do know that she has some really disturbing stuff in her house. When she cracked open the door it was pitch black inside her apartment. She literally could not have opened the door in a creepier way than she did. She craned her neck out the door, opened her eyes really wide, and cocked her head all disturbing-like. Gave me the chills. She isn't even super old, but she has the face of a stereo-typical witch (minus the moles). The bulk of the storm started as we were sitting in her kitchen and she just sat there cackling and glaring at the lightning. She is a less active member who is obviously breaking the commandments by using black magic, she smokes, and she says that she can't come to church because her clients call her throughout the day so she can't leave. She is actually a super nice lady, she just has some not nice dealings with the "other side". I saw a little book of Tarat cards that she uses with her clients and she has told the Sisters before that she hears voices. Not good news. Sister Thomas and I left feeling really creepy and uncomfortable. There was not a very good spirit there at all. We had to just stand on the sidewalk for a few minutes and pull ourselves together after the lesson. Not an awesome experience. 

We did see a miracle this week aside from the scary one! While Sister Thomas and I were contacting around Penza, I handed a little church invitation to a couple of girls that were walking by us. As we continued to make our way down the street, one of the girls turned around and starting calling after us. I got all scared thinking she was going to get mad at us, so we just kept walking. I had a feeling that we should turn around, so we walked back towards them. Turns out, one of them is an English teacher and the other girl is an English student and after hearing our American accents, they wanted to know more about why we were here. They agreed to come to English group and they want to know more about the church! The English teacher even said, "I'm not a very religious person, is it still okay if I visit your church if I'm not religious?" Um... yeah! Such a great experience!

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Don't eat creepy sandwiches or hang out with witches during storms!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Bamboo Goats‏

Zdrastvuitye!

Transfers week!!! Sister Martinez and I were pretty positive that we were going to stay together for this next cycle, but that is not so. I am getting transferred to a city called Penza! It's about an 8 hour train ride away from Saratov, and a 9 hour train ride from Samara. I love Penza so much! I went there on exchanges during my second cycle in Russia and I had a blast! It is such a cute little city. My companion's name is Sister Thomas. I met her when she first came to Russia about three cycles after me and she is such a smarty! She studied at Yale and she already knew Russian before she came. I feel like she'll be helping me out with the language a lot. It'll be a fun time! My MTC companion, Sister McKell is going to be with Sister Martinez. This is the second time we've switched companions and areas and I haven't even gotten to see her in over 6 months. What a crazy life we live. I was pretty sad having to say goodbye to all of my friends in Saratov, but the Lord knows better than I do why I'm being sent to Penza.

I have a lot of stuff to pack and get ready for so this letter will be short. I have a visa trip on Thursday, and I think we are flying to Riga, Latvia again. Sometimes missionaries get to go to Ukraine or Armenia, but I think Riga has become the default now. I am so pumped for the visa trip! President Schwab told us that we're not supposed to like visa trips, but I love the atmosphere of airports and riding in airplanes, so you can't take away my joy!

Not a whole lot happened this week actually. Pretty much all of our investigators except for one fell off the face of the planet, and that one is out of town for a few weeks. We've been hitting the streets for pretty much the entire week. Not the funnest when it is over 100 degrees outside. We've spent a lot of our missionary money on ice cream, so we've had to cut that out of our budget because we're running low on money. We went contacting in the "outskirts" of our area where all of the forests and tiny houses are. We ended up following a little path that led to a bamboo field. It literally felt like I was in a dream or stuck in a computer wallpaper as we were walking through the bamboo. On the other side of the bamboo field it felt like we transported into the Shire from Lord of the Rings or something. We walked over the scariest looking bridge of my life and saw some old ladies looking over their goats that were chomping down on the bamboo plants. We went contacting next to a forest and we actually met a really nice lady who took a Book of Mormon and gave us her number. The forest was so beautiful!!! It looked exactly like something you'd see in a scary movie though. We didn't go in it, but I got eaten by mosquitoes nonetheless. Adventures!

Welp, that's all for this weeks folks! Soak in the airport atmosphere and don't go by forests without putting on bug spray.

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Lawyers and Thieves

Zdrastvuitye!

Phew! This week was both stressful and miraculous. Mostly miraculous. The Lord is not only shining his blessings on us, but also the sun. Literally. In our neck of the woods, the sun sets at 9 o'clock at night and rises at good old 2 o'clock in the morning. When we wake up at 6:30, it feels like it's already noon. Fun times! I have woken up at 4:30 in the morning almost every day this week thinking that I accidentally slept through the alarm because of how bright it was outside. Thankfully this is just a summertime thing. I'm definitely on a completely different side of the world. 

