Ocean Shoes‏

Zdrastvuitye!

Wow, this week was very moist. There were lots of thunderstorms and the rain was abundant. So far, my rainboots have been one of the smartest purchases that I have made on my mission. Note: They are only helpful if you remember to wear them when it is raining. Speaking of smart purchases, I have gotten into a terrible habit of dozing off during personal study from being so tired, so I was determined to find a solution this week. Sister Thomas and I have been doing a lot of contacting lately, so I have been going to bed exhausted and waking up exhausted. Not a great recipe when you have an hour of silence to study on your own every morning. So, to solve this problem, I bought an exercise ball. Not only have my morning workouts gotten a lot better (which unfortunately also makes me more tired), but I use it as my desk chair during studies. Number one: Having to balance myself on the ball keeps me awake and alert whilst I am studying. Number two: If I do fall asleep, I will come crashing to the ground which will wake me up. Win, win. So far it is working and I haven't had to crash to the ground to reap the benefits.

Anyways, Sister Thomas and I had a few interesting lessons this week. One of our new investigators, Valentina, can only meet with us in the wee hours of the night on the street on her way home from work. Apparently her husband is super controlling and he doesn't like her going anywhere without him knowing. She just meets with us after work so that he won't ask questions. Pretty weird. Valentina and the member that we had on the lesson with us became best friends and that made the lesson so wonderful. I think a little bit of Valentina's husband's personality rubbed off on her because she was super paranoid about every single thing that was going on around us during the lesson. She wouldn't let us pray on the street for like 10 minutes because she was afraid that someone would walk by, see her, and hunt her down while she was at work. She was so convinced that some random person was just going to walk up to us and kick us off of the bench that we were sitting on, which gave her so much stress for some reason. She was paranoid that someone in the building next to us would be peering out of their window and spying on us (which is valid because that usually does happen). She asked us if we knew every single person that walked by and what their relationship was to us. It was just really weird. Thankfully she moved past her paranoia after about 15 minutes and we were able to talk about the Restoration with her. It ended up being a really great lesson! The only issue with her is church attendance because her husband will question her about it and won't let her go. With time things will get better with her husband as she comes to learn and love the gospel.

We also had a lesson with another new investigator named Anya and it was literally insane. This was the first time that we had met with her before, so of course we wanted to start off with the Restoration. Little did we know that Anya loves studying about crazy religion theories and philosophies and stuff like that, so it was really hard to keep everything in focus. Unfortunately the lesson took a drastic turn to the Plan of Salvation, and the member that we had with us had just come out of inactivity, so she didn't understand the Plan of Salvation AT ALL. They both got in an argument about something to do with archangels and then they both turned on us and started arguing about reincarnation. Yeah, it is really difficult to tenderly answer the question: "Well, how come some people can remember their past lives before this one? Hmm???" It is especially difficult to answer that when your member has turned on you too. In the end, thankfully no one hated each other and only a little bit of false doctrine was taught by our member. 

On Saturday Sister Thomas and I had quite the adventure. It was raining and thunderstorming the entire day, so it's a good thing that all of our lessons fell through that day. Not. I have never been so soaking wet in my entire life. When we went outside in the afternoon the weather too bad. It sprinkled a little bit, but nothing too crazy. Contacting in this kind of weather is great because nobody is running away from storms or hiding inside from the lightning. Within the first 30 minutes of being outside Sister Thomas and I gave out 2 Book of Mormons! That is such a miracle! Lately we have just been praying to give out one Book of Mormon a day because no one has been taking them. We had to hurry home and grab some more books since we had given out our only ones. We live right across the street from a beautiful performance hall and I guess it was some sort of "Russian Pride Day" or something on Saturday so there were booths set up all over the performance hall grounds, there was a band, and a bunch of activities for kids. We decided to take a little bit of our meal time to look around after we grabbed some more books and at that point it started dumping rain. I am not exaggerating when I say dumping. The thunder was louder than I have ever heard it in my life, there was lightning flashing all around us, and there were baby oceans in my shoes. I absolutely love thunderstorms, but I love them a little bit less when I have to contact in them. Needless to say, nobody wanted to talk to us on the street. The storm didn't let up all day and Sister Thomas ended up forgetting her umbrella at a bus stop while she was fixing one of her shoes so we had to run around under my tiny umbrella. Such an adventure. We ended up resorting to bus contacting to get out of the rain and we got lost a few times. There were no people on the buses since there wasn't anybody on the streets. I thought it was pretty fun. The bus conductors don't like it very much when you don't get out though. 

Welp, that's all for this unusually entertaining week. Sit on exercise balls and wear your rain boots!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff