July 29, 2013 Week of surprises!

Well this week so pretty unexpected things happened as you my have guessed from the title.  Probably the most exciting thing was that this Elder can now check of Estonia as one of his places to visit!  I had a surprise visa trip this week!  Well not really surprise, I just had forgotten about it.  But that means that I have been in Russia now for already 6 months!  Crazy.  It was kinda fun, Everyone from my MTC group went (Except for the 1 elder in Kaliningrad) and also my first trainer Elder Eady and the sister from Australia!  It was fun we all got in this big van and drove about 3(ish) hours to the boarder, got out and checked outselves out of Russia, crossed a bridge and checked into Estonia then turned right back around, stamped out of Estonia, back accross the bridge and stamped back into Russia.  So I was in Estonia for about 30 min haha. We were supposed to be back to the mission office by around lunch time (we left early in the morning), but as the mission driver in the big van was pulling out of the parking lot, he didn't turn wide enough and ended up hitting the car parked next to us...  It was funny cause Ivan, the mission visa guy (who returned from his mission in St. Pete's then moved back about less than a year ish ago I think) asked Elder Noorda what time his train left that night (to go back to petrozavodsk - 8 hr train ride) and he said 10pm.  Ivan was like "crap, I don't think we're going to make it".  Keep in mind it was like around 11am when this happened.  Apparently thats how slow the Russian police are.  So we all got out of the car and sat and waited for the owner of the other car to come back.  He finally did after a few hours and we had to wait even longer for the police to come.  We all wandered over into town and ate at a cafe there.  Then came back to the car and still stood there and waited.  Finally, the police hadn't come yet and our driver and their driver just took pictures of everything and just went to the police themselves haha  So we went and sat in the parking lot at the police station for a bit.  By the time everything was all figured out and we could leave, it was like 5.30.  We got back to the mission office about 8.30 which means that we had to stay another night at the assistants (which I was not prepared for).  Then the next day was at the office for literally ever waiting for one of the guys there to come and give me my new registration for living here.  Needless to say, it was a super fun(ny) adventure that took way more time than I was expecting.  Craziness.

No one got hurt or threated this week (not too bad at least).  Just a couple of guys who told us that we are enemy and that They really want to beat us up, but won't because thats "not good".  Also, normally I have nothing against this other religious group here (who also have missionaries - they are just usually old ladies) except for now they are getting on my nerves.  First of all, Sestroretsk isn't that big of a city and everyone already thinks that we are from this other religious group, so you can imagine my annoyance when I met 2 of their "missionaries", this time young people dressed just like us!  And carrying a bible.  The only thing they didn't have were nametags (although I  heard that missionaries in other areas have seen the same thing, but WITH nametags).  SO annoying.  I love that the other organization is doing missionary work, great.  Just not in the same town as us when everyone here already thinks that we are them and therefore won't even stop to talk to us!  AHHH.  BUT.  Something cool is gonna happen here soon, I'm sure.

Then yesterday in Church another surprise.  We had some senior couple serving in Finland visit our branch yesterday and guess who had to translate for them.  Me.  Let me tell you how hard that is.  I understood everything (except when one of the speakers started telling a story about when he was in the army cause I don't know any of those words), but its a whole lot harder to understand and then immediately rapid-fire it back into english... that was so stressful. But a fun experience.

Well that was my week.  I can't really think of anything else that happened this week.  But transfer calls will be this saturday already!! Crazy!

Hoping for a more successful week of finding this week!  Love you all!

Elder Robison