Bobbing for Babies‏

Zdrastvuitye!

Transfer calls are in! Momma's having a baby again! I am so pumped to be training another new missionary... in Penza! That's right, I'm staying in Penza. Sister Thomas and I were sure that I would be the one leaving Penza, but that is obviously not so. I love Penza with all of my heart, so I'm not complaining. Sister Thomas is going to be in a tri-panionship with one of my previous companions, Sister Wilson, and one of the Sisters that she came to Russia with. She will be joining them in the beautiful city of Kazan. We are really bummed to be getting split up, but we both knew that it was going to happen sooner than later. Many tears will be shed at our parting. We will be heading out on a train at 5:30 tomorrow morning to Samara and I will spend the next couple of days there while Sister Thomas is on her Visa trip. Then on Thursday Sister Thomas and I will say our final goodbyes, I'll head over to the office to get my baby, and we will be homeward bound once more. Sister Thomas still has a bit of packing to do and our apartment needs some deep cleaning in preparation for the new baby, so this email won't be too long. 

Along with the crazy transfer call, the weather has also been pretty crazy here. At the beginning of the week the skies were clear but the cold was almost painful on my face. As the week went on, it started getting cloudy and then on Friday night the sky dumped about 2 inches of snow in a 3 hour period. The next two days were straight rain and today we woke up to more snow. We are walking in a winter, spring, and fall wonderland. 

On Friday our Branch had a Halloween party. Well, kind of. It was more of just a Fall Night. It was kind of strange, but it was still fun nonetheless. The party wasn't held on the actual day of Halloween because a big group of members from our Branch went on a trip to the Kiev Temple on Saturday, so there would have been a very small turnout had we waited. There were a lot of investigators that showed up to the activity, so that was a very unexpected miracle. There were all sorts of games for the children and adults, there were snacks, and there was a random opera singer that came and performed. We as missionaries got to help out with Bobbing for Apples. It was all fun and games at the beginning until the kids starting spitting in the container of water. You could literally see the saliva floating on the top of the water. It was repulsive. Super entertaining as a whole, though! I think it was an enjoyable experience for many people. None of the investigators that showed up have any interest in learning about the gospel, but we will keep working with them to help them gain that desire.

So... for the past month or so Sister Thomas and I have engaged ourselves on a workout journey that we named "Project Pudge." Neither of us are fat by any means, but we ate a lot of candy at the beginning of our companionship, so we have some baby fat in our cheeks (both sorts) that we wanted to get rid of. Here are some of the parameters that we set: 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily, no pasta on Sundays and Thursdays (we are inside for a majority of the day on those days), no sugary things, no snacking after nightly planning, no bread, no making cookie or cake batters for eating, etc. etc. Along with that we made individual workout programs for ourselves. Sister Thomas was such a brave soul and tried to follow Project Pudge with exactness. She hardly ever slipped up while I, on the other hand, pretty much only slipped up. She would be munching on her little salad whilst I was downing a bowl of pasta. She picked out apples while I selected an icecream for myself at the store. She would munch on a carrot while I shoved brownies down my shirt so that I could sneak them into the bathroom and eat them without receiving judgement. Let's just say I wasn't winning the Project Pudge game. Thankfully I didn't gain any weight from that failure, but whilst I was reading from the Bible during personal study one day, I came across this scripture in Romans that should be the motto for Project Pudge. 

Romans 14:2-3

 2 For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs.

 3 Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him.

I literally started laughing so hard during studies that I had to stop everything and share it with Sister Thomas immediately. We laughed hysterically for a good 10 minutes. Let's just say I'm not the weak one who eateth herbs. 

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Don't spit whilst bobbing for apples and beat project pudge!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Hair and Humility

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was quite the adventurous one. Lots of traveling and bustling around! Thankfully the weather wasn't quite as adventurous as it was last week. As a whole, it was just plain old cold. Jack Frost didn't come to visit, but there is currently a rain storm going on outside. Hopefully the snow comes back so that I can have a white Halloween!

