Miracles Are Everywhere (Week 10)

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet and her P Day is tomorrow!! So sorry!! Here's the email:

"Wow it's been an awesome week! We seriously see miracles everyday. If you open your eyes to God's hand in your life, you are bound to recognize all of the miracles and blessings that he gives you :)

They sure know how to give missionaries really long meetings to sit through. I think it's because they just want to teach us how to be more patient. Sitting in the car for hours and sitting in meetings have really changed how patient I am, I think. I have really enjoyed all of the meetings that we had this week. New Missionary Training was awesome and it's great to understand the mission culture better. I like seeing that there are so many awesome missionaries here in this mission when we all meet together. It's really inspiring. We also had Stake Conference and it was SUPER great. It was a little stressful translating all that stuff because my vocabulary is pretty limited, but I just wanted to focus on talking about stuff that I thought would help those who I was translating for. Basically it was a lot of testifying.Mostly, we just translate for Brother and Sister Slava.  And no, they aren't married. Slava is both of their first names. We just call them by their first names because their Russian last names are way to hard to pronounce haha.

I am amazed at how helpful the ward is with all of the carpooling and work that we have to do with the Russian members! On September 4th, there is a mission-wide fast for missionary work, but particularily for the Russian work, which is so awesome. We're so excited to see what comes out of that. There is apparently already so much happening in this last month as compared to previous months. A young couple who have a 5 year old daughter and are from Russia are being baptized on Saturday and they are sososo awesome! We also have a Russian picnic this week. Also there is a Ukrainian festival that we are going to go to and hand out flyers for English class at. It's going to be a blast and I am way super excited wow!

My Russian is honestly improving every day. Mostly it's pronunciation that I need the most help with. It's hard not to be immersed, but I get to listen to a lot of different accents from all around Eastern Europe and I was even able to get the jist of a crying lady who was speaking Russian (you know how hard it is to understand people when they are crying, right?!) She was a really cool lady. It was an awesome experience that we had.  I wasn't sure exactly where Sister Orr was going, but she taught me an important lesson! I am the type of person that would want to stick exactly to the plans that we made the night before, but she wisely showed me about following promptings. We were just driving and she was like "I feel like we should knock around here." So we did, and we ended up at about the 4th house I think finding a lady that was distraught on her porch! And guess what? She was a Russian speaker and a muslim. She didn't speak any English from what I could tell. I know that God sent us there to her. She kept saying how no one had been there for a few days and she didn't know what to do. We were really able to help her. We were reading from the BOM and she just kept telling us to please keep reading. It was really awesome. She's had a rough past and I think that her afflictions really have humbled her and prepared her to hear the gospel! We are super excited to go back and teach her more tomorrow. I'll update on how that goes next week.

We had exchanges with some English sisters and that was like a fun sleepover, but at the same time it was kind of like Girls Camp. Not exactly sure how to describe the experience. I was paired up with Sister Bowen and she was seriously fearless! We talked and sang to everyone that we saw. I'll end up being a good singer after this mission and I am going to have so many hymns memorized in Russian and English. It's gonna be sweet. But anyways, we met a guy that lived in Nazi Germany and he was telling us a lot of stories about how it was there. That was really interesting and sad. We did service at a thrift shop and the whole time we were looking for someone Russian for me to talk to! Turns out there actually was a lady that worked there and someone told her I "know" Russian and so she came to talk to me. lemme just say that it was kind of a disaster and I think she got a little mad that I didn't know how to say more. It was a little bit funny and also scary because I didn't have anyone there to help me. It was just me. Thank goodness for Sister Orr!!! But, I did help the Elder from Ukraine do a Russian baptismal interview with me and I understood pretty much every word that he said! It was so awesome. I know he was talking slowly for me, but still cool.

We also got to have a sleepover with the Russian North sisters. I tried some Russian food called Buckwheat. Well, it's called something else in Russian but I don't remember it and you wouldn't be able to read it. So it's buckwheat. It was really interesting.

I can't think of that much else that happened. Besides the fact that the people at Cafe Rio absolutely could not understand Sister Orr when she was trying to tell them her name and so we ended up picking up an order under the name of "Sam Ori" instead of "Hope Orr." It was so funny. I was trying to pray afterwards and I could not keep a straight face.

John 6:48-51

Remember that the 7th day is for 2nd chances :):)

Love you all!

Sister Jenne"

No pictures this week for some reason. Stay tuned!