Soo... Remember that investigator who called us last week and said that she couldn't meet with us or get baptized anymore? Yeah, she got baptized yesterday! Sister Martinez and I went to Victory Park last P-day and whilst we were roaming around, we got a call from our investigator out of no where! She asked us if we could meet with her in 30 minutes. What?? Considering we weren't in town and it was P-day, we scheduled our meeting for the following day. Sister Martinez and I were pretty nervous about the meeting considering we hadn't heard from her in over a week and she dumped us like a pile of coal the last time we talked to her. She was happy as could be when she showed up to the lesson and she asked "so what is the lesson today?" when we all sat down. She acted like nothing happened, so we did too. We asked her if she still wanted to get baptized and she said yes. Her mom and grandma are still really against the church, but she still wanted to get baptized nonetheless. She feels the spirit so strong and she absolutely loves this church with all of her heart!

After that lesson was over, the member that we had on the lesson with us approached us about the legality of everything. Our investigator is a little bit handicapped and if it so happened that she legally wasn't able to make her own decisions without her mother's consent, then our meetings with her would be illegal and we could have gotten in a lot of legal trouble. Sister Martinez and I freaked out a little bit and called President Schwab. He instructed us to write a big old fancy letter to him explaining our investigator's situation and then he would forward it on to the Eastern European Area Mission Presidency who would review it and then send it on to the Church's Legal Department. Pretty intimidating... Let's just say that year of AP English really paid off. We even had a lawyer come to a later lesson with us to make sure that everything would be okay in terms of the legal stuff. Everything turned out peachy and she got baptized! Yay!

There is a lady in our branch named Svetlana and she is a handful. She is about 80 years old, 4 foot nothing, and she always gets what she wants. If you are standing in her way when she is walking, she will plow you down. If she decides that she wants the table from the church's kitchen moved into the Relief Society Room for no reason, you had better not question her. She comes to pretty much all of the activities just to steal food. Of course the treats are for everyone, but at the baptism she loaded up a giant bowl full of food, left, came back and filled up another giant bowl with food, left, came back and did it a third time! Nobody really knows how to approach her about her stealing problem because she could probably kill you before you even knew what happened. As we were cleaning up the treats, we noticed that one of our tupperware containers that we brought some banana bread muffins in was missing. We pretty much knew right off the bat who stole it, so while Svetlana was in the bathroom, we went and found her food stash. Sitting on top of her spoils was our container. We took it back and ran away before she could catch us. As soon as she noticed it was gone, she went on a hunt. She grabbed our bags and started rummaging around for the container. When she found it, she got all mad at us and told us that we have to give it to her. Yeah, that didn't happen. It's pretty sad because I know she probably doesn't have a lot of food, but that does not excuse breaking the Lord's commandments. Nonetheless, it was a pretty funny experience.

I ate some interesting things this week that ended up being super delicious. I tried some sushi here in Russia for the first time and it was SO GOOD! Considering we are right next to Asia, I don't know why I thought it would be any different. I also ate a bunch of strange sea creatures. I saw little container in a grocery store with octopus, shrimp, muscles, and all sorts of other critters in it and decided that I would try it out. Literally the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. Not the cheapest thing, but very tasty!

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Don't baptize anyone illegally and don't question stubborn old ladies!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Phone Fists‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, but that's just life I suppose. The weather is still nuts here! It has been in the 90s for a majority of the week, but there were a couple of days where Sister Martinez and I needed to grab some sweaters because it was cloudy and windy. I think this week it is supposed to be in the 70s, so that should be a nice change of pace. 

I'll start off with the series of unfortunate events since it has to do with the miracles that we saw last week. The two investigators who were planning on getting baptized together have now become former investigators. The first investigator called us the other day and immediately started off by saying "I do not want and I can not get baptized. I can't meet with you anymore and I will not be returning to your church." Not the best way to start off the morning. She told us that her mom has forbidden her from meeting with us anymore and won't allow her to even step foot in the church building. She will not give her daughter permission to get baptized and she even threatened her daughter with bodily harm if she continued to meet with us. Her mom has always been very against the church but we didn't think very much of it because the daughter is 30 years old. It has all just turned into a really sad situation. We thought that maybe we could just try to meet with her on the street or something so we tried to bribe her with cookies, which she initially agreed to, but her mom shut that down real quick once she found out. There's just not a whole lot we can do in that situation.