We had Zone Conference a few days ago, which means we got to travel to Samara! The train ride to Samara was great, as always. Sister Thomas and I got some amazing sushi before our ride and then we slept for a majority of our 7 hour journey. We got to Samara pretty late at night, but I still enjoyed seeing my mission birth place once again! In about a week we will be back in Samara for transfers and Visa Trips and such, so that'll be a good time! I never get tired of going back there. The morning before Zone Conference was a lot more hectic than I had anticipated. Heres a little background: About a month or so ago I decided that it would be fun to bleach the ends of my hair to get the "ombre" effect. It looked amazing... for a little while. I had noticed that it was starting to look a little bit more bronzy as time went by, but I just ignored it thinking that it probably wasn't too bad. Sister Thomas snapped a candid pic of me on the train to Samara and I was appalled to discover that the bottom half of my hair was straight up yellow. I'm talking school bus status, here. Horrified by the thought of having to hide my yellow clown hair from two General Authorities, I opted to going out on a hair dye hunt the following morning. After running around Avrora at 7 in the morning like a chicken with it's head cut off, we finally found some hairdye at our last stop. Hallelujah! Needless to say, I was able to enjoy Zone Conference without being preoccupied with concealing my yellow hairs. 

The Zone Conference with Sister McConkie and Elder Kacher  was a wonderful revelatory experience. Sister McConkie and her husband talked a lot about how all of the miracles in the scriptures and all of the miracles in our everyday lives are brought to pass according to our faith. She used the stories in Luke 17 to emphasize this principle, so study that chapter when you have some time. Elder Kacher stressed that if we wanted to reach any of the goals that we set throughout our missions and throughout our lives, we have to change our "mindsets." He said we have to "BELIEVE that God can bless us" and that he will help us achieve our goals. He then asked: "Are you willing to change how you think?" We were invited to ask ourselves if we are willing to do so, because it is such a key. During the conference, Elder Kacher drew a "ladder of faith" on the board which had five rungs. The five rungs were as follows (starting from the bottom): 

1. "This is too hard and I'm no good. Nothing will happen." 

2. "This is too hard and nothing will happen, but I made a commitment, so I'll go through the motions." 

3. "I can make it happen. ­­I can work hard and it will happen." 

4. "I can do this. ­­I'll follow the Spirit." 

5. "The Lord can do this. ­­I can be an instrument in His hands."

The point of this exercise was to emphasize that we cannot rely on "the arm of flesh" if we expect to find success. We were asked to honestly evaluate ourselves and ask ourselves where we are at on this ladder. This ladder can be applied to anything in life; faith, school, callings, work, family, etc. We all need to work toward getting to that 5th step, no matter which rung you are on right now. Change how you think! Require yourself to believe that God can do all things. Remember that "if you do what you've always done, then you'll get what you've always gotten." INCREASE and change what you are doing, and see how you are blessed because of those sacrifices! 

Sister Thomas and I saw quite a few miracles this week as we strived to exercise our faith. First of all, we gave talks on Sunday. That was the first time I have given a talk in Russian, in Russia. I was feeling pretty confident in myself (first mistake... pride) as I prepared my talk. It was on missionary work, so I figured it wouldn't be too hard. As I made my way up to the podium, the Lord smacked me with a big old palm full of humility and I realized just how little I had actually prepared. A wave of panic struck me to the very core as I stood infront of the branch and began to speak. It was hardly intelligible; I literally forgot all of the Russian that I had spent over a year studying. Of course everyone was sweet and said that our talks were wonderful, but one member walked up to Sister Thomas and I and said, "you tried." Then he just shrugged and walked away. Thank you for the honesty. The other miracle was that there were a million less actives at church on Sunday, so they probably showed up and thought, "so this is what it's come to..." after hearing the missionaries speak. Well, the gift of tongues only comes if you ask for it, I guess! Never forget to ask for it...

Also, Betty Crocker is back! There's a pastery in Russia called Samsa that's not really Russian, but I still love it. It's basically just a flakey triangle shaped croissant filled with seasoned sauteed meat and onions. Well, I was craving Samsa the other day so I made little baby bite sized Samsi! They were so good! Sister Thomas and I didn't let them live for more than 5 minutes. I will certainly make them again in the near future. I also made apple crisp, but I'm not going to tell you how quickly we cleaned out the entire pan.

