February 11, 2013 - RUSSIA at Last!

First Area ~ Gatchina

Well it's definitely been a crazy week!  Different than I was expecting, thats for sure.  First of all, sorry I didn't call anyone when I got to London, we landed and had about an hour to go to a different terminal and get through customs and stuff and find our gate.  We barely had time to go to the bathroom, let alone try and find a phone card or anything.  But, we did make it safely!  I got to sleep actually quite a bit on the plane to London, which was nice.  All my luggage made it too which was also a relief.  Also, customs was surprisingly easy.  They didn't even open any of our bags.  Just put them on a little scanner like they do when you go through security to get into the airport.  I was suprised, but glad cause that was one less headache to deal with.

We met President Clark and his wife and the assistants outside the airport and they took our stuff and everything.  Then divided us up into 2 groups and a few of us went with each of the assistants and went on the bus, then the metro to go contacting.  Of course, the first guy I tried talking to pretended to not understand me.  Elder Rasmussen (assistant I was with) was watching and started talking to the guy and guess what, turns out the guy did speak Russian, he just didn't want to talk to me!  I was holding the Family Proclamation in my hand and he pointed to it and said he didn't like it and he didn't want to talk anymore.  I wished him well and turned around to see Elder Noorda having a full on conversation with some guy!  Lucky dog.  Needless to say,  I was not overly thrilled about the idea of talking to anyone else.   After that experience we went back to the mission office cause we had to do some paperwork.  Then we walked about 30 sec down the street to the mission home (appartment - although its really probably a penthouse compared to some of the other appartments I've seen).  It was in the city though and I'm not (I'll get to that later) so maybe everything is bigger there.   We had dinner at the mission home and the whole time all I could think about was when we visited nanny and pappa R in Spain and stayed in the little area where the missionaries stayed in the mission home - thinking about that and being back in that same position again only this time as one of the missionaries.  It was weird to think about.  Anyways, after dinner they showed us a little slideshow of all the areas in the mission and we had a little testimony meeting.  Then went to bed since we were all kind of falling asleep.  As soon as I layed down I fell asleep then woke up at midnight.  Occasionally I dozed off for a minute or 2, but then woke up again.  I basically laid in bed and stared at the wall from midnight until 7 when President came to wake us up.  That was miserable haha.  

First Night in Russia - Right off the Plane!

We had breakfast and all of our trainers were there with the assistants, but they wouldn't tell us who was with who or where we would be all morning.  We had to wait a few hours until the little orientation thing.  Skip all that cause it's kinda boring and I'll tell you where I am now.  My trainer is Elder Eady - he's super nice.  We are in a city/town called  Gatchina (Гатчина).  It's about a 2 hour bus/train ride to the south of the city.  We're the only 2 in the area.  Apparently the population is about 90,000, but it doesn't seem like that at all.  It's been a rough few days though - I'm actually really missing the MTC and my friends there.  I'm not even in the same zone as any of the guys I came with.  2 of them are in a 4-panionship together (lucky dogs) in Nevsky which is in the city.  One is in Kaliningrad (the little part that isn't connected to the rest of Russia) and the other one is on Vyborg (the city that boarders Finland).  I'm really jealous of the 2 that are together.  I don't think I'll probably see any of them for about 3 months since I'm assuming we'll be with our trainers for at least the first 2 transfers because of the whole 12 week in-field training program.  Elder Eady has been here for about 6 months I think and has been in Gatchina the whole time.  I'm not even the first person he's trained!  I really like him - he's great.  He had a visa trip on Friday so I went up and was on spits with our zone leaders in Автово - an area in the city-ish for about a day and a half.  That was ok - we didn't really do much.

Church was great yesterday - our branch has about 15 or so active members.  I had to speak yesterday (surprise, surprise).  The members are really great.  They're all super friendly and always want the missionaries to come over.  On Saturday night we went and visited with one of the families - a young couple with a little baby.  We just taught them a short lesson and left.  It was really nice.  That's the only lesson we've taught.  I guess we have 1 investigator, but they haven't met with him in about 2 weeks.  We spend all of our time contacting.  Not my favorite activity, but I'm going to have to grow to love it.  We talked to some guy last night who looked to be about 20 who was way too excited about it.  He wanted us to take him to see the church building right then.  He called one of his friends and talked to him for a while about us.  I literally didn't understand a single word he was saying, but after he called his friend we started taking him to the chuch and I just felt really weird about it.  After a few minutes he asked us if we had any money cause he wanted to take a taxi.  He kept bugging us for money, but we finally told him we didn't have time and if he wanted to meet with us so we could teach him we could call us.  We got away after what seemed like forever.  I think he wanted to mug us or something, but we managed to get away uscathed.  It just fekt really weird for us both the whole time we were talking to him.  Later that night we talked to some guy who was slightly drunk, but we stood there and talked to him for about half an hour.  It was like 8:45 so we had to start heading home, but we got his phone number!  Thats kind of exciting.

Dad you'll love this, but here, they love to put mayo on everything.  It's a little different though, it tastes like mayo with a hint of dill.  Its super good, and I've started putting it on a lot of things too.  Delicious!

Well I'm kinda out of time.  I still have so much more that I want to say, but I have to go soon.  Just know I'm doing well and adjusting, slowly but I'm getting there.  I miss everyone from the MTC and all of you!  I hope you're all doing well!  I'm so excited to hear where Logan gets called to.   Man, I really feel like I ripped you all off on telling you what Russia is like.  I'll do more of that next week.  It's different though.  Just know that haha.

I still get dearelders here so that's good.  I only get mail whenever we go to the mission office which is probably about once a month ish.  That stinks so email works too!  At least that's weekly.  Keep the dearelders though, cause then I can just get a stock pile and read one every night haha.

Love and miss you all!  Hope everyone is doing well!!

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