How many people can say that they received a Apistolic Blessing for their birthday? I am sure not many, but I can now say that I have! Yesterday was one birthday that I will never forget! My district was so great and made it the best with what little we have! I came into a class full of "Happy Birthday" signs drawn with crayon on notebook paper hung around the room, even a "Happy Birthday" banner strung together made from notebook paper and crayons. It was SO great and I absolutely loved the "Ghetto Fabulous" (as Cectpa Kelley called it) birthday decor! They even stuck a bunch of "Happy Birthday" notes in all my books so as I studied I would find them. Cectpa Wallace's family sent cupcakes, and my amazing mother sent me a cake and the makings for a "dirty diet coke," and the Day's sent me a ton of candy.... I think I will be a sugar coma for the next week! We are going to break into the cake tonight since we ate the cupcakes last night. This way we can celebrate with Brat Adams, our teacher, as well.
Every Tuesday night we have a devotional and this week we could tell it was someone big, because they put up the teleprompters while we were practicing during choir, plus the song we had to sing, one that I lip sung quite impressively, was one that had been preformed at Conference. At dinner after practice we were all speculating who it might be, it was Richard G. Scott. He was just the cutest ever and he was just so amazing! He talked to us about communicating with our Heaven Father, and before ending he pronounced an Apostolic Blessing an all of us missionaries. He blessed us with the ability to MASTER our languages and several other amazing things, I wish I had my study journal with me to tell you all what he specifically said. It was just so great! Even after the closing hymn, he stood back up to reinforce what he had told us directly. Then the closed the meeting with a prayer. It was just so amazing and wonderful! He really was just the sweetest in disposition and SO sincere in everything that he had told us. Perfect ending to my birthday.
Afterward we had District Review, our Branch President Cranny joined us as we discussed everything. My district is just so great, everyone has the most amazing insights and all of us are willing to share them and build off of each others insights and promptings, it is great, I LOVE IT!
This week, like all the rest has just been phenomenal! Our investigators have been progressing right along, Svetlana is probably the hardest one we have, but she really is so sweet! She is onlt 15 so sometimes we have to deal with a teenage attitude which can make it hard since we can't communicate what we would like as well as want to. She has agreed to read the Book of Mormon, which is great! Artem is my favorite investigator that we have right now, oh my gosh! He is so funny, and speaks some english which is helpful! On Monday, at the peak of our lesson, the Spirit was just so strong and he was just so happy about everything that we were teaching him, he was reading the Book of Mormon, praying, going to church, everything, we asked him to get baptized! Well.... we actually asked him if he would like to follow Christ into the shower first... then he corrected us, acted out "showering" so that we knew what we had said, we all laughed, then we asked him again to follow Christ into the waters of baptism! He agreed to baptism! It was so great!
On Sunday we had this great Relief Society speaker, Mary Edmunds...? Have you ever heard of her? If you have/haven't look her up! I know that she has books and stuff, she is just great! And oh so funny!! All of us were cracking up at her the entire time, but the Spirit was SO strong! I couldn't tell if my tears were from laughing or from feeling the Spirit. She was just great! She has served 3 missions, I think, and she showed us her first journal from her first mission. It was 723 pages, loose sleeve paper. She said that she was so homesick and wanted to come home, but if she had, she held up 20 pages of her journal, she said that would be all that she would have gotten from it, 20 pages. It was just a great visual for when times get tough, I can't come home until I have a full journal, how embarrassing would that be?!? I don't even know what will be in the rest of my journal, what stories will fill it up or the people that I meet that I will write about, I don't know who or what experiences are coming, but I am not coming home until I have that full journal. (Even though I have already filled one completely up and another halfway in just 3 weeks.)
I am trying to think what other things have happened this week.. I swear they are all so different and yet blend together. I love the people that I get to share this experience with, all of us work hard together and laugh together as well. We did our temple walk on Sunday after sacrament, which was completely in Russian. It was interesting, I only understood some of it. The 7 of us got the sing in Ukrainian while everyone else some in Russian, that was hard!!! During our temple walk we went to a spot on the hill and brought our Ukrainian Hymn books and practiced singing. It helps our reading ability so much and we can learn the phrases from the song. Some we can literally translate and they can be quite funny. Then we walked around the temple and back to campus. On the way back Elder Peterson made me "teach" him. Out of everyone, I am probably struggling with the language the most. It really is hard, but  I know that I have their support. He especially helps me, even when I do not want it. He actually won't speak to me sometimes unless I ask him to do things in Ukrainian! It is frustrating, but it really helps having to use it! If you want to know what Ukrainian sounds like, google it. Sometimes I feel like I am speaking french, somtimes Italian, and other times Russian. They like to make everything rhyme and flow, so we have A LOT of cases we have to learn. The sentence structure is super different as well.
For instance if I want to say that I like something, literally translated I say "At me is pleasing ____." If that isn't weird... Also, if I want you to do something I have to say "I want so that _______" and everything in the blank has to be in past tense. It really is kind of odd. But if you don't put it that way you will  be saying "I want you. _____" Which can get pretty awkward if you are a missionary.
 
Oh, and as for pictures! This is kind of a dumb thing, but my camera doesn't have a like memory card in it, at all. Because of this I can't hook it up to this computer to get pictures off of it because it will not accept camera cords. The ones I sent before were from my companions camera. Sorry! I will try to figure out a way to get pictures to you without having to buy a new camera....
 
Anyway, time is up! Have a great week!!!


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