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Hide your clown hair and speak intelligibly.

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Jack Frost Fest‏

Zdrastvuitye!

This week wasn't super eventful, but the weather has definitely kept things interesting. Whoever keeps praying for the cold weather, thank you again! All this week the temperature has been in the 30-40 range and, except for today, it has been snowing for the past few days. Needless to say, all of my winter garb has been broken out and I am sporting the snow boots once again! Yay! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! The snow is really wet, so pretty much none of it has stuck thusfar, but it's still fun to see! I keep hearing rumors that it will warm up again, but I hope that is a lie. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... except it's not even Halloween yet...

A few days ago, Sister Thomas and I decided that it would be fun to have a family night with one of the members in our branch named Vera. She is such a strong little lady! All of the members in her immediate family are members of the church, but all of them have since gone inactive and refuse contact from everyone. Vera and her husband got baptized together about 12 years ago, but her husband died and she is all alone. Since it was freezing cold outside and we had no plans ahead of us, Sister Thomas and I braved the cold and marched to her house. Having never been there before, I did know, nor could I have anticipated just how treacherous the journey would be. I knew that a portion of the trek would be up a hill, but I did not anticipate just how steep or how long it would be. Sister Thomas and I started on our adventure cheerfully and with energetic bounds in our steps. The first part of the hill is one that we walk multiple times a week, so we hardly batted an eye at that obstacle. However, upon further examination of the road ahead of us, we discovered that there was an even larger hill carefully hidden behind the slope of the hill that we had just journeyed, the pitch of which was exceedingly high. Sister Thomas and I cringed at the thought of having to hike up this steep street, but after much consideration and wrestling with the spirit, we carried on. Many times we almost turned back, but our love for our sweet Vera kept us pushing forward. After about 10 minutes of straight upward climbing, we took a break and discovered that yet another small hill was nestled a ways off on the top of this hill. After questioning whether or not our bodies could even physically handle another heck hill, we decided that we had come too far to give up, so we carried on once again. My shins burned with a pain that I had never before experienced, nor have I ever wanted to hike up a hill in the winter wearing just shorts and a tee shirt in my life. Fortunately, this was an uphill battle that we won. Vera was taught the sweet word of God, and we ended the night by merrily skipping down the hill that we had previously conquered. By the end of my mission, my legs are going to look like they were chiseled by the gods. 

This week is going to be an adventurous one for sure! Elder Larry Kacher of the Seventy and Sister Carol McConkie of the Young Women General Presidency will both be visiting the Saratov Zone tomorrow. They will be doing some sort of devotional with the members there and then they will commence in a mission tour. When President and Sister Schwab visited last week, Sister Schwab told me that there will most likely be a stake formed in Saratov before the end of the year. That would be the first stake in our mission and just one stake closer to having a temple in Russia! Since the General Authorities have recently taken a lot of interest in Saratov, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if a stake was formed there in the near future. Anyways, whilst Elder Kacher and Sister McConkie are on the mission tour, they will be having short Zone Conferences with each of the zones, which means Sister Thomas and I get to take a train back to Samara again! Yay! I'm really excited to hear what these servants of the Lord have to share with us. Should be a great, spiritual experience!

Speaking of great, spiritual experience, we finally got to watch General Conference this weekend! It was so good! It takes a few days for the Russian translation of Conference to be available online, so we had to wait an extra week to watch it. The missionaries gather together with all of the members before the showing and then the missionaries go into a different room to watch the broadcast in English once everything gets up and running. Since Jack Frost came into town for a visit and the heaters weren't working in the church building, everyone looked like a bunch of bundled up Eskimos in the sacrament hall during the broadcast. Sister Thomas and I watched Conference in the computer room and it was freezing! We left on all of our winter gear and crouched over a heater the whole time. We sipped our hot chocolate and struggled to take notes with our frozen fingers. Good times. I learned a lot from Conference and I had a lot of questions answered by our beloved Prophets and Apostles. It made me sad to see how frigid and crinkly President Monson is looking, but his talk was just as powerful as always. Hearing the testimonies of the new apostles was both sad and uplifting. I know that all of the leaders of the church are chosen by the Lord, and it's always sad to see them depart this life, but the Lord knows what He's doing. The church is in good hands. 

