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!!).