Week 9

Four Latvian Speaking Sisters: Wilson, Sutterfield, Ferrin and Lindstrom

Can I just start by saying that I LOVE General Conference. I feel so spiritually uplifted and every talk was an answer to a prayer. I really enjoyed the talk with the analogy of the current bush. I am definitely relating to the cut down current bush right now. I was fine and happy and thought I was growing so well and now I am on a mission and being pruned and cut and reshaped when I already thought I knew what I was going to be. I am grateful that we are all in the Master's hands.

On Monday we went with our super district to FeiFei's with Inga. It was a really fun Chinese restaurant...except it took them an hour to bring the main course! I guess that is what happens when you have a group of eight people eating in Latvia... We got lemon ginger tea, soup, and chicken with rice. We also did a lot of contacting in the rain on Monday, luckily I wasn't completely soaked!

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference (aka all people serving in Latvia = zone). It was...interesting. I felt like I was in one of my psychology classes. President Dance talked about "barrier thoughts" and how our perceptions change our reality so that we need to focus on having positive thoughts. It was so great seeing Elder Lynch and Elder Burr. I'm pretty sure that Elder Burr grew at least an inch. They are both doing really well and Elder Burr is learning Russian. The assistants took us on a "Magic School Bus Trip" to "Contacting Land" where we got to practice contacting people using "natural conversations." We got fed kebabs and then got taught some more.

We had interviews with President Dance on Thursday. Mine was really short and not too interesting. He just asked me how I thought my language was going, what my goals were for my mission, and what I have learned from my companion so far (and how my family is :]). We had both Linda and Marita cancel on us (both possible new investigators for us). We got to meet with Aija, Erika's mom. She is so fantastic! She reads and has lots of great questions and comments. Erika said that she would be a "piece of work" to try and teach religion, but she seems really open to it all. We bought a yummy orange chocolate cake for Vicente's birthday and shared it with Anda and him. They are happily in love (celebrated anniversary #3 this week) and are going off to Stockholm this weekend. They can be pretty funny together. We taught them about eternal marriage and they were doing a lot of teasing to one another. We also were able to meet with Andris and talk with him about the importance of church attendance and prayer. He got yet another new work schedule, so we don't know if he will ever be able to make it to church.

Friday was a WILD day. We met with Valerija, the lady who Sister S. contacted last fall and decided to randomly show up on conference. She was very kind and fed us lots of sandwiches and tea and then showed us pictures of her family. We tried to teach a lesson but she kept talking about her Brazilian preachers. The Spirit WAS in the lesson and then she prayed and started praying in tongues as well and Sister S. totally lost it and well, the Spirit was definitely gone then. She kissed us when we gave her the Book of Mormon though. She has been searching for God all her life, so we'll see how she is. Elder Taylor made a pumpkin pie and brought it to Latvian language class. It was very good. We also talked about changing area boundaries which made a certain companion of mine very displeased. Going to Pinkie definitely made up for it. We visited Grandma Senkane (one of the first Latvian members). She is soooooooooooooooooo great! So the evening went a little bit like this: getting my glasses smashed into my face from the hug, getting dressed to try on some of the things that she knit, and then learning how to knit. In Latvian. Now mind you this would be hard enough in English, and I definitely don't have knitting vocabulary. I did catch what Grandma said, "Know you know how to knit so you can go home and get a husband now." Knitting IS very essential in a future wife, so boys, I'm ready. I can now knit (if that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is!) She also fed us potatoes and meat that you ate with pickles. I was graceful enough to drop my pickle in my tea. Grandma Senkane reminds me of my grandma, in the sense that she has lots of energy, love, and she makes yummy bread (Grandma K's is still better!). She decided to come with us to our next meeting with Inese Choblet, a ward member, but not before spraying both of us with some of her French perfume (I guess we smelled?). It was just so great. I love that woman. At Inese's we got to have some birch tree syrup. They are obsessed with it here since you can only get it out of the tree 2 weeks every year. It is supposed to be very good for your health. I don't think it tastes that bad (it is like sweet water), but my companion doesn't enjoy it. We gave a good lesson that with the Spirit tied in all their comments!

Saturday we had a super big district meeting. It was fun having the 3 Russian elders. They are good kids with great hearts; I enjoyed their comments. We met with Aija again and gave her a BOM. She actually met with the missionaries about 15 years ago, and gave a great prayer at the end and was visibly touched by the Spirit. We pray that she will want to be baptized!

I wish I could write more about Aija, but I'm out of time. Hopefully we'll get Martins a baptismal date this week!

Love
Me!














All the Sister Missionaries in Latvia