Thank You, Technology

Zdrastvuitye!

This week has got to be one of the most interesting ones that I've had on my mission. It was one of the funnest, most adventurous weeks, but in the most unexpected ways.
First off... Kazan! The plane ride to Kazan was one of the most unanticipated adventures of the entire week! First of all, I didn't even know that there was an airport in Penza because of how small the city is, so I spent about 20 minutes scanning our giant map with squinted eyes trying to find a tiny airplane-shaped icon that indicates where the airport is. After discovering that it would take at least an hour and a half, probs two hours, to get there by bus, we opted to taking a taki there instead. It took about 45 minutes to taxi to the airport and I hardly recognized it as an airport when we got there. It was PUNY! It definitely isn't an internation airport, that's for sure. The building was the size of a large two-story American home and the waiting area was about the size of a 2 car garage. Cozy! After Sister Warnick and I went through security, we were expecting to be escorted onto a decent sized airplane... nope! We watched this tiny nugget of a plane land on the strip and scoot to the terminal. It was the smallest plane I have ever laid eyes on. After seeing the exterior, I was pretty terrified to see the interior of the plane; I was expecting the seats to be something equivalent to lawn chairs strapped to the floor with some rope and staples. Upon entering this mini 8 passenger airplane, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was actually REALLY nice inside. I felt like I was in a fancy private plane, except that you couldn't stand up all the way inside. No complaints though. The ride was smooth, no turbulence, and we actually got to Kazan earlier than expected. The ride was a little under an hour and a half long, so it wasn't dreadfully boring. I am so grateful to have had that experience. It was a blast and Sister Warnick and I had the time of our lives!

After we landed in Kazan, it took another hour long taxi ride to get to the apartment in Kazan. If you haven't Googled what Kazan looks like, do it, but that is completely irrelevant to everything because the area that the Kazan Sisters live in looks pretty reminiscent of Penza. The further you go to the outskirts of cities, no matter how beautiful the city is, the more poopy and boring it gets. We didn't see anything too breathtaking on the ride. The coolest thing that we saw on the way was this huge soccer arena with one of the outer walls made out of a gigantic movie screen. That was cool. Sister Thomas and I had such a sweet reunion when we were finally reunited for the first time in almost a month. I missed that goob so much! It was also fun to see Sister Wilson. She's actually finishing her mission in a week, so it was great to talk to her and hear about all of her plans for "the after life." That'll be me before you know it! Anyways, I don't have a whole lot to talk about regarding our experience in Kazan. Sister Warnick and I worked with Sister Wilson the first night and we met with a super sweet member family. I worked with Sister Thomas and her other companion Sister Nelson the second day and we visited a couple of investigators; both of which are preparing to get baptized very soon, so I was really grateful to have had the opportunity to help teach them before baptism!

Unfortunately, the only return flight back to Penza happened to be on Wednesday, so we were only able to spend one full day in Kazan, but nonetheless it was a blast. All of the Kazan sisters have super blonde, straight hair, Sister Warnick has super blonde, straight hair, and I have crazy brown, curly hair, so of course we had to take a picture of all of the blondies surrounding my curly head before we left. I looked like a black sheep lost in a field of golden wheat. On Wednesday morning Sister Warnick and I boarded our classy 8 passenger plane and flew back to good old Penza.

The next day was a pretty unusual one, that's for sure. It happened to be Thanksgiving, but neither of us remembered that until the next day... didn't even celebrate it. Anyways, everything started off pretty normally. We got up and did some contacting, came home and did studies, and then we commenced in our weekly planning session. Later in the afternoon a HUGE blizzard blew into town. As we were finishing up our planning session, I called a member and set up a lesson with her family and then our phone randomly stopped working. Any time I tried to call or text somebody, a little message saying, "Emergency Calls Only," would pop up and I couldn't do anything. I thought that the blizzard must have knocked over a phone tower or something, so we just waited it out. We aren't allowed to leave the apartment without our phone, so I had to somehow figure out how to cancel our lesson for the night without a cellphone. Great. I ended up having to call back the member from our dinky little fax machine phone and we spent the rest of the night hiding indoors from the blizzard. After calling our District Leader about 20 million times from our fax machine phone, he finally answered and we were able to get the phone-fixing process started. Turns out, it was actually the SIM card that bummed out, not a tower. We tried many methods to get the phone fixed with no success, so we ended up having to go a couple of days without a phone before everything got resolved. Thankfully we were able to go out and work, we just had to be extra careful since we didn't have a working phone. I am grateful for modern technology and that I don't have to use a tiny, baby, fax machine phone to make calls from. How missionaries survived without cellphones, I haven't a clue.
Funny story! So, probably none of you remember this story from the beginning of my mission, but I got a call not too long ago that forced me to reminisce this experience. Read it and then I will elaborate:
 Oct 27, 2014 "[O]ur air conditioner broke at like 5 o'clock in the morning one day. I don't know why my companion, Sister Johnson, had it on in the winter, but she did. Anyways, she turned it on when it had been snowing outside and it started making dripping noises. We thought it was like an animal or something because of how quiet it was. Then the AC full-on started dumping water onto Sister Johnson's bed. Seriously so funny. It stopped waterfalling when we turned it off but it was making horrible crackling noises for the rest of the night. So great. Also, all of the lights in our apartment except for two tiny ones decided to go out. it was the strangest thing. When the landlord came to look at the lights, he got all mad because apparently we're not supposed to have the AC on in the winter... probs broke it forever."
So... yeah... we did break it forever. I got a call from one of our office Elders a couple of months ago asking about what happened with the air conditioner since I had lived in that apartment before. Apparently the Sisters in the Avrora apartment had been sleeping on the floor in a different room with a working air conditioner all throughout the summer because it was too hot for them to sleep in the bedroom with the air conditioner that Sister Johnson and I wrecked. I couldn't even hold a normal conversation with the office Elder because I was busting up laughing the entire time thinking back to when this happened. I never thought that experience would come back to haunt me almost a year later. Lesson learned. Always tell somebody when you break something, and don't turn on the AC in the winter.
Oh yeah, Sister Warnick and I contacted, or rather, got contacted by, a couple of Protestant missionaries this week. They were on their way to a service project somewhere and they heard our weird accents and saw that we were talking about the gospel with a lady on the street, so they interrupted our conversation to talk to us. They ended up being super nice and really respectful, but one of them was getting a little too close to Sister Warnick. Hard pass. They invited us to their church and we invited them to ours. It's always interesting to see missionaries from other churches. I sometimes forget that there are more churches than just the Mormons and the Russian Orthodox.
Sister Warnick and I saw some amazing miracles this week! One of the less actives that we tried to meet with ended up bailing on us earlier in the week, so we decided to drop by another less active that lived close by and say, "Hi!" When we got to her apartment, she couldn't get her own front door open and we heard the voice of a man behind the door egging her on. She lives alone, so we were pretty freaked out by that. When we finally got in, turns out, the guy that was in there was another less active that we've been searching for for months. All of the members of his family are members of the church, and we've been stopping by week after week trying to get in with no luck. He just so happened to be over at this less active's house to help her move. Such a miracle! We were able to have a really great gospel discussion with both of them and I could tell that they both felt the spirit. Also, a random less active decided to show up to church on Sunday, so that was great too.
Welp, that's all for this week folks! Hug your modern technologies and don't break things!

Do Svidanya!
Love,

Sister Megan Wagstaff