Monday, June 4, 2012

June 4, 2012

Hey all! Greetings from Moscow! It's been quite the adventure with transfers and things, but things are going great, and I love Perovo so far. It's great!

So we spent the last few days in ZGrad (Mon-Wed) meeting with people--it's so funny, people are so much more willing to take time to meet with you if they know that you are leaving. On Wednesday, it poured rain, and the Suttons (our senior couple in Z) took me and Sister Thrall out to dinner before English Club, since it was the last time we would be together. :) It was also kind of sad saying bye to my English Clubbers. My two favorites have actually started staying for the spiritual thought and asking questions about the church! I will miss them, but I got their email so that I can write them when I go home. They even invited me to come stay at their house if I'm ever in ZGrad again. :)

The day of transfers was crazy. The office called and said on Wednesday that we'd have a car Thursday morning to take us all down to Moscow, and that it would be there at 7:30. Well...the driver called us at 6:55 and said that he was already almost at our apartment! Luckily he understood that he was 30 minutes early. We then were all over the place picking up missionaries and luggage and we had transfer meeting and I met Sister Maxwell. It should be really fun. Interesting--she is a lot different than any of my other companions, and this training experience will be so much different than my last one--1) it will be in English, and 2) I will need to help her with Russian. That is not even considering that they are two different people, who came here for completely different reasons and have completely different personalities and goals and the like. I guess it's kind of really what having kids is like...since everyone is different, you kind of have to do everything just a little bit different every time. Anyway, The two of us have a lot of work to do, and it will be an interesting few transfers. But it should be fun. I hope it will be awesome. Sister Maxwell actually knows a lot of the same people I do, and went on study abroad to Berlin with my roommate Michele! Poor Sister Maxwell though got sick right away and was wiped out all Saturday and Sunday. :( We're hoping she gets better and adjusts well soon. And I just love love love being with Sister Frolova. Just speaking in Russian with her the past few days and laughing...we're already great friends and it's just so fun to build our comp relationship (however short) on that friendship and on our mutual "mothership" of Sister Maxwell. :) It's been a lot of fun so far. And actually, on Thursday night we had Sister Martyanova with us too, because Friday she was going home and since Sister Sorenson will be out of town when Sister Frolova goes home in 2 weeks, they combined the last dinner at the mission home with the both of them, and so we got to go too. It was really fun to be with Sister Marty--I love her a lot, and she is so funny. We had a lot of fun talking and things And so Friday we spent most of our day after study at the mission home with President and Sister Sorenson eating good food and sharing testimonies. It was just really weird, realizing that soon it will be my turn. But it was a great night.

Oh, by the way, I got my package! Thanks so much! Just for the record, the powder foundation is the one that I wanted right from the start, but thanks for your care for sending me like 3 other kinds too. And I love the flowers and the outfit. I really loved it. ANd the album is great, even if you put some really horrible pictures of me in there. ;) Everything was great. Thanks! I love you too!

Well, due to crazy things like spending days at the mission home across Moscow and Sister Maxwell getting sick and needing to rest, we really haven't done all that much work-wise, but we've had a few meetings, and of course, we got to go to the branch yesterday! I LOVED it. I was kind of nervous going into it a bit, since ZGrad was sooo great and I had been there for so long. But we had a great meeting with our ward mission leader before the meetings, which was AWESOME. He is great. And then just the Spirit in Sacrament meeting was so strong. It was like I was already home. There are a lot of really cute recently returned Sister missionaries in our ward--one trained Sister Clark (my MTC comp) in Ukraine, another I think is the sister you met on temple square...and there are so many great people. Another YSA girl played tennis for BYU and joined the church after she graduated there. It is a super small branch, but our area is huge and...the members here are just great, and I love it so much already. I am really really excited to be here.

Well. I am not quite sure what else to say. I love my new area, I love my new companions (I kind of wish we could stay in a 3some for forever, but Sister Frolova unfortunately needs to go home...it's just a lot of fun). I love being a missionary, I love the Gospel, and I love you all!

С любовью,
Sister Ashby


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