Dough Boy Races‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was quite the interesting one. Not as interesting as last week, but slightly entertaining nonetheless. Sister Thomas and I are still rocking the training life. Loving it! Our apartment is still without hot water. Loving it! I always feel like a wee pioneer whilst I'm carrying my bucket of water heated on the stove to the bathroom. Except that's not even what pioneers did. Whatever. It's pretty old-fashioned. The weather is starting to get a bit colder outside. It's been cold enough to need a sweater outside, but there are still some days where it's around 80 degrees. Pretty bipolar, but it's leaning towards the cold side. I'm ready for the snow! Bring it!

We had quite a diverse variety of experiences with investigators this week. We were able to miraculously find and teach a new investigator, and we also had to drop one. The one that we found really was a miracle. Our teaching pool is getting pretty shallow, mostly because literally every one of our investigators is out of town, so we decided to call a random number on our phone. The one that we picked ended up being a referral from one of the members in the branch. We called her up and set up a meeting for that night. Aside from the fact that the member was sleeping in her chair for most of the meeting and the investigator just shrugged every time we asked her a question, the lesson went pretty well... I think. She wouldn't agree to be baptized, but she'll come around eventually. She agreed to read from the Book of Mormon and read through the Restoration brochure, so that's a start. The member fed us grapes that she rinsed off in a bowl that I'm fairly certain had tacos or something in it. They don't even eat tacos in Russia, but there was some kind of creepy oil film on the grapes with a hint of hispanic seasoning. There were old cheese chunks in the bowl and some other matter that I couldn't identify. Also, she took the bowl into the bathroom to rinse them off. There isn't a sink in there. Food safety is clearly not a priority in some households. 

The investigator that we had to drop has been dropped many-a-time before, but she keeps calling the Sisters out of nowhere saying that she wants to meet with us. It's hard to say no when you have an entire day of contacting ahead of you and then someone magically wants to meet. Yeah, sometimes it's not worth it. Basically, the only thing that's come out of missionaries meeting with her is that she has a desire to learn more about her own religion. *Face palm* No. She absolutely will not do anything that we ask her and she has zero desire to be baptized or change. Drop it like it's hot. We felt so bad saying goodbye to her though because she's literally one of the nicest people I've ever met and she loves the missionaries as friends so much. She even made us little fried pies which I felt guilty for eating after we threw her under the rug. They were still good though. She'll have a change of heart. I know it.

Funny story! So, there's this little town outside of Penza called Ахуны (pronounced uh-hoo-nee) that's on the outskirts of our area. One evening, Sister Thomas and I didn't have anything to do, so we decided to bus out to Ахуны and find some new diciples of Christ. Basically, nobody was outside while we were there, so we went on a little quest in the forest to find somebody. The forest was beautiful, as always. As we were making our way down the beaten forest path, a heavenly scent entered our nostrils. The aroma was that of a sweet Pilsbury Dough Boy stuffed with sugar, spice, and everything nice (not really, I just can't put into words how amazing it smelled). Real swift-like, our quest switched from finding diciples of Christ to finding the source of the smell (just kidding, we never do that). As soon as Sister Thomas and I acknowleged the scent in the air, we literally starting bolting down the trail trying to find some sort of house or building that might contain the sugary goods. After running for about 35 minutes with no luck, we decided to throw in the towel. Someday we will return and find them. Someday.

Sister Thomas and I met a really cool kid on the bus yesterday on our way home for the night. He was about our age and he had a man-bun on his head, so we just ignored him as we were being hooligans in the back of the bus. Yeah, after about 20 minutes, man-bun kid turned to us and started speaking to us in perfect english. He was actual really cool and we committed him to come to english club! Miracle! I hope he starts meeting with the Elders and gets baptized. 

Yeah, so I get food poisoning a lot. I got it again this week actually. Last P-day Sister Thomas and I bought this delicious looking bread that had some sort of cream-cheesy type of topping on it that was amazing, but apparently bad. Also, Sister Thomas unknowingly made us a smoothie out of milk that smelled like it was milked from tiny shrimp utters. I have never smelled milk that was so rank in my entire life. Yep, innocently drank that. Let's just say Sister Thomas and I were taking turns going in and out of the bathroom for most of the next morning. Always a fun time. Welcome back food poisoning. Don't come again.

Side note... I dyed my hairs again. Since it is starting to get colder outside, I switched back to my darker side since the sun won't bleach it out as badly in the winter. I really like it!

