January 2, 2013 - Happy New Year!

Hello family!  It's everyones favorite time of week now (hahah) - ok at least it is mine.  We get new missionaries today.  But not just any new missionaries - new RUSSIAN speaking missionaries!!! I can't even tell you how excited I am!  Seriously, we have all been waiting for this moment for forever! Maybe not forever, it just feels like it.

Crazy week haha.  Right now at the MTC you'd think it was the end of the world.  Everyone is sick!  They keep making announcements and saying things like "No handshakes and no hugging and no touching your face with your hand and wash your hands frequently".  They are really freaking out about it!  Its so bad and there are so many missionaries that are sick that we have to dissinfect the door handle and drinking fountain 3 times a day.  If a missionary is sick, they can stay in the residence halls alone as long as they leave the door open.  Half of our zone is down and out.  I'm holding out pretty well, but we'll see how long that lasts haha.

My district went to the temple with one of our teachers today which was fun.  We met him there this morning and had breakfast in the cafeteria then did the temple things.  Super cool! He's great.

Brother Kulikovskyi isn't my class teacher anymore (he is one of the natives - I sent a picture with him earlier) since he is in charge of my old district, but this week he has been working with me one on one everyday.  Yesterday he worked with me for like almost 2 hours!  It's so great to be able to work so closely with a native speaker.  I learn so much more than in class!

Something else that was kinda exciting this week..  I slipped on some ice as we were walking back to our dom.  I slipped and fell on my back and hit my head.  I got up just fine, no problems, but then as we were walking down the hall to our room I started feeling really dizzy.  As Elder Fernandez was trying to open the door, I totally passed out and fell right on top of him.  I woke up laying in the doorway.  It was so weird.  I had to stay at home for basically the rest of the day.  We went to the medical center and they said I was fine. Not to worry!  It was kinda a weird feeling though, just slowly blacking out.  The creepiest part though, is that Elder Fernandez said the whole time I was out, my eyes never closed.  He said it was like looking at a dead person haha.  He took good care of me though.

So, in Russia, apparently new years is the biggest holiday.  In honor of this, our little district of four had a little party before we had to be back in the dom.  We went to 17M (a building currently being remodeled - turned into new residence halls) and went to the veding machines. We all bought little snacks and they had a package of pizza rolls in the vending machines.  We got those and heated them up in the microwave then went into one of the unfinished rooms, sat on the floor and ate pizza rolls and our other snacks. It was a fun little party to bring in the new year.  My district is great!

New Year's Celebration in the MTC.

Now, I am officially a part of a tripanionship.  The Elder from the other zone who was just with us during class, was officially moved into our zone so he is one of my companions now.  Elder Sehnert.  He is a genius.  He's 23, has a bachelor's in political philosophy and Latin and Greek.  He was validictorian of his college too.  He also speaks/has studied, besides Latin and Greek, German, French, Welsh, Gaelic, Sanskrit (which I thought was only a font on microsoft word), English, now Russian, and there is another one that I'm forgetting.  Anyways, he's super smart and so funny!  He just says the funniest things and I love it!

I think that's about it for this week.  Pretty exciting week!  Oh, and if you have heard of Susan Easton-Black, she gave the fireside on Sunday.  She talked all about Joseph Smith.  I really grew to love and appreciate him more because of her talk.  My testimony of him was really strengthened.

I don't really think anything else super exciting happened.  It was a great week!  I'm sure loving the MTC a lot!  Everyone here is great and I have some really good friends now.  Another funny thing that I just remembered.  There is a guy in my zone who's room is right next to mine and I swear he is Collin's (Ritchie) clone.  Its so great!! He's awesome.  Elder Johnson. They are pretty much the same person, they even have like the same body type - just different faces.  Sometimes its a little weird how much he reminds me of him.  Kinda crazy, but in a good way hahah. 

Until next week all!  Miss you and love you!

Старейшина Робисон

Austin had a bad headache in class and took time
from studying to take a little nap on the floor of the classroom.

Practicing their "Russian" Smile