A very similar situation happened with our investigator's friend. Out of the blue she quit showing up to lessons, stopped answering our calls, and didn't reply to our text messages. We called her on Sunday morning to invite her to church and her mom actually answered the phone. I have never been yelled at over the phone until this day. When I told her that I couldn't actually understand anything that she was saying because she was talking too loud and fast, she got even angrier and started chewing me out in an over-exaggerated, slow, baby voice. I have never been talked to in such a disrespectful manner in my entire life. I have never wanted to punch somebody through the phone before, but nothing would have satisfied me more in that moment. Missionary work is supposed to bring people joy, including the missionaries, but in some instances it just brings a lot of anger and frustration. Not very Christlike, I know, but I was literally furious. I never really understood the phrase, "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me," because I was really hurt by what she said to me. I'm having a really hard time forgiving her because in her mind she was doing exactly the right thing and she probably doesn't feel bad about it in the slightest. We have the atonement to be able to forgive people, forgive ourselves, and recieve forgiveness, but I've been "struggling in the spirit" these past couple of days and it's been really hard to even have a desire to forgive her. I'm sure with time and a lot of prayer everything will be fine. Missionary work is pretty hard. Anyways, so that's another sad story. All we can do is keep praying for them and trusting that the Lord will work everything out.

Alright, enough of the sad stuff. We did have a series of fortunate events happen to us this week! This first story is kind of weird, but it will make a little bit more sense later. While Sister Martinez and I were contacting around our area, we met these two nice old ladies who were totally down to talk with us. We had a nice conversation about family and religion with them and then one of the old ladies left after taking a few brochures and a Book of Mormon. After talking to the second lady for a little while we noticed that she was a little bit drunk, not visibly drunk but we could definitely smell it. She started crying after her friend left and confided in us that she wanted to give up drinking. She told us that she had tried giving it up for years but she just couldn't do it. We told her that she would be able to give up alcohol and we would tell her how if she met with us that night (when she was less drunk). We set up a meeting with her, wrote it down for her, and reminded her about it a million times so that she wouldn't forget. Yeah, she forgot. She didn't show up that night, so Sister Martinez and I decided to just go knocking. At least it was an almost-miracle!

While Sister Martinez and I were knocking, we met one of the nicest ladies I've ever met in my life! We decided to go knocking because it was cold and windy outside (and we got dropped), and the lady who answered the door invited us in because she thought we were freezing to death or something. Apparently she knows English, Spanish, and Russian really well, so she got to practice her different languages with us while we chatted. Her and her husband actually live in Spain, but she lives with her mom for half of the year to take care of her. She loves traveling and has a strong love for humanitarian work. When we talked to her about why we're here and what we believe, she was very receptive and agreed to meet with us again. She was so sweet and she has so much potential! I am so excited to see what happens with her!

This week we had a zone conference and Elder Porter from the Quorum of the 70 came and spoke to us. It was really great and really inspiring, but what was even greater was that me and Sister Martinez got to hang out with his wife and son for the evening. His son served in this mission about 14 years ago and he wanted to come visit some of his former investigators and converts. He served in the area where Sister Martinez and I are, so we got to chauffer him and his mom around. It was really great meeting some of the less actives that I didn't even know existed that he baptized, and we received a lot of referrals. Such a cool day!

Lesson that I learned this week: Don't scratch your bug bites, regardless of how many or how itchy they are. One of the bug bites on the upper part of my calf that was pictured last week got infected. Really infected. At the beggining of the week, Sister Martinez and I had some Sisters over for exchanges when I started noticing that one of my bug bites was gradually getting larger. A couple days past and it didn't go away. I figured it was just getting irritated by my skirt hem constantly rubbing against it, so I just ignored it. By the time the Sisters were about to go back home at the end of the week, it was pretty massive. It was red, swollen to about the size of a tennis ball, and it felt like a baby furnace on my leg. Definition of infected. One of the Sisters that I was on exchanges with was disgusted with my calf and made me call Sister Schwab and tell her about my creepy leg. Yep... infected. Now I am on some lovely antibiotics and my leg is looking a lot less creepy. The members were all whispering behind me and pointing at my bug bite at church yesterday, so it definitely isn't gone, but it will be soon! Don't touch your bug bites!

Last note... Russian ice cream is amazing. I ate it multiple times this week to the point where I had to make myself a "1 cone a day" rule because I ate 4 in one day once. I do not want to look like a fat woodland animal when I get home, so this rationing is necessary. Amen.

