Letter #28 from Russia

Hello Everyone!!! So this week has been SUCH a trial for us! It's been awesome, but we have really had a hard time with the work. It's just been really slow this week. The Lord certainly knows how to try his children, that's for sure. I still feel like the language is just a big brick wall. My vocabulary is just fine, So no problem there. Grammar though... that's a different story. I've noticed that I'm falling behind other missionaries with my grammar. It's just not clicking for me! So weird! I've never had problems with grammar in any language that I've been learning, so this is really frustrating! In opening up the verb conjugation book, every verb has has (at least) two translations into Russian. The average verb has 46 different ways it can translate depending on... well... everything. So that's difficult. Every noun has 40 different ways to conjugate it as well... including names. Plus there are a billion different exceptions to the rules on conjugation nouns. And on top of that there are at least 20 different ways to conjugate adjectives. My companion is like, perfect at it... which is dumb... xa xa! It's just frustrating because I'm at the point where if you gave me a test, I could write it all out and get most of it correct. But when I'm speaking, the speed of it all just doesn't give me enough time to compute it all in my mind. I know it all theoretically, but it doesn't come out of my mouth when in an actual speaking situation. With time, it will all come... but it is just annoying. xa xa! So hearing about everyone's weeks made me quite jealous. Mary waking up and seeing the sunrise over the Peruvian Jungle and like, thirty more baptisms. That is awesome. Rachel and Chris in Hawaii right on the beach... Mom and Dad at a resort with the family... You guys will be so jealous to hear my side! xa xa! We woke up this morning at 5:00 to drunk people shouting and stuff. So beautiful. The weather turned from Snow up to our heads, to lakes up to our knees, to 25 C (70-80 F) within about three days. So crazy. It's summer here suddenly! Unfortunately the amount of drunk people went from a lot to like... 80% Last night, there was not a place you could go with out being surrounded by drunk people. The warm weather hit, and suddenly it was like a zombie apocalypse of drunkards. Pretty interesting... but I can see why the city I'm in has the highest incident rates in All of Russia. I haven't been yelled "go home yankee" as much as I had yesterday for my entire mission. One guy told us that he was going to call the cops on us and they were going to take us to jail and... do bad things to us... This mission is not making me any more innocent of a person... that's for sure. I LOVE IT! Xa xa! Honestly. I would not trade my life for anything else! Our Cold water got shut off this week for a day... that was weird. Showers were super painful and we had to flush the toilets with buckets of hot water... xaxa! Also, our Electricity in the kitchen stopped working for a week, which is also where our washing machine is... so that's been interesting. We got everything fixed, but it was definitely an adventure. Seriously, I cannot think of any other place that I would be having more fun! I'm in Russia and the weather is PERFECT outside and our members are angels and our investigators are studs! We have the best mission president and the best leaders! Russia is such an amazing place with such a curious people. But in the end of it all, we all just want the same things. We all want to be loved. We all want to be safe. We all want to be accepted. We all want to be wanted. We all want to be happy. That's why I'm here! To help people figure out how they can make that all happen. So many people here think they will be happy if they just move to America or if they make a lot of money. There is so much more than that in Life. I'm so glad that I've found it. And there's nothing that hurts more when someone tells you to your face that it is not true. That our doctrines are false and deceiving. That Christ was nothing more than a skazska (fairytale) I have to go. I love you all! I know this gospel is true! I know that God wants me here for a reason! I know that our way isn't just "a" way. It's "the" way. I'm excited for what the Lord has in store for me next! Loves! Elder Skvortz (that's what everyone calls me here... so that's kind of what I go by now... haha! Svortz is just too hard to say for Russians... xa xa!)