On a less spiritual note, Sister Thomas and I were finally able to meet with a less active who is literally never home when we stop by. She decided to come home early that day from gathering the last of her crops at her little garden outside of town, and we just so happened to stop by when she was home. The lesson wasn't terrible, but it was a tad strange. We read a scripture in Alma 5 about how Christ is calling after his sheep and if you do not answer his call (getting baptized, keeping the commandments, keeping covenants, etc) you are not of his flock, ie the flock of the devil. She readily and almost cheerfully admitted that she is in the flock of the devil and then spent the next 20 minutes telling us about how we need to improve our language. Thank you, lady. We are more aware than we'd like to be of how awful our Russian is. She kept telling us about how unsuccessful we'd be if it was just the two of us trying to find people on the street. I don't think she really understands how the Lord works. This is HIS work, not ours. Nobody would have any success if we were in charge of this work.

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Walk around hills and snuggle warmly whilst learning about the sweet word of God!

Do Svidanya!

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Antsy Grandmas

Zdrastvuitye!

This week was a pretty fun one! Lots of little adventures! First of all, the weather in Russia is about as crazy as Russian old ladies. Last week Sister Thomas and I were dying of heat stroke, and this week we had to break out our sweaters again. Whoever prayed for cold weather, thank you. Before you know it, I'll be trekking through the snow once again! Bring it!

So, for the past few weeks I have noticed a few ants lounging about in my clothing piles. This didn't used to bother me because our apartment is pretty much infested with ants anyways, but recently, the number of ants that I've happened upon in my closet has been gradually increasing. As you all know, I'm considerably short, which means there are a lot of areas that I can not see or reach. A few days ago I decided to retrieve a lamp that was sitting on one of the unreachable shelves in my closet for the use of brightening up our study. After scaling my way up the closet by using the shelves as ladder rungs, I grabbed the lamp box and gracefully hopped to the ground. I noticed that there were a couple of ants on the outside of the box, but nothing too out of the ordinary. I took the lamp out, no ants. I took the instructions out and saw a few ants hanging out in the instructions' bag and I think there was ant poop in it, but nothing too terrifying. After noticing a little row of ants trailing out of the box, I took a peek inside. Literally HUNDREDS of ants were marching around at the bottom of the box! I chucked that box into a garbage bag and launched it into our stairwell as quickly as possible. But it doesn't end there... I climbed up on my bed to get a better view of unreachable shelf... Yep, dozens of ants were making there way down town! I lifted up a pair of shoe inserts on the shelf and about 50 ants scrambled in all directions. I just stood there in shock for a few seconds and then heaved that shelf into the shower as quickly as I could. I didn't have the patience to go find some kind of spray and wipe them off all peaceful-like, so I just bathed them in hot water. Needless to say, I no longer have an issue with ants in my clothes anymore.

Sister Thomas and I went on kind of a fun adventure this week! There's a less active in our branch who lives out in the middle of nowhere and we decided that we should go visit her. You can't get to her house on a bus because it's too far away, so we had to ride in a Russian van called a marshrootka. Sister Thomas gets ridiculously car sick in those. Anyways, after riding in the marshrootka for about 30 minutes, I concluded that I had no freaking idea where we were, so we decided to stay on for a few more minutes and then get out. There was a particular stop that a lot of people were getting off at, so Sister Thomas and I hopped out of the van and contacted around for a while. Since winter is going to be peeking it's head into Russia soon, that means the sun goes down super early. It was only 7 o'clock in the evening, but it was pitch black outside. I remembered the route that the marshrootka took to get to where we were, so we decided to contact home along that dark, sketchy path. After contacting for about 30 minutes, Sister Thomas and I found a compound that we're fairly certain is a prison. There were tall, concrete walls around the perimeter with barbed wire on top, big old spot lights about every 50 feet or so along the walls, and cameras at every corner. Prison? Yeah... I think so. There are a lot of buildings in Russia that have that type of security around them, but not with barbed wire and spot lights. It was an eerie sight, that's for sure. Kind of cool though.