Welp, that's all folks! Don't let people yell at you on the phone and please wear bug spray when you are outside!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Burns and Bugs‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was a good one! A hot one... but a good one! I got a sunburn after being outside for only an hour. Also, the mosquitoes are alive and well in good old Russia. I counted my bug bites the today and I have 55 mosquito bites on me right now... 33 on one leg (the pictured one). It has been really rainy and stormy for the past couple of days, so the mosquitoes are loving the puddles. I heard that the mosquitoes will start to die off from the heat in the next couple of weeks, so I am looking forward to that. Bug spray and sun screen are on the shopping list today. 

Sister Martinez and I were in Balakova for the first half of this week and it was a blast! The bus ride there and back was great! Thankfully there was air conditioning on the first bus, so that was a blessing. We ended up talking to the people sitting next to us on the last half of the trip to Balakova, and it was quite miraculous. One of the girls that I talked to was so excited that we were from America and took advantage of the opportunity to talk to us in English. Sister Martinez ended up teaching a different lady the Restoration before we arrived at our destination. It was a really great experience. The bus on the way back to Saratov did not have air conditioning, so Sister Martinez and I looked like discheveled hobos when we got back home. I don't know why, but the ride back home was so much bumpier than the ride there. I almost got a concussion like 20 times because there was a big metal pole in front of my seat that I almost faceplanted into everytime we hit a bump. Other than than, I had a wonderful time in Balakova, but it's definitely a lot different than being in a big city like I'm used to.

Balakova is so beautiful! It is a small town outside of Saratov and it is so green. Very foresty and cute. The are Jehovah's Witnesses EVERYWHERE! They are almost as bad as the mosquitoes. I accidentally sat by a Jehovah's Witness on the bus who was trying to convert the lady sitting next to her. I got really uncomfortable and just sat there silently. When we got to our stop, I dropped a brochure on the victimized lady's purse and bolted off the bus. I hope she read it! I've been told multiple times that Balakova is the "place of miracles" and that is definitely not a lie. We met a lot of really amazing people on the streets and got some lessons set up with them. Elder Russell M Nelson went to Moscow on Tuesday night and the conference was broadcasted to all of the church buildings in Russia. We took an investigator and got to watch it. He talked about 10 things that he has learned in his life and promised a lot of blessings. I can't remember all of the 10 things that he stated, but all of the points related to the information in the message of the Restoration. It was really great!

The apartment in Balakova is pretty old and ghetto, so that was a fun adventure. The bathroom door doesn't have a latch that keeps it shut, so their door has a lock that looks like the kind that you would find in a community restroom stall. The little metal stick that you slide into the hole on the door frame falls out a lot, so you have to go on a scavenger hunt to find it before you go to the bathroom sometimes. Also, their apartment has been without hot water for the past couple of weeks so if we wanted to take a shower, we had to fill up a bowl with water that we heated in a kettle, mix in enough cold water to make it a bearable temperature, and then use little plastic cups to bath ourselves. Such a fun time! The first night that we were over there, one of the sisters decided to throw in a load of laundry while we were getting ready for bed. After we all finished our nightly prayers, we hear a "Uh... we have a small problem," come from the kitchen. The kitchen floor was flooded with water!!! Apparently the hose that drains the water from the laundry machine came detached and all of the water got pumped onto the kitchen floor. Literally so funny, but everyone was freaking out! I wonder if the neighbors underneath us got a nice shower? I loved Balakova but it was nice to get back to our area and help out our own investigators.

Our investigator who invited her friend on the lesson with her last week finally agreed to be baptized! At the end of one of our lessons, we extended the baptismal invitation again with an official baptismal date, and our investigator's friend said "yes!" without hesitation. Then we tossed the question over to our investigator and she said, "I'll get baptized sometime after her." After explaining that she could be baptized on the same day as her friend, she said, "Alright, then let's do it." Sister Martinez and I were ecstatic! So exciting! They are both progressing beautifully and I am excited to see what the Lord has in store for them!

Sister Martinez got a package from her family this week and it was FULL of Mexican candy. Such a funny family! They also sent her the movie "Meet the Mormons" and we got permission to watch it today, so guess what we're going to do? Yep, your guess is probably right. Excited! It is so wierd to me that all Mexican candy is spicy. I love it! I ate a lolly pop yesterday that you had to lick through a layer of chili peppers before you could get to the sugary sucker part, but even the sucker had chili peppers in it. It was pretty hot.  

This week President Porter, the area President, is coming down to Saratov for a zone conference and we are so excited! We all have our fingers crossed that he is going to announce that a stake is going to be formed in Saratov. How amazing would that be? We are anxiously waiting for that day to happen.

Well, that's all for this week folks! Wear bug spray and lock your bathroom doors!

Do Svidanya!

Love, 

Sister Megan Wagstaff