Anyways, that's all for this week folks! Don't eat grapes that came out of the bathroom or drink milk that smells like sea creatures! Have a nice week!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Surprises and Cemeteries‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was full of lots of adventures! Sister Thomas and I are having way too much fun together and we are pretty much always in a state of hysterical laughter. Good times. I had forgotten how crazy living in Russia is until I became companions with Sister Thomas. Her fresh American eyes are swift to notice all of the crazy Russian things that have become so normal to me. Yay, Russian life!

First off, on the 13th was my official year mark on the mission! Whoo-hoo! Man, time is flying! Anyways, of course Sister Thomas and I had to get something yummy to celebrate, so we went to this delicious cake shop called Шоколад.RU (Chocolate Russia). They make about a million different kinds of delicious cupcakes and cakes and things, but my favorite is a little chocolate-almond-pistachio flavored cake. It has a little slab of chocolate cake on the bottom, chocolate cream on top of that, an almond-pistachio cream on top of that, and then a thin slab of bright green fondant to cover it all up. Literally the most delicious cake I have ever put in my mouth. But guess what?? They didn't have it. Guess who didn't get to eat their favorite cake?? Me. It's okay though... we went back the next day and celebrated my year and a day mark with the pistachio cake. Heavenly.

This week we also had a surprise Zone Conference! By surprise, I mean that I straight up forgot about it. The Elders called us Monday night and asked, "So you know what time your train is leaving tomorrow, right?".... "Uhhh... what?" Yeah. Forgot about that. Frantic packing and snack buying ensued the next morning. At that point I had already sent out about 40 english group reminder texts that I had to back-track and fix. Lots of fun. Zone Conference is so worth it though! I love trains, so I wasn't upset about that surprise at all. Speaking of trains, the bathrooms in trains are pretty sketchy, meaning, when you flush the toilet on the train, a little flap opens up at the bottom of the bowl and you are dead on looking at the train tracks whoosh beneath you. After this discovery, Sister Thomas and I spent a little more time than we should have looking for "logs" on the tracks outside our window. No success. Yet. Anyways, I felt so much peace being back at home in Samara after our train ride. Everything was so familiar, except for the fact that it wasn't covered in deadly ice like it was when I lived there. Such a fun place. Zone Conference was amazing, as usual. I always get a much needed spiritual boost after Conferences and Trainings. I learned a lot and I am excited to apply the things that I learned into the work.

When we got back from Conference a couple days later, I took Sister Thomas to see the Russian Cemetery that Sister Thomas the older and I went to a few weeks ago. We actually saw some cool miracles on the way there. On the road across the street from the cemetery is a little stretch of flower shops that sell a variety of fake flowers to stick on people's graves. Normally Sister Thomas the older and I would just walk on by, but Sister Thomas and I decided to talk to the owners as we made our way through. The first few people were busy cleaning up their flower stalls, but they gladly accepted brochures and promised to read them. I was a little bit nervous as we approached a couple of women who were having a conversation; thinking that they would hate me if we interupted their conversation. I almost shyed away from the opportunity to talk to them, but I felt prompted to engage them in a conversation. Wanting to "one-up" Satan for making me scared in the first place, I approached them with the intent of having the best conversation they'd ever had in their lives. In the beginning, one of the women was pretty cold to us, but in the end she took a Book of Mormon and said that she would come to English Group sometime! The other woman almost accepted a Book of Mormon, but told us honestly that she wasn't going to read it, so she kindly returned it to us. She agreed to come to church if she had time though! They were both really nice and very open. Imagine how much they (and I) would have missed out on had I yielded to my initial fear. The Lord will always help us as long as we are doing our part. Miracles everywhere!!

The cemetery was creepy, as usual. There were a ton of headstones that had big, human-length mounds of dirt just chilling in front of them, which really freaked out Sister Thomas and I. I kept thinking that I would accidentally expose a dead foot or something if I ran into one of the mounds. Real creepy. I don't know if the bodies are actually inside the dirt hills, but I don't really want to find out. Nobody was in the cemetery, but Sister Thomas and I had a deep conversation about death as we were walking around. Yeah.

Remember that member that I visited a few weeks ago named Lada? The one with all of the pictures of her face on her walls? Yeah. Sister Thomas and I dropped by her house again to do a little spiritual thought, and I don't think I will ever forget (nor can I forget) what transpired in that meeting. We played a game using the scriptures and then I let Sister Thomas and Lada get to know each other a little more. Sister Thomas showed Lada her little picture book and we convinced Lada to show us her pictures as well. With a little encouragement, she finally fetched her photo album. So we thought. She ended up walking back with about 8 photo albums. A few of which were her family and friends. A few of which contained some of the art that artists have made for her. And a few of which were pictures of her bare naked body modeling for artists before she was a member!!! Let me remind you that she is like 75 years old... she got baptized about 5 years ago... these pictures weren't that old... but she is. Oh the wrinkles. I pray that you will never have to endure such a sight. *Cringe and shiver* Anyways... We commited her to write her testimony in a Book of Mormon and give it to someone. Hopefully something good will come of that visit. Yikes.