President and Sister Schwab decided to spend their Sunday in Penza this weekend and it was such a blast! I love the Schwabs so much. They have a daughter that served a mission in Romania and she just finished her mission 3 days ago. She got shipped straight from Romania to Russia and then her dad released her as a missionary. How wierd would that be? So, now she gets to tag along with her parents as they visit the different branches in our mission. Fun! Anyways, I got to translate from Russian to English and vise versa during church for the Schwabs, which is always a blast. I haven't had to translate during church in so long! Since there were a million Senior Couples in Avrora when I first came to Russia, all of the missionaries serving there would just take turns translating. It's been almost a year since I've had the opportunity to do that. It was nice and it helps with learning the language a lot. There are a lot of crazy grandmas in our branch, so translating was really... interesting during Relief Society. There's a particularly looney old lady named Baba Katia in our branch who always adds the strangest comments during class. At the end of the Relief Society lesson she stood up to bear her testimony and I cringed a little bit inside knowing that I would have to translate her crazy story for Sister Schwab and her daughter. That fear was not in vain. She went up and told a tale about this wild dog that lives on her street that Baba Katia likes to pet and feed. One day one of her neighbors came up and started swatting at the dog trying to shoo it away and Baba Katia got mad. She later saw that neighbor on the bus and Baba Katia lectured her about being kind to wild animals until her neighbor got off the bus. Amen. That was her testimony. The Relief Society counselor who was teaching the lesson looked at me while I was translating and said, "Make it seem like what she's saying is spiritual. Don't tell them what she's saying." I just started laughing and told them what she said. Good times.

For some reason people have become a lot more blatant with persecuting us on the streets. It never really used to bother me too much, maybe because I couldn't understand what they were saying not too long ago, but lately it has been really starting to peel my skin a little bit. I know that as the Lord's work hastens, so will Satan's, but it still gets a fire burning inside of me when someone starts lecturing us about how we're wasting our time or how we're a "sect." Trying to address their concerns in a Christ-like manner or just having to walk away from a situation instead of fighting is probably one of the hardest things, mentally, to deal with. The natural man inside of me wants to have a doctrinal throwdown with the persecutors until they are on the ground crying and begging for baptism, but I know that is not how Christ would have handled it. It's really hard, and even humbling to have to turn the other cheek and just walk away from situations like that. Whenever we have to walk away from someone who clearly isn't ready to listen to the message, it hurts my pride a little bit knowing that they think they "won" in the conversation by us leaving, but it would do more bad than good if we choose to stick around and argue. The more persecutors we face, the more I can keep my pride in check, so that's a perk, I suppose!

Despite all of the persecution that we've faced, Sister Thomas and I saw a lot of miracles this week as well! First of all, when Sister Thomas and I got home after finding that prison on the creepy street, I looked at our big Penza map and realized that we had actually unintentionally gotten off at the correct bus stop and that we probably walked past the less actives house about 3 times while we were contacting. The Spirit was guiding us and we didn't even realize it! Thanks to that, we were able to meet with that less active the next day and have a Plan of Salvation throwdown with her (throwdown is not an exaggeration... It's sad how much information people forget when they fall away from the church). Second, there were a couple of less actives that showed up to church out of the blue! One of them I had never seen or heard of before aside from seeing her name in the phone. She was so nice, but she ended up leaving after sacrament meeting, so we weren't able to set up a meeting with her. The other less active came to church for the first time in 4 years about a month ago and bailed on a lesson that we set up with her. We were able to set up another lesson with her that we are praying will work out. The work has been pretty slow in Penza for the past few months, but we're hoping that things will start to pick up again soon. I want to see a Thanksgiving miracle! 

Welp, that's all for this week folks! Bathe your ants and turn the other cheek!

Do Svidanya!

Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff

Here's a picture of Sister Thomas and me eating some Sharma (Russian chicken wrap... heaven!!).