This week was one of the strangest and hardest weeks I've had on my mission. I don't even know if I can accurately depict all of the shenanigans that happened. It wasn't an awful week, but I've certainly had better. We did see a lot of miracles, but a majority of the week was, indeed, a series of unfortunate events.
First off, I knew that we were supposed to have exchanges at some point during the week, I just didn't know when or who was going where. I thought that Sister Thomas and I would be going to Samara for the exchange, since that's what was decided when we talked with the Sister Training Leader about a month ago. When we still hadn't heard anything about the exchange by Sunday, I texted Sister Sotnikova, the Sister Training Leader, and asked her what was going down. She informed us that they would be arriving in Penza the following night. Sister Thomas and I started flipping nuggets trying to get the apartment clean and appointments set up in time for their arrival. Stress to the max! Thankfully everything came together alright. Both of the Sisters in that companionship are Russian, so Sister Thomas was a wee bit nervous about that.
Literally the weirdest exchange of my entire life. I was with Sister Sotnikova for the first day, and everything started off all fine and dandy. We had a solid lesson about the Plan of Salvation with one of the members who believes in reincarnation. No false doctrine was taught from either end, but she still believes in reincarnation. She's getting ready to go to the temple for the first time in about a month, so we have to shut down her crazy ideas real quick-like. The rest of the day was just insane. We didn't have any other lessons planned for the evening, so we had a big old 3-hour block of contacting ahead of us. After walking around for about 30 minutes, we met this super nice lady sitting on a park bench. We parked it next to her and had a really good conversation for a little while. Then, this big old drunk man waddles up to us and starts predicting our future. I don't know why Sister Sotnikova wasn't freaked out by the whole situation, but she just sat there all chill-like while he was lumbering around. The prediction that he gave me was a good one though. I accept it. He said that I will die when I am 92 and 6 months old, everyone will want to be friends with me throughout my life, and in 6 years and 3 months I will be rich. Drunk-man knowledge for you. He stuck around for about 25 more minutes while we were trying to have a spiritual conversation with this lady, and then we finally left. He was harmless, just irritating. He called himself Drunk Buddah or something. Wise and hammered. We contacted for another hour or so after we all parted ways and then we headed home. Guess who we saw as we were walking home?? Mhmm... Drunk Buddah. We gave him a Plan of Salvation brochure and told him that the people at church would be able to help him out if he came to church. He started crying and tried to initiate a group hug that was shut down by us running swiftly away.
*Pause* Here are a couple more drunk-people experiences that we had this week. Whilst Sister Thomas and I were trying to find the address of a less active, I unknowingly asked for directions from a drunk woman. She ended up being super nice and she was infatuated by the fact that she was talking to two Americans, but she was also pretty touchy. She randomly kissed my arm during the conversation and then kissed my cheek about 6 times as we were saying goodbye to her. Then, as we were coming home after finding the address, there was a drunk man sprawled out on the ground sleeping in front of our apartment building. So graceful. I have never had so many encounters with drunk people in my entire mission and I am not planning on having any more. They are fun to watch from a distance, but emphasis on the "from a distance" part. No more!
The next day wasn't quite as odd, but it wasn't the most fun. I was with the other Russian sister, Sister Mateikina, on Wednesday. We only had one appointment scheduled for the day, which ended up falling through because the lady didn't show up. My head started to hurt pretty bad whilst we were waiting for the lady to come, and we unfortunately had to spend the rest of the night inside because it developed into a migraine. The Russian sisters kept freaking out about my health and they asked me about a million times if they needed to call an ambulance to have the doctors check out my head. After convincing them that I just needed to sleep it off, they peacefully left and let me sleep.
The following day wasn't any less strange. Apparently there was a Missionary Leadership Council scheduled for that morning, and since Sister Sotnikova is a Sister Training Leader, she had to be there. We all had to wake up super early in the morning to be ready and at the church in time to Skype in. They informed me, very last minute, that I would have to translate everything from English to Russian for Sister Sotnikova since no one else would be around to do it for her. Fun surprise! It was definitely a humbling experience to discover that my Russian wasn't as good as I had previously thought. It wasn't awful, but it certainly wasn't a great translating job. It certainly gave me some motivation to work harder on my Russian.
Speaking of needing to work harder on my Russian, here's another experience where the Lord humbled me for thinking my Russian was sufficient. The following evening, somebody called the phone to our apartment from the pager outside, which we always ignore since it's usually just someone wanting us to open the building door for them. We went about our business and a couple of minutes later we heard a knock at our door. I thought it was going to be a salesman or something, but upon looking through the peep-hole, it was a police man! Not knowing if we should just ignore it or open the door, Sister Thomas and I stood there in shock for a good minute or so. Not wanting to get thrown in Russian prison for not opening the door when we were home, I pulled myself together and opened the door. He started talking super fast and I could only pick out a few words that I understood. I stepped out of the way so that he could come in and he asked to see our Registration. We showed him our information, chatted for a bit, and then he left. He was actually super nice, but I literally have no idea why he stopped by wanting to see our Registration. I freaked out at the fact that I had just given our information to a police man without knowing the reason why, so I called the lady in charge of our legal stuff from our branch. I explained what happened and she just laughed and told us not to worry about it. She said that sometimes they just stop by to make sure that there aren't any illegal residents living in an apartment. I'm still a little worried about it, but no one got thrown in prison, so that's good I suppose.
*Sigh* Despite all of the insanity that ensued this week, Sister Thomas and I did see some miracles! During and after exchanges with the Sisters, we gave out a total of 22 Books of Mormon over the course of the week. HUGE miracle! That would normally take us at least a month to accomplish. Amazing! Then, on Sunday, one of the members in our branch invited someone to come to church with him, and she came! He is a bus driver and he became friends with this particular passenger a few days ago. He gave her a Book of Mormon, invited her to church, and now we have a meeting set up with her for Saturday! Member missionary work is so important! The Lord is blessing this area through the members.
Also, guess who FINALLY has hot water, as of this morning? This companionship does! I thought we were going to have hot water a tad bit earlier than this morning because our sink was doing creepy things that usually mean the water is coming back on. First of all the sink gargled every time we turned the water to hot, and second, the water that came out of the faucet was straight up brown. Don't brush your teeth with that water. Nope. Sister Thomas knocked on the bathroom door while I was getting ready this morning and said, "I recommend that you wash your hands with the hot water that will come out of the sink now." Did we freak out? Yes. Miracle!
Welp, that's all for this week folks. Wash your hands with warm water and don't talk to Drunk Buddahs.
Here's a picture of some grafitti in Penza. "Я скучаю" means I miss you.
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Sister Megan Wagstaff
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