New Transfer as Senior Companion Letter from 2/15/10

Hola Familia!

It's good to hear from all of you, and it sounds like everyone had a fun, chocolate-filled Valentine's Day. Poor Mom though, I hope you're feeling better soon! For some reason I've always loved Valentine's Day, so my companion and I were determined to do something semi-festive. We didn't have any food, but we found enough ingredients in our apartment to make Snickerdoodles. And, lo and behold, we located pink sprinkles in one of our cabinets. So, even here in Russia, we had a good time celebrating yesterday. We gave most of the cookies to some less-actives we dropped-by last night, but we had some too : ) I think it was my first American-type cookie since I've been here. Anyways haha, I'm back in Chili, which means bye bye Finland. We had all sorts of craziness coming back into Russia, but that wasn't totally unexpected. One of the sisters found out her Visa didn't activate Tuesday like the rest of ours did, and her old Visa expired in four hours. Unfortunately, she realized this on the flight from Helisinki into St. Petersburg, so it was crazy trying to find her a way back out of St. Petersburg in four hours. Poor thing, but all is well, or so they say. Sister Hansen and I arrived Wednesday night, and started working Thursday. Everything is going so well already. As you know, I felt a little scared about this transfer, but I've been surprised how well eveything has gone so far. Sister Hansen is awesome, and being with her puts a lot of my worries at rest. We have the same ideas about what we need to do here in Chili, and how we need to work. I am so grateful for that. She is from Idaho and her family has a potato farm : ) Haha. She has three brothers and three sisters, and her Dad is an Archaeologist in Guatemala part of the year, crazy huh. So, she grew up a lot of her life in the jungle, living in a tent. So, Russia is no big deal to her at all haha. She's also really cute and fun too. She's an Art Major at BYU and we have a lot of the same interests.  Her Russian is already pretty solid too, thank goodness!

Towards the end of my second transfer with Sister Zakharova, both of us felt like the people we had been meeting with here in Chili were not progressing like we would have liked. We both felt that whoever served in Chili this transfer would need to locate a new pool of people to teach. I don't think we are going to stop meeting with any of the old people I've told you about, but we do want to find some people who are progressing better. Sister Hansen and I have been working with the Area Book a lot, which is really needed. We're trying to contact Former Investigators and Less-Actives to teach, and she's putting together a map of our area with all of the people and where they lived marked on it. So, if we ever have a cancelled appointment or something, we can see who lives close by and try to visit them. Her doing this really helps becasue we have two large areas that are kind of spread out. We've also set some really good goals to talk with everyone -- on the busses, street, etc. We've already seem some success in this too! We had a lady we contacted on the street show-up to Church yesterday, and we met with a Former Investigator who is going to be our new investigator. And we received a referral at Church yesterday from one of the Branch members. That is hopefully three new people to teach already! We have two Former Investigators who agreed to meet with us tomorrow (Tues) too, so we'll see how that goes, so maybe five. I've only been here in Chili for four days, but the last four days have been so intense. We've seen a lot of little miracles already, and I know that you reap what you sow. The work here probably sounds really slow here to most of you, like three new people isn't very much. But things are just different here in Russia, so we're really happy with our little successes!

It's a lot different to be in charge and responsible for finding meetings, etc., but Sister Hansen and I want to make our companionship really equal, and to share all the responsibilities, be unified. Because we're both newer missionaries, everything takes a little longer still, but we're trying our best. We both feel like we haven't worked harder or felt better on our missions yet. It just feels so good at the end of the day to relax and know you did everything you could, ya know? Our Russian is probably the biggest obstacle, but in the meetings we've taught already, we've been able to communicate what we have wanted and to bring the Spirit. While it would be nice to understand everything, I know I need to be patient... I do feel like I'm already understanding and talking better since this transfer started, which I know is the Lord helping me. We really couldn't do this without him, and it is kind of nice to realize that, because then I really know he is on our side.

Our little family, шумиление, the one that recently re-activated and the daughter gt baptized, is doing good. The Mom opened up to me that her husband is not as excited about being active as she is. I hope this doesn't cause a rift between them. He was doing so well, but quitting somking, paying tithing, etc. (basically keeping the commandments) is still hard for him. I totally understand that. I don't want him to resent the Church. And, I want him to be keeping the commandments because he wants to, not becasue his wife wants him to. So, they are a little fragile right now, and we need to keep working with him. Hard to see, and hard to know what to teach them, but everyone has their free agency. I think they'll be okay though.

All is well here and I love you all so much. Thanks for all of your letters, and Mom, I felt your extra prayers this week so much. The Lord really has helped me a lot : )

Sister Hakes or птица (bird)