The hot water has been turned off in our apartment for almost two weeks now. Sister Thomas has yet to experience a warm shower in Russia. Hehe. After the first week, we were getting pretty tired of shreiking and cringing whilst in the shower, so we have henseforth resorted to bathing the old fashion way by heating up a pot of water and cooling it down with a bucket of normal water. Great fun! When in Russia, live as the Russians do. Actually, the Russians probably just suck it up and bathe in their cold water. Who knows. There is now a creepy residue in my hair from not being able to clean it properly, but whatever. That is why the Lord created hair buns, I guess. 

Well, that's it for this weeks folks! Don't dig around in cemetery mounds and be careful about the pictures that you put in your photo albums!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Mosquito Massacre‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was majestic... just majestic. My new companion and I are literally two peas in a pod. Two scoops of icecream in a cone. Two stamps on an envelope. Two meatballs in an italitan sub. You get the point. Anyways, we instantly became best friends upon the first meeting and we are too insane for anyone's good. Thankfully (and ironically) my new companion's name is Sister Thomas! It usually takes me forever to learn my companions' names and I typically have to awkwardly glance at their nametags before it starts to stick. Since my last companion and my new companion have the same last name, all is well in the kingdom. Oh man, I love her so much! She is from California and she and I are goobers together. Our district and our branch think that we are crazy, which isn't completely inaccurate. We always have so much fun together! It is going to be a great cycle, I just know it! I'll talk about her more later.

Saying goodbye to my old companion Sister Thomas was pretty sad. We had a fun, peaceful companionship and I learned so much from her. We had some deep spiritual chats on the train ride to Samara before we parted ways. I'm going to miss that little nugget, but I will get to see her at Zone Conferences and stuff, so it wasn't a heart-wrenching farewell. She's going to do great in the homeland!

On Monday night, all of the Sisters who were about to become trainers stayed in the Bezi Sister's apartment (it's about an hour away from the main office). Upon arrival, we were immediately warned about the excessive amount of mosquitoes that infested their apartment. Considering how many times I've been eaten alive on my mission, I wasn't even a little bit worried about it. And then we went to sleep. I kid you not, every twenty seconds I would hear the buzzing of a mosquitoes wings in my eardrum. Every twenty seconds. I had to shoot my arms out from under the sheets and flail around like a crazy baboon to keep them from eating me. I only got about 4 hours of sleep that night. Regardless of my efforts to keep them away, I woke up with about 4 or 5 bug bites on my face. *Sigh* The next morning, one of the sisters was super peeved about the mosquito infestation, so she and I created a mosquito hunting pact and spent our entire companionship study killing all of the mosquitoes in sight. There were about 7 mosquites just chilling on the ceiling when we started the hunt, so we tried spraying them down with water... yeah... didn't work. The water made them fly from the ceiling to the wall, which made it easier for us to kill them, but I called it a hunt for a reason. It literally took us the entire hour to kill most of them; there were a couple that disappeared. There was blood and mosquito carnage all up in that room by the end of the hour. That night we were again paranoid about the missing mosquitoes, so we doused all of the beds in bug spray. It smelled like a nasty campsite in there. Worth it! Not a bite was bitten on my body when I awoke the next morning. Victory!

The next day was so crazy! Everyone was so nervous and worried about who their companions were going to be! We all decided that we would sit down together as trainers and talk about things that we liked and disliked when we were being trained so that we could figure out what to do with our new missionaries. Only one of the five soon-to-be trainers had ever trained before, so it wasn't actually a huge help. "Don't die and don't let them die"... that's basically the only piece of advice that I absorbed from that little pow wow. We were all shakey chihuahuas as we waited to meet our new missionaries in the office. When I found out that I would be with Sister Thomas, a wave of relief rushed over me and all of the nervousness went away. I would have been fine with any of the other Sisters, but it was just comforting to know that the Lord had his hand in choosing our companionship. We bonded right away and have had a blast together ever since. Unfortunately she was sick when she came to Russia, so I've been trying to nurse her back to health ever since she's gotten here. I've had so much fun showing her around and giving her advice on things to say and such. Sister Thomas pretty much came pre-trained, so there's not much to worry about. Lucky us, our hot water turned off the day that we got to Penza, so Sister Thomas has yet to experience a warm shower in Russia. Fun, fun! Welcome to Russia!

We've already seen so many miracles in our companionship and we haven't even been together for a week yet. We handed out two Book of Mormons the first time we went contacting, and then another one the next day. I don't know why, but giving out Book of Mormons is kind of a hard task, so it was really interesting to see how much the Lord helped us out in that aspect. Pretty cool! Sister Thomas also got to experience having two lessons in a row fall through. Good times. Great learning opportunities! But yeah, this week has been great! Many more great ones to come!

Welp, that's all folks! Spray down your beds with bugspray and shake like chihuahuas!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Babies and Berets

Zdrastvuitye!

Transfer calls are in! I'm having a baby!!!! A new missionary, that is! On Wednesday I get to pick up my bouncing new baby fresh from America! I get to be a trainer!!!! I am literally so excited! Sister Thomas and I have been cleaning the apartment like frantic house-maids to get it ready for the new missionary. It is going to be such an adventure. I am glad that I will be able to train in Penza. I love Penza will all of my heart, and it will be great training-grounds. Sister Thomas will be moving to Avrora (my birth place) and she will finish up training a sister who is going into her second cycle. I am sad to say goodbye to Sister Thomas, but the Lord has so much in store for us this coming cycle. Sister Thomas and I will be taking a train to Avrora in the next few hours and from there we will part ways. I will be working in Bezi (the area right next to Avrora) on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday I will get to meet my trainee! There are five sisters coming in this cycle, which is crazy since we've only had one new sister come in over the past 3 cycles. Man, I am so pumped! President doesn't make his final decision on who is training who until he interviews all of the new missionaries and the trainers. Of course he has them picked out already, but nothing is finalized until he prays about it after talking with us. I was originally supposed to be trained in Saratov with a completely different companion but it ended up getting changed the last 5 minutes after he prayed about it. The Lord knows better than we do!

Anyways, this week was super busy! Sister Thomas had a feeling that she would be leaving Penza, which is understandable since she has lived here for 7 months, so we spent the week meeting with her favorite members and saying goodbye to everyone. We had quite a few unexpectedly interesting meetings with some of our investigators. First of all, a random old lady showed up at the front of the church building while we were having a lesson and she ended up preaching to us about Christ. She was looking at a poster with pictures of Mormon temples on it that we have hanging in one of the front windows of the church, and she thought they were so beautiful, but she thought it was so wrong that they didn't have crosses on them. We explained to her that we don't have crosses on our temples or churches because Christ still lives and we don't need a symbol of his suffering ornamented on everything to remind us of his sacrifice, but she wasn't taking it. We ended up standing in front of the church for 30 minutes while she relayed Christ's Earthly ministry and atonement to us. In the end, she took a brochure and said she'd come to church sometime. Thankfully we had a really good member with us that kept our investigator entertained during all of that.

Strike number three! For the third time this cycle Sister Thomas and I had to have a throwdown about why reincarnation is not a real thing. The crazy thing is, two out of the three conversations were with members of the church. What?? No... just no. People get pretty defensive about their beliefs on the afterlife. Throughout my entire mission I have never, not once, had to address or clear up the "theory" of reincarnation. Sometimes people would ask, "Do you believe in reincarnation?" and we would say, "No." End of conversation. I have never come across a person who actually believed in it! We were able to get everything cleared up with one of the members, aside from the fact that she thinks her cat is her reincarnated friend who committed suicide a few years ago. Didn't even know how to go about addressing that. The other member is still pretty lost in the dark. We're working on it. The investigator who believes in reincarnation is taking everything really slowly, so she'll come to know the truth in time. They will learn.

This weekend was a really big holiday in Russia called "Paratroopers' Day" and apparently it is super dangerous for us Americans, so we had 3 lockdown days where we had to be inside our apartment by 6pm. I don't really know what Paratroopers' Day consists of, but yesterday there were a lot of men walking around wearing blue berets and some of them were waving weird flags that I had never seen before. I heard that in bigger cities they make a bigger deal about Paratroopers' Day. They roll in tanks and march the troops and have parades... the whole shabang. Penza isn't too big so, to my knowledge, none of that happened here. I don't really know though because we were inside. I am glad that we were inside because a few of the members warned us that we needed to be extra careful on the streets because of all of the drunk people. Sister Thomas and I made lots of food and studied during our lock-in time. Fun, fun.

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Watch out for cats that might be your deceased friends and don't mess with men wearing blue berets.

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff