Zone Conference

We had Zone Conference this past week, and that was an incredible experience! There are about 24 missionaries in my zone and we all gathered in the mission home for a wonderful spiritual day of talks, practices, and learning how to be better missionaries. I was very inspired by that conference and motivated to become the best missionary I can be. It was neat to get to work with more experienced missionaries than myself and role-play different situations with them. 

There was a cool story shared at Zone Conference that I wanted to tell you all. The day of the bombs, a couple elders in my zone were heading out to a farther part of their area. They felt that something wasn't quite right, and when they tried to call people, they realized that phone service was down. They decided to head down to the mission office and see what was going on. The office is on Karla Marksa, which is the street where all the bombs went off. As they were walking, one of the elders had a distinct impression: "Stop walking!" The two elders stopped, and shortly thereafter one of the bombs went off 100 yards in front of them. God truly is watching out for His missionaries. Another cool story from that day was with the other companionship of sisters in the zone. They had lost their phone the day before, so they were running late because they had to stay at the apartment and use our phone before they left. As a result, they left after the bombs started, instead of being on a tram by at the time they went off. I think all of us missionaries agree that we felt very protected and safe that day. And everyday. There truly are angels around us, and we have more help than we can see.

We had a really neat lesson this week with one of our investigators, Anya. She told us at the beginning of the lesson that it's really bad if people never read the Bible or the Book of Mormon in their whole lives because there is so much in those books that we need. We asked her why she was interested in these things, and she told us that some of her friends had died and she wanted to know what happened after this life. That was really neat, because we had planned a lesson on the plan of salvation, and we had the opportunity to explain to her that there is a life after death. The Spirit was so strong as we taught, and I just felt so much power as I testified of the plan of salvation. We had planned to invite her to be baptized, and as the time in the lesson approached to do that, I was struck with how bold an invitation that is - here we are, asking people to give up everything they've known and make drastic life changes and join a church they probably hadn't heard of just a few months earlier. But we have to be bold, because the church is true! If this wasn't true, it would be pointless to ask people to be baptized, but because this is the most important message in the world, we have to invite people to accept it. It was such an exciting feeling as we asked her to be baptized. She said that she needs to know more first so she declined our invitation, but I feel that she will be baptized before too long. I'm beginning to realize how powerful the gift to love is that we receive as missionaries. I just have such love for these people I'm teaching, and I want so desperately for them to accept the truths I know will bring them greater happiness than anything in the world.

There was another baptism on Saturday! Tatiana isn't one of my investigators (the other sisters teach her), but she is super sweet, and it was neat to see her baptized by her soon-to-be-husband Anatoli. I got to play the piano again, which I enjoyed.

In sacrament meeting yesterday, our opening hymn was "Zdrastvy, zdrastvy, dyen soobotny" (Welcome, welcome, sabbath morning). I'm pretty sure I was grinning the whole time, because that was my favorite song in the MTC. Sister Busch and I would sporadically break out into singing it when we greeted people, and I can't think of that song without being happy. 

There are approximately one million cotton-producing trees in my area. It honestly looks like a blizzard in some areas of the city because there is so much cotton flying through the air. It builds up in the bushes and on the ground and makes the world look like a winter wonderland. It's pretty fun, although there is virtually no way to avoid being covered in the cotton so it's often difficult to see. And breathe. But it looks really cool! :)

We had a branch activity Saturday afternoon. Since Victory Day was earlier last week, part of the activity included a World War II commemoration. Branch members read poems, sang songs, and played music honoring those who had fought in that war. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the Russian, it was still a really cool experience to see all that. The people here are so great! I definitely feel blessed to be able to get know them and work with them.

